Press Release

Adds Kevan Shokat, Ph.D., as Academic Co-Founder and Julian Adams, Ph.D., John Kuriyan, Ph.D. and Trever Bivona, M.D., Ph.D. as Senior Advisors

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--REVOLUTION Medicines, Inc., a company focused on frontier cancer targets and drug discovery inspired by nature’s lessons, today announced that noted chemical biologist and cancer investigator Kevan Shokat, Ph.D. has joined the company as an academic co-founder and member of the company’s scientific advisory board, along with co-founders Martin Burke, M.D., Ph.D. and Michael Fischbach, Ph.D. The company also appointed accomplished industry veteran Julian Adams, Ph.D., leading structural biologist John Kuriyan, Ph.D., and noted clinical and translational oncologist Trever Bivona, M.D., Ph.D., to its scientific advisory board.

“REVOLUTION Medicines has established significant momentum in deploying our product engine to advance multiple oncology drug discovery programs,” said Mark A. Goldsmith, M.D., Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of REVOLUTION Medicines. “Dr. Shokat is a leader and pioneer in the design of small molecules to modulate signal transduction pathways that control cellular growth exploited by cancer cells. Drs. Adams, Kuriyan and Bivona are also exceptionally accomplished scientists who bring additional creativity, experience and insights to help us fulfill our mission to engage frontier targets on behalf of cancer patients.”

Dr. Shokat currently serves as professor and vice-chair in the department of cellular and molecular pharmacology at University of California, San Francisco, professor in the department of chemistry at University of California, Berkeley and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including election to the National Academy of Science and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Shokat and his research laboratory are widely recognized for exploiting tools of chemistry, protein engineering and genetics to reveal the functions of individual kinases within a cell, and thus identify critical signaling molecules as candidates for drug development. He is a founder of Intellikine (acquired by Takeda) and Cellular Genomics (acquired by Gilead); co-founder of Araxes Pharmaceuticals, eFFECTOR Therapeutics and Mitokinin, LLC and a scientific advisor at Kura Oncology.

Dr. Adams currently serves as president, research and development at Infinity Pharmaceuticals. He is a highly successful and noted drug hunter, having discovered and developed Velcade® (bortezomib), a proteasome inhibitor for cancer therapy while at ProScript Inc. (acquired by Millennium Pharmaceuticals). Earlier in his career, while at Boehring Ingelheim, he discovered the drug Viramune® (nevirapine) for HIV. Dr. Adams has received many awards, including the 2012 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize for his role in the discovery and development of bortezomib, the 2012 C. Chester Stock Award Lectureship from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the 2001 Ribbon of Hope Award for Velcade® from the International Myeloma Foundation. He is an inventor on more than 40 patents and has authored over 100 papers and book chapters in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Adams is on the board of directors of Warp Drive Bio and the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation, as well as a member of the scientific advisory boards of Cleave Biosciences and Stand Up to Cancer.

Dr. Kuriyan currently serves as professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the department of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Kuriyan’s research focuses on the structure and mechanism of the enzymes and molecular switches that carry out cellular signal transduction. He is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work in structural biology, including elucidation of foundational insights about the dynamics of protein kinases that have been highly impactful in the drug discovery field. He is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and member of the National Academy of Sciences, which awarded him the 2005 Richard Lounsbery Award. Dr. Kuriyan is an academic founder of Nurix, Inc. and a member of the advisory boards of Carmot Therapeutics and Amgen, Inc.

Dr. Bivona is an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco. He is a medical oncologist and accomplished cell and molecular biologist. He maintains an active academic clinical practice and leads a basic and translational research laboratory focused on cancer genetics, precision medicine and the molecular basis of targeted therapy response and resistance. Dr. Bivona’s research has led to the elucidation of important mechanisms of resistance to EGFR-targeted therapy, BRAF- and MEK-targeted therapy and ALK-targeted therapy in lung and other cancers. He is the recipient of an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

About REVOLUTION Medicines
The mission of REVOLUTION Medicines is to discover and develop new drugs directed toward frontier oncology targets for cancer patients. The company draws inspiration from nature’s lessons including natural products that are inherently rich with biological function. REVOLUTION Medicines deploys an innovative toolkit including REVBLOCKS™, an integrated suite of modular synthesis methodologies applied to simple chemical “building blocks,” and the REVEAL™ computational platform, which uses evolution’s lessons to inform selection of chemical scaffolds and guide drug design for non-classical drug targets. Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. at the intersection of Silicon Valley and the birthplace of biotechnology, REVOLUTION Medicines is a private company financed by top-tier investor Third Rock Ventures. For more information, please visit www.revolutionmedicines.com.