Totus Medicines Expands its Scientific Advisory Board with the Addition of Dr. Lewis Cantley, Dr. Hope Rugo, and Dr. Josep Tabernero

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Apr 12, 2023, 08:00 ET

EMERYVILLE, Calif., April 12, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Totus Medicines, the drug discovery and development company committed to ending the era of untreatable disease, announced today the appointment of Dr.Lewis Cantley, Dr. Hope Rugo, and Josep Tabernero to the company's Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). Totus has created the first biosearch technology that scans, maps, and decodes effective new drugs thousands of times faster than traditional drug discovery processes. To start, Totus has focused on oncology with an early breakthrough for the most mutated oncogene in cancer, PI3Kα, using the Totus Accel^™ Platform.

The members of the newly appointed SAB bring unique expertise and experience in the areas of oncology treatment and therapeutic development for some of the world's hardest oncology gene mutations to treat. They include:

Dr. Lewis Cantley: Dr. Cantley's work has helped define the field of signal transduction, and he notably discovered the PI3K pathway and its role in cancer. He previously co-founded Agios Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AGIO), Petra Pharma, and Volastra Therapeutics. Dr. Cantley has been the recipient of multiple awards. For the discovery of PI3K, he received the inaugural $3M Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, an honor that "recognizes excellence in research aimed at curing intractable diseases and human life." He is a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Cancer Cell Biology program.
Dr. Hope Rugo: Dr. Rugo is a foremost expert on targeted oncology clinical development and well known for developing new strategies to enable rapid advancement of effective drugs to patients. As the co-director of UCSF's breast cancer clinical trials program, she established the I-SPY Trials, a groundbreaking new clinical approach to allow rapid approvals based on pre-defined benchmarks. This represents the longest running platform trial ever. Dr. Rugo has also served as principal investigator for over 10 new therapies, including working with multiple PI3K inhibitors. She is also an investigator with the Bay Area's SPORE (Specialized Programs of Research Excellence) on breast cancer.
Dr. Josep Tabernero: Dr. Tabernero served as ESMO President from 2018 – 2019, including its Executive Board of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) for many years. He is also member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and has been appointed as member of several Educational and Scientific Committees of ESMO, ASCO, AACR, AACR/NCI/EORTC, ASCO Gastrointestinal, and ESMO-GI/WCGIC meetings. As the Head of the Medical Oncology Department at the Vall d'Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus and Director of the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), Dr. Tabernero has been Principal Investigator of several Phase I pharmacodynamic studies and translational projects with tumor-directed targeted therapies and immune therapies.

Totus announced the formation of its Scientific Advisory Board in May 2022, taking a novel approach to the usual practice of populating an SAB with experts of similar backgrounds. Instead, Totus recruited industry leaders from different disciplines to provide strategic guidance as the company entered clinical trial phase in December 2022 and continues to expand its platform.

"I am excited to join the Scientific Advisory Board of Totus Medicines. Totus has a uniquely novel approach to targeting PI3K-alpha that may solve the key challenges that this field has been working to address for decades," said Dr. Lewis Cantley. "By achieving near 100% inhibition of PI3K-alpha, this approach could produce real benefit for patients with this mutated oncogene."

"I'm honored to have Dr. Cantley, Dr. Rugo, and Dr. Tabernero join our growing Scientific Advisory Board," said Totus CEO and co-founder Dr. Neil Dhawan, Ph.D. "Totus' mission is to solve some of the biggest issues plaguing the biopharma industry through our novel technology applications and platform - and our new SAB members, who are renowned leaders with diverse backgrounds, will be a crucial part as we continue to develop the next generation of highly effective medicines."

The SAB advances Totus' efforts to continue to deliver unparalleled efficiency and accuracy with its groundbreaking drug discovery platform. Announced last year, Totus initiated a drug program for the newly identified TOS-358, which is the first highly selective covalent molecule targeting PI3Kα, which is the most mutated oncogene in cancer.

About Totus Medicines
Founded in 2019, Totus Medicines has developed the next generation of cellular analysis to create life-changing therapies to treat previously untreatable diseases. Totus' platform uses proprietary molecular tags that track drug binding in individual cells to enable the screening of billions of molecules across any drug target. Totus is based in the Bay Area.

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

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SOURCE Totus Medicines