After breaking cover last April to go after a whole new class of medicine, Third Rock Ventures’ MOMA Therapeutics has grabbed a new chief to take the helm.
Asit Parikh, M.D., Ph.D., joins the ambitious startup as its full-time president and CEO nine months after it got off an $86 million funding round led by VC Third Rock Ventures to systematically go after molecular machines, a family of more than 400 enzymes that others have only stumbled upon by chance.
He will succeed interim founding CEO Reid Huber, Ph.D., a partner at Third Rock, who will remain on the board, and starts in April. He comes from a long history in biopharma, including most recently a major stint at Japanese pharma Takeda as senior vice president and head of its gastroenterology unit, one of its biggest research and sales areas, since 2012.
He now boards a completely different ship: a very early-stage biotech going after cutting-edge science and the need for a lot more cash to keep going in the future.
His R&D focus will now be on molecular machines, areas that are a very rich target class that really function to move things around the cell, utilizing the energy that comes from the hydrolysis of ATP. They range from DNA helicases and chromatin remodelers, which govern genetic expression, to transporters, which shuttle materials inside cells and across membranes.
Others have drugged molecular machines before, including Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which has developed multiple drugs that target a transporter that causes cystic fibrosis due to mutations in the gene that encodes it.
These have, however, often been found by happy accident: MOMA wants to discover them on purpose and build out a new class of medicine by drugging molecular machines.
The biotech is still keeping mum on the details of which diseases it is hoping to go after, having previously said that with 400-plus targets, more than half of which can contribute to human disease, it has a wide field to tackle.
“I joined MOMA in large part because of its unique and compelling vision—the possibility that systematically drugging molecular machines can deliver an entirely new class of medicines to patients who need them,” said Parikh in a statement.
“MOMA’s approach, coupled with its world-class team and scientific founders, represented an unprecedented opportunity to join a disruptive young biotech poised to make a true difference in medicine.”