Presage appoints two new directors

Presage Biosciences, an oncology company has appointed Tachi Yamada and Christoph Lengauer to its board of directors.

Dr. Yamada was recently the Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of Takeda Pharmaceuticals, and Dr. Lengauer is currently the Chief Scientific Officer of Blueprint Medicines.

Nathan Caffo, President of Presage said Tuesday that this was an important juncture of the company’s evolution to more directly apply its CIVO technology platform to the development of effective cancer drug combinations. He said that Yamada’s and Lengauer’s experience across both large scale pharmaceutical company drug development and agile biotech companies will complement Presage’s current board capabilities well.

“We are thrilled that they are joining Presage in our efforts to build a world-class oncology company,” said Caffo.

“I have followed Presage with interest through its partnership with Takeda during my tenure there, and I have always been particularly impressed with Presage’s unique approach and its efficiency and effectiveness for discovering novel drug combinations,” said Tachi Yamada. “I look forward to contributing my perspective and experience as the company evolves its focus to directly guiding development of its own internal drug programs.”

“At oncology companies large and small, I have led a number of drug discovery programs that could best realize their clinical potential in combination, and these efforts were often thwarted by a limitation on translating preclinical work into patients,” said Christoph Lengauer. “It’s time for a new approach to empirically determining drug sensitivity, and Presage has developed just such a technology. The company’s platform has immense potential to guide clinical development of combinations.”