Our technology enables a comprehensive cartography of the cancer cell surface to identify a multitude of new druggable targets.
Our technology enables a comprehensive cartography of the cancer cell surface to identify a multitude of new druggable targets.
Our mission is to improve patient care by unleashing the full potential of targeted cancer therapies using our transformative cell surfaceome discovery technology.
At DISCO we are able to unlock the entire cancer cell surface at scale by identifying surface-bound proteins and uncovering protein communities. This approach thus permits unravelling comprehensive target information that neither standard proteomics, nor genome or transcriptome sequencing can provide.
We have formed a stellar team of individuals with diverse backgrounds from academia, biotech and pharma and covering all relevant areas of expertise – from basic science to clinical trials – to leverage our breakthrough technology and launch the development of novel therapeutics. Our initial discovery projects are on Small Cell Lung Cancer and microsatellite-stable Colorectal Cancer. Other tumor types are in the works.
Fast and comprehensive surfaceome discovery will thus accelerate the process of selecting novel molecular targets – for mono- as well as bi-specific antibodies – and expedite drug discovery.
Our disruptive platform technology transforms our understanding of the surfaceome of cancer cells by identifying protein communities across the entire cell surface.
By knowing which proteins are truly present on the cell surface and participate within previously unrecognized protein communities, we can design highly specific large molecule therapeutics, thus boosting efficacy and reducing side effects.
Roman Thomas, MD
Chief Executive Officer
Founder
Roman is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of DISCO Pharmaceuticals. Roman also serves as the Director of the Department of Translational Genomics and as Professor at the University of Cologne.
As an avid biotech entrepreneur, Roman founded NEO New Oncology in 2012 (acquired by Siemens in 2016), PearlRiver Bio in 2019 (acquired by Centessa in 2021) and Epiphanes Inc. in 2019. His scientific focus is on the characterization of cancer genome alterations and their relevance for diagnosis and treatment of patients. Roman has a particular interest in lung cancer and leads the worldwide largest research initiative on small cell lung cancer.
Roman obtained his medical degree from the University of Cologne and performed postdoctoral work at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard.
Johannes Heuckmann, PhD
Chief Operating Officer
Co-Founder
Johannes serves as Chief Operating Officer and Head of Computational Biology at DISCO Pharmaceuticals. Johannes has more than a decade of senior management experience with a successful track record in company building as well as leading Research & Development and operational activities in the biotech and diagnostics industry.
Before co-founding DISCO, Johannes co-founded PearlRiver Bio (acquired by Centessa in 2021) and led the discovery of its next generation EGFR inhibitors as CSO. Earlier, as co-founder and CSO of NEO New Oncology (acquired by Siemens in 2016) he developed CE-IVD-labeled next-generation sequencing (NGS) diagnostic tests and successfully built a start-up into a company with more than 50 employees.
Johannes holds a PhD in Cancer Genomics from the University of Bonn, Germany.
Stefan Ries, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer
Stefan serves as Chief Scientific Officer leading all Research and Development activities. He is a seasoned executive with deep knowledge of drug discovery and development, especially in the field of Oncology and protein therapeutics.
Prior to joining DISCO, Stefan served as Venture Partner at Versant Ventures, where he was member of the global investment team and contributed to the build-up of Versant’s biotechnology company portfolio. Prior to this, he spent over 16 years at Hoffmann-La Roche, where he held various scientific leadership positions.
Stefan holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the Institute of Clinical Chemistry in Regensburg, Germany. He did his postdoctoral fellowship at the NCI-designated Cancer Center of the University of California, San Francisco.
Emanuela Tschudy-Milani, PhD
Head of Technology & Head of DISCO Zürich
Emanuela serves as Head of Technology & Head of DISCO Zürich overseeing technology development and all activities at DISCO Switzerland. Prior to joining DISCO, she was head of the Proteotyping Node within the Tumor Profiler consortium, where she contributed to the initiatives focused on integrated, multi-omics, and functional tumor profiling, with a special emphasis on advancing personalized medicine. Emanuela also contributed to the academic community as Research scientist and lecturer at the ETH Zürich.
Emanuela holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI), University of Basel, Switzerland. She did a postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Bernd Wollscheid at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology & Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.
Tobias Schmidt, PhD
Head of Discovery
Tobias serves as Head of Discovery overseeing target validation and preclinical development at DISCO Pharmaceuticals. Tobias is a target validation expert with several years of drug development experience in the pharmaceutical industry.
Before joining DISCO, Tobias was a Team and Project Lead at Hoffman-La Roche, where he established and led a target discovery & validation group with a focus on genetic screens to identify targets in the field of cancer immunotherapy.
Tobias holds a PhD in Molecular Biomedicine from the University of Bonn, Germany, where he worked on pattern recognition receptors of the innate immune system and gene editing technologies as a tool for target identification.
Dieter Weinand
Dieter, the former CEO of Bayer Pharma, is an experienced business leader with over 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. During his career, he has held various responsibilities in general management, commercial, operational and strategic leadership roles, leading business operations in the Asia-Pacific region, EMEA, Latin America and the US, for companies including Bayer, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Sanofi.
