|
overview | leadership | founders | scientific
advisory board | investors
founders
Agios' founders are world-renowned authorities in cancer who are also pioneers responsible for key advances in the field of cancer metabolism. Together, they provide scientific leadership and expertise in the field that is on the leading edge of integrating decades of research within the combined, unexploited area of oncology and metabolism.
Lewis C. Cantley, Ph.D.
Professor of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School
Director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Member of the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts
and Sciences
Dr. Cantley is a world leader in the understanding of the biochemical
pathways linking cancer and energy metabolism. Key contributions include:
- Discovering the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) signaling pathway.
- Characterizing the mechanism by which PI3K is activated by growth factors and oncogenes, and elucidating pathways downstream of PI3K, including the AKT/PKB signaling pathway
- Pioneering the application of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) for studying small molecule cell membrane transport
- Discovering pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) as a “hub” to integrate growth factor signaling and aerobic glycolysis, a new evolution to the understanding of the Warburg effect
Tak W. Mak, Ph.D.
Professor of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto
Director, Advanced Medical Discovery Institute
Director, The Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research
Foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences and Fellow of the Royal Society
Dr. Mak is a preeminent researcher of the biology of the immune system, the biology of apoptosis and the pathogenesis of cancer. Key contributions include:
- Discovering the T-Cell receptor.
- Characterizing the tumorigenic functions of the tumor suppressor protein p53, and the kinase Chk2.
- Identifying CPT1C as a tumor-specific gene product that plays an important role in the utilization of fatty acids as an alternative energy source of cancer cells.
Craig B. Thompson, M.D.
Director, Abramson Cancer Center
Chair of the Department of Cancer Biology, University of Pennsylvania
Member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Institute of Medicine
Dr. Thompson is an authority in the study of how genes regulate apoptosis and metabolism and investigates their application in treating cancer. Key contributions include:
- Elucidating the role of the Bcl-2 family of oncogenes role in regulating cell survival.
- Identifying the roles of aerobic glycolysis, fatty acid synthesis and autophagy in the metabolic adaptation by cancer cells as part of carcinogenesis.
- Proposing the concept that most oncogenes and tumor suppressors evolved to regulate cellular metabolism.
Shin-San Michael Su, Ph.D.
VP Drug Discovery, Interim CSO, Agios
Dr. Su brings more than seventeen years of organization, project management and scientific experience in the biotechnology industry. Most recently, he served as General Director and Vice President of the Biomedical Engineering Research Laboratory (BEL) at ITRI in Taiwan. Prior, he spent 14 years in a number of roles, concluding his tenure as Program Executive and Vice President of the Novartis Kinase Collaboration for Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
|
