Mission Therapeutics, a company focused on the discovery and development of modulators of the deubiquitylating (DUB) enzyme family for the treatment of cancer and other diseases, appointed Paul Wallace as Chief Business Officer. The appointment highlights the scope and productivity of Mission’s drug discovery platform.
Dr. Wallace joins Mission to formulate future business strategy at a time when the company’s pipeline has matured to the point where strategic options such as development partnerships are ready to be explored. Having worked in business development roles within drug discovery companies for nearly 20 years, Dr. Wallace was most recently Executive Vice President and Head of Business Development at Medivir AB, where he was also a member of the Executive Management Team responsible for strategic and operational leadership, R&D portfolio management and investment planning. During this period, he played a key role: not only did the company seal 25 partnership deals under his leadership, it also brought 8 products into clinical development, 2 drugs were launched and Medivir transitioned into a profitable pharmaceutical firm. Prior to his roles in business development, Dr. Wallace had a career in pharmaceutical research and undertook his PhD and post-doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge.
Paul Wallace responded: “I am delighted to be joining the Mission team at a time when the commercialisation of certain of its assets is an increasingly promising prospect. The Company’s progress in unlocking successive DUB targets to potent and selective small molecule inhibitors positions Mission for entering partnership transactions outside its proprietary oncology programs. The diversity of assets created is testimony to the rigor of Mission’s screening platform in this critically important, but hitherto difficult, area of drug discovery”.