Key Appointments Bring Highly Relevant Experience in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Drug Discovery
BioSymetrics, an AI-powered drug discovery company, today announced the appointments of Stacie Calad-Thomson as Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Drug Discovery, Matt Fusco as Chief Operating Officer, and Amanda Guisbond as Vice President of Marketing and Communications.
BioSymetrics integrates clinical and experimental data using machine learning to navigate human disease biology and advance precision medicines. Unlike other AI-powered drug discovery startups, BioSymetrics utilizes electronic health record data and human-relevant disease models to bring clinical insights, validated in vivo, into the scientific discovery process. BioSymetrics then applies its patent pending Contingent AI™ to denoise, debias and integrate this clinical data for use across a phenotype-driven, therapeutic discovery process.
BioSymetrics currently works with life science and health system partners – including Sema4, Northwell Health and Janssen, The Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson – to leverage diverse datasets, apply its framework to advance our understanding of disease, and progress therapeutic discovery. BioSymetrics is currently exploring, with and without partners, preclinical development of assets in neurogenerative, cardiovascular and rare disorders.
These three leadership appointments support BioSymetrics’ plans to operationalize its proprietary Elion™ platform and accelerate partner and pipeline development:
Stacie Calad-Thomson, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Drug Discovery
Stacie will guide the company on its drug discovery strategy, with a focus on human-relevant disease biology, and progressing beyond protein targets. Stacie is a rising star in the industry, having already held positions of increasing responsibility at GSK, Atomwise and the ATOM Consortium, in addition to her work consulting with many of the startups currently using machine learning or genomics data to spearhead drug discovery programs.
“The current pharma model is plagued by high failure rates and attrition. Nearly 90 percent of drug discovery programs that enter clinical trials fail, and most are due to lack of efficacy,” said Stacie. “Having worked in the industry for 15 years, I’ve seen how clinical data are siloed from discovery data, and that lessons learned go un-shared between, or even within, these organizations. What excites me about BioSymetrics – and why I’ve decided to join full time after consulting with both BioSymetrics and its competitors in the space – is its application of real-world patient data and human-relevant disease models to drug discovery. This is a compelling, modern approach that I’m eager to help bring to more partners as we build, together, a pipeline of human disease-ready, AI-derived medicines.”
Matt Fusco, Chief Operating Officer
Matt is an entrepreneur and executive leader with repeat experience helping early-stage companies bring new and innovative solutions to market. With a strong operational and business development background, Matt has helped numerous companies navigate complex and emerging markets to provide actionable direction that drives client adoption and improves internal processes and execution. Before BioSymetrics, Matt was co-founder of Barometric, a data company providing measurement and identity services to advertisers that was sold successfully to Claritas in 2018.
Amanda Guisbond, Vice President of Marketing and Communications
Amanda is a career marketer and corporate communicator with a focus on emerging companies in the digital health and life sciences sectors. Amanda brings highly relevant experience to BioSymetrics from Recursion, where she led marketing and communications before the digital biology company’s successful IPO earlier this year. Previously, Amanda also led communications for Amwell, a national telehealth company at the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic and was part of the team that developed the initial communications and marketing strategy for Moderna.
Said Anthony Iacovone, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of BioSymetrics:
“We are humbled and excited to bring on these three seasoned leaders, all incredibly skilled at what they do, to the growing leadership team at BioSymetrics. Stacie’s experience in AI and drug discovery has already helped to refine our strategy around partnering, platform development and pipeline prioritization. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Matt before, an executive who is laser focused on execution while building team morale and know he will help us deliver on our vision. Like Stacie, Amanda has already impressed me with her knowledge about the industry and approach to messaging and communication strategy. This is the team that will accelerate our growth and help elevate BioSymetrics as a leader in our industry.”
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