Dewpoint Therapeutics has nabbed infectious disease specialist Kara Carter, Ph.D., as its senior vice president of discovery biology.
Moving into a new research area, Carter joins the Boston biotech to work on biomolecular condensates—an area not just new for her, but to everyone.
Condensates research is helping explain aspects of cell biology that have been mysterious to researchers. If you look back at your dog-eared biology textbooks, they’ll almost certainly tell you the principal of the cell is the membrane.
But now, more importance is being given to biomolecular condensates—transient, liquidlike droplets made up of proteins and RNA—and Dewpoint is using this model to find new ways of discovering drugs. It’s early days, but the company thinks it can build out a new series of drugs for a range of diseases using the approach.
Carter will now work with Dewpoint’s Ann Kwong, Ph.D., the 2019 Fierce 15 winner’s executive vice president of R&D, as the biotech pushes on with early work to translate condensate biology into treatments for a range of tough-to-treat diseases.
She has a long and prestigious background, with 20 years of experience in the life science industry, including as EVP of infectious diseases at German biotech cum CRO Evotec, where she led the virology therapeutic area, and also as lead for the virology therapeutic portfolio at French Big Pharma Sanofi.
On top of this, she also this year in light of the pandemic was appointed to the ACTIV public/private partnership, serving on both the leadership team and in the preclinical working group, while also heading up the preclinical repurposing workstream for COVID-19 R&D in the pharma-based consortium.
“Kara Carter is a perfect fit to our growing team,” said Ameet Nathwani, M.D., CEO of Dewpoint. “Her curiosity, integrity, and deep drug discovery expertise, which spans multiple therapeutic areas including virology, together with her strong leadership track record, will enhance our wide-ranging condensate biology research programs and enrich our talented R&D team headed by Ann Kwong.”