Totus Medicines Appoints Chief People Officer Daisy Chhokar and Chief Financial Officer Sam Singer to Senior Leadership Team

Company Plans Rapid 2022 Expansion Before Advancing First Drug Candidate into Clinic

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Jan 06, 2022, 08:21 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Totus Medicines, a drug discovery company using breakthrough chemical biology to make the entire human genome druggable, today announced the appointments of Daisy Chhokar and Sam Singer as the company's first Chief People Officer and Chief Financial Officer, respectively. Chhokar and Singer will report directly to Neil Dhawan, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Totus Medicines, and will support the company's expansion.

Totus Medicines' $40M Series A, led by DCVC Bio and Northpond Ventures, will enable the company's rapid growth, including hiring for 60 open roles in San Francisco, California, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the coming year, Totus Medicines plans to expand and scale the company's proprietary drug discovery platform and advance its lead drug program, TOS-358, which targets PI3Kα, the most mutated oncogene, into clinical trials.

"We are thrilled to welcome Daisy and Sam to the team and know their counsel will be invaluable as we continue to grow and scale our team, the company, and our drug discovery platform in 2022 and beyond," said Neil Dhawan, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Totus Medicines. "The next few years will be pivotal for Totus Medicines as we progress our mission of creating treatments for the world's most intractable diseases."

Chhokar brings nearly 20 years of human resources experience to Totus, where she will be responsible for leading the company's people and culture strategy as Chief People Officer. Prior to Totus, Chhokar served as the vice president and head of human resources at Nurix Therapeutics, and director of human resources at InterMune, another highly successful biotechnology organization.

"Totus Medicines is on a path of rapid growth as we continue to scale our drug discovery platform. Assembling the right team, including the world's leading data scientists, biologists, chemists, and more, will be critical to our successful expansion," Chhokar said. "I am looking forward to working with Neil and the Totus team to make this vision of treating the untreatable a reality."

Singer is a deeply experienced finance executive who has led analysis and evaluation of multiple biotechnology companies with a specific focus on oncology and gene editing. Before joining Totus as Chief Financial Officer, Singer served in leadership at Granahan Investment Management; Mistral Capital Partners; Wellington Management; Loomis, Sayles & Company; and Lehman Brothers.

"Totus Medicines is a company with unlimited potential in our ability to develop therapeutics across the entire human genome with our proprietary drug discovery platform," Singer said. "It is a privilege to join Totus as we are on the cusp of an exciting future, not only for our team but more importantly for patients with complex diseases. I am excited by the opportunities at hand and look forward to helping build and shape the path ahead for Totus."

About Totus Medicines

Founded in 2019, Totus Medicines uses revolutionary chemical biology to create life-changing therapies to treat previously untreatable diseases across the entire human genome. Totus is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For more information, please visit totusmedicines.com and follow Totus on LinkedIn and Twitter.

SOURCE Totus Medicines