BOSTON — Monte Rosa Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing precision medicines that degrade disease-causing proteins, announced today the appointments of Owen Wallace, Ph.D., as Chief Scientific Officer and Silvia Buonamici, Ph.D., as Senior Vice President, Drug Discovery Biology, as the company continues to expand its executive leadership team. Drs. Wallace and Buonamici will oversee the research and development of the company’s pipeline of molecular glue degrader programs.
“As we continue to build out the Monte Rosa team and advance multiple new therapies toward clinical development, we are thrilled to welcome Owen and Silvia to the team,” said Monte Rosa CEO Markus Warmuth, M.D. “Owen brings more than two decades of experience leading drug discovery and development and will be a significant asset to the team as we bring our protein degrader therapies into clinical trials. Silvia’s previous leadership in oncology drug discovery both in industry and in academia will help to streamline research processes and fully utilize our in-house proteomics, structural biology, machine learning-based target selection and computational chemistry capabilities to predict and bring to life the next generation of molecular glue degraders.”
Dr. Wallace joins Monte Rosa from Fulcrum Therapeutics, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer since 2017. Prior, he was the Head of Global Discovery Chemistry at Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Research. Earlier, Dr. Wallace spent ten years with Eli Lilly and Company in various positions, including global leadership roles as Senior Director of Discovery Chemistry Research and Site Scientific Leader at the Lilly Research Center in Surrey, U.K. Dr. Wallace began his career at Bristol Myers-Squibb as a Research Investigator. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University.
Prior to joining Monte Rosa, Dr. Buonamici served as a Consultant at Atlas Venture and Third Rock Ventures, developing the strategic build of new oncology precision medicine companies. Prior to Atlas and Third Rock, she worked at H3 Biomedicine in roles of increasing responsibility, culminating in her position as Executive Director. Dr. Buonamici began her career as an Investigator at Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research. She holds her Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Bologna in Italy.
About Monte Rosa
Monte Rosa Therapeutics is a biotechnology company discovering and developing molecular glues to degrade disease-causing proteins. The company has created a platform to rationally design small molecules that reprogram ubiquitin ligases to eliminate disease drivers previously deemed undruggable. The company’s drug discovery platform combines diverse and proprietary chemical libraries of small molecule protein degraders with in-house proteomics, structural biology, machine learning-based target selection and computational chemistry capabilities to predict and obtain protein degradation profiles. Monte Rosa was launched from founding investor Versant Ventures’ Ridgeline Discovery Engine and is headquartered in Boston, Mass., with research operations in both Boston and Basel, Switzerland.