Frontier Medicines’ Post

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Daniel Erlanson to the Drug Hunter Scientific Advisory Board!   Dr. Erlanson brings over 25 years of experience in the biotech industry. Currently, he is Chief Innovation Officer of Frontier Medicines. Before that he co-founded and led chemistry at Carmot Therapeutics, Inc. Therapeutics, which collaborated with Amgen on the discovery of the first FDA-approved KRASG12C inhibitor, sotorasib. Carmot also put three of its own internally discovered drugs into the clinic before being acquired by Roche in early 2024.    Daniel is a widely recognized thought leader in fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD), serving as the editor of the popular Practical Fragments blog (https://lnkd.in/dStCAyZW), co-editor of two books on FBDD, and the inventor or author on over 70 granted US patents and peer-reviewed publications.   Daniel started his industry career at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he co-invented the covalent disulfide tethering approach for finding fragments and advancing them to leads, enabling the discovery of drugs for targets once thought to be intractable for small molecules, such as KRAS. Daniel received his BA in chemistry from Carleton College, his PhD from Harvard University in the laboratory of Greg Verdine, and did postdoctoral work in Jim Wells’ group at Genentech.   We are privileged to have Daniel Erlanson on our Scientific Advisory Board, whose scientific leadership enhances Drug Hunter in our mission to empower the world’s scientists to make tomorrow’s medicines.   Welcome Daniel!

Kicking KRAS to the kerb It's not so long ago when we saw numerous companies vying to to drug targets such as VEGF and EGFR – with limited success in many cases.  Even today there are not too many approved drugs in these two categories relative to the number of agents which ended up in 'dog drug heaven'.  The dreaded phrase was originally coined by Dr Pat LoRosso while at Karmanos Cancer Centre in Detroit; she's now at Yale and the incoming AACR President.  Befitting the lady's style – she's one of the nicest and kindest oncologists I've ever met – it seems a much more pleasant way to describe abandoned or discontinued anticancer agents than referring to the veritable dustbin of failed dreams. The latest posse of drugs needing some stringent culling or shakeout will likely come from the KRAS niche because the market is unlikely to be forgiving commercially of any drug not moving the needle in a substantial fashion.  The good news is there are some gems in the rough for those who care to look more carefully and closely at what's needed to move forward.  One of them is the focus of our latest company interview from AACR – what are Frontier Medicines doing differently and why does it matter? In an interview with their CSO, Dr Kevin Webster, we learn more about their innovative approach to tackling KRAS G12C... Check it out! https://bit.ly/49AXKGn