Orphagen Pharmaceuticals, a preclinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing first-in-class therapeutics for cancer and inflammatory disease, announced the promotion of Paul Crowe to Vice President, Drug Discovery, effective June 30, 2021. Dr. Crowe previously served as Director of Biology after joining Orphagen in 2009.
“Paul’s leadership in drug discovery and development has been critical to advancing our preclinical programs, including OR-449, a first-in-class development candidate for treatment of adrenocortical cancer (ACC) and related indications,” said Scott Thacher, founder and CEO of Orphagen. “On top of this, Paul has managed a wide range of operational commitments while representing Orphagen externally on key projects.”
Previously Dr. Crowe served as Senior Director of Pharmacology and Lead Discovery at Neurocrine Biosciences, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on development of therapeutics in the CNS, autoimmune, and endocrine therapeutic areas. Paul earned his PhD at the University of South Florida and was a post-doctoral fellow and Research Asst. Prof. at U.C. Riverside with Carl Ware, a noted cellular immunologist, where he discovered and characterized ligands and receptors in the TNF/lymphotoxin family.
About Orphagen – Orphagen is a pioneer in the screening, discovery and development of ligands that modulate orphan or unexplored members of the nuclear receptor family. On a per target basis, the nuclear receptors are one of the most successful target classes known to the pharmaceutical industry.
The company has proprietary leads for multiple novel drug targets with potential applications in precision oncology and inflammatory disease. Orphagen is initiating IND-enabling studies for its lead program, based on the first-in-class SF-1 antagonist OR-449. Potential expansion indications for OR-449 include other cancers where SF-1 expression is highly elevated and endometriosis, where SF-1 can be ectopically expressed.