Bicycle Therapeutics adds two senior figures to clinical team to advance expanding pipeline

May 9, 2019 Off By BusinessWire

Lisa Mahnke, M.D., Ph.D., joins as Senior Vice President, Head of
Clinical, and Terrence West, MBA, joins as Vice President, Head of
Program Management

CAMBRIDGE, England & BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Bicycle
Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering a new class of
therapeutics based on its proprietary bicyclic peptide (Bicycle^®)
product platform, today announced two senior appointments to facilitate
its expanding and advancing clinical pipeline. Lisa Mahnke, M.D., Ph.D.,
joins as Senior Vice President and Head of Clinical. Terrence West, MBA,
joins as Vice President and Head of Program Management.

Dr. Mahnke has completed multiple successful investigational new drug
(IND) applications and brings deep expertise in pharmaceutical
development to Bicycle, including experience in clinical development,
clinical pharmacology and translational medicine. Mr. West is a seasoned
biopharma executive with experience across multiple therapeutic areas
and project functions.

“As Bicycle expands its pipeline and our programs mature, it is critical
that we deliver an effective clinical strategy, and these two new
clinical team members are an integral part of our strategy,” said Kevin
Lee, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Bicycle Therapeutics. “Lisa and
Terry have exceptional track records as senior leaders navigating
programs through the clinic. I am very pleased to welcome them both to
the Bicycle team.”

Lisa Mahnke will lead Bicycle’s clinical efforts. Most
recently, Dr. Mahnke was Head of Clinical Development at Dragonfly
Therapeutics and Syros Pharmaceuticals. Before that, she held positions
of increasing responsibility in clinical pharmacology and clinical
development, including medical lead and Head of Clinical Pharmacology,
at BMS, Merck, EMD Serono and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. She is a licensed
and prior board-certified physician in internal medicine and infectious
diseases. Dr. Mahnke holds a B.S. in chemistry from Ripon College, a
Ph.D. in biochemistry and an M.D. from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.

Terrence West was most recently Executive Director, Project
Management, at EMD Serono, where he successfully led multiple teams from
discovery through initial FDA filings, including Phase I-III clinical
program approvals and launches. He has also worked in program management
for companies including ZioPharm Oncology, Stryker Regenerative
Medicine, Dynavax Technologies and Exelixis, Inc. Mr. West holds a B.S.
in chemistry from the University of Arizona and an MBA in Technology
Management from the University of Phoenix.

About Bicycle Therapeutics

Bicycle Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company
developing a novel class of medicines, referred to as Bicycles^®,
for diseases that are underserved by existing therapeutics. Bicycles are
fully synthetic short peptides constrained to form two loops that
stabilize their structural geometry. This constraint is designed to
confer high affinity and selectivity, and the relatively large surface
area presented by the molecule allows targets to be drugged that have
historically been intractable to non-biological approaches. We have a
novel and proprietary phage display screening platform that we use to
identify Bicycles in an efficient manner. Our initial internal
programs are focused on oncology indications with high unmet medical
need. Our lead product candidate, BT1718, is a Bicycle Toxin
Conjugate being investigated for safety, tolerability and efficacy in an
ongoing Phase I/IIa clinical trial in collaboration with, and fully
funded by, the Centre for Drug Development of Cancer Research UK.
Bicycle was founded in 2009 as a result of innovative science conducted
by Sir Greg Winter and Professor Christian Heinis. Sir Greg Winter is a
pioneer in monoclonal antibodies; in 2018, he was awarded a Nobel Prize
in chemistry for the invention of the technology underpinning our
proprietary phage display screening platform that we use to identify Bicycles.
Bicycle is headquartered in Cambridge, U.K., with many key functions and
members of its leadership team located near the biotech hub of Boston,
Massachusetts. For more information, visit BicycleTherapeutics.com,
connect with us on LinkedIn and follow us on Twitter at @Bicycle_tx.