He has also led the launch and marketing of products in various therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular diseases, oncology, dermatology, immunology, and respiratory and inflammatory diseases. He is currently a member of the Board of Coya Therapeutics (NASDAQ: COYA), Chairman of the Board of Replimune (NASDAQ: REPL), Chairman of the Board of Umoja, Chairman of the Board of Inspirna, and Executive Chairman of the Board of Mnemo Therapeutics.
He earned an M.S. in pharmacology and toxicology from Long Island University, New York, and a B.A. in biology from Concordia College, New York.
Maina Bhaman
Maina is a Partner at Sofinnova Partners and has a long track record as a successful healthcare investor. Prior to joining Sofinnova, she was director of healthcare investment at Touchstone Innovations (formerly Imperial Innovations) in London, where she led and co-led investments in the U.K.
Before turning to investing, Maina worked in the R&D teams of several UK and US biotech companies, including Celltech, Oxford GlycoSciences, Chimeric Therapies and GeneMedicine. Her current investments at Sofinnova Partners include Sitryx Therapeutics Ltd, Mironid Ltd, Myricx Bio, Mediar Therapeutics, Enyo Pharma, Nuage Therapeutics, and Catamaran Bio.
Maina holds a B.S. from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from the Imperial Business School.
Carsten Reinhardt, MD, PhD
Carsten is a physician scientist who currently serves as Chief Development Officer at Immatics (NASDAQ: IMTX), a pioneer in the field of tumor antigen identification, and is focused on bringing T-cell therapies (TCR-based ACT and bispecific TCR) against these targets into the clinics and towards regulatory approval. Previously, he was EVP and Chief Medical Officer at Micromet Inc, International Medical Leader at Hoffmann-La Roche and has been serving as a director on supervisory boards to a variety of biopharma companies.
Carsten is a Visiting Professor for Pharmaceutical Medicine at the University of Basel and has co-authored more than 40 publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Carsten holds an M.D. from the University of Munich and a Ph.D. in cellular immunology from the Institute of Immunology in Munich.
Therese Liechtenstein, PhD
Therese Maria (Thera) is an Investment Director in the Biotechnology team of M Ventures. Thera actively leads investments and represents M Ventures on the board of multiple portfolio companies. Previously Thera managed strategic projects for the Healthcare business of Merck and prior to this was a client relationship manager in the field of wealth preservation, at Industrie- & Finanzkontor Ets.
She received her PhD in Immuno-Oncology from University College London, an MSc in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Amsterdam, and a BA in Biology and Business studies from New York University.
Christian Schubert, PhD
Christian has over a decade of experience in the life sciences industry spanning corporate development, strategy and external innovation, company building, and venture capital. He is currently Vice President and Head of AbbVie Ventures, where he directs AbbVie’s strategic venture capital investments in core therapeutic areas of interest. Prior to joining AbbVie, he was an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Atlas Venture, Global Head of R&D External Innovation at Servier, Managing Director of Servier BioInnovation, and earlier in his career held roles in Corporate Development and Strategy at Biogen and Worldwide R&D at Pfizer.
Christian holds BSc and MSc degrees from the Technical University of Munich, received his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Rob Woodman, PhD
Rob has led the biotech at Panakes since 2021. He has global experience in biotech gained in both institutional and corporate venture firms, encompassing de novo start-up through to growth investments, with a track record of value creation in all of these settings as demonstrated by multiple acquisitions and NASDAQ listings of the companies he has invested in.
Rob was Senior Partner at Takeda Ventures, and was also the Head of Genesis Labs, Takeda’s internal concept incubator. Prior to joining Takeda, Rob was Director of Healthcare Investments at Touchstone Innovations (formerly Imperial Innovations) in London. Prior to this, Rob was a Principal in the life science team at Sofinnova Partners.
Rob holds a PhD Oncology from the University of Cambridge and a MSc in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford.
Bernd Wollscheid, PhD
Co-Founder
Bernd is a Professor of Molecular Health and Head of the Institute of Translational Medicine at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. Dr Wollscheid is also the Chairman of EC of the ETH domain Strategic Focus Area, “Personalized Health and Related Technology (PHRT)”. Bernd has pioneered next-generation technologies at the intersection of biology, chemistry, medicine, and bioinformatics, thus enabling insights into molecular nanoscale organization and their impact on cellular function and therapy.
Bernd studied Chemistry and holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Immunology from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology in Freiburg, Germany. He performed post-doctoral research at the Institute of Systems Biology, Seattle, USA.
Julien Sage, PhD
Co-Founder
Julien is a Co-founder of DISCO Pharmaceuticals. He is currently the Elaine and John Chambers Professor in Pediatric Cancer and a Professor of Genetics at Stanford University. He has been awarded a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Scholar Award, a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Scholar Award, and an R35 Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute. Julien’s work has focused on the RB tumor suppressor pathway and how inactivation of RB promotes tumorigenesis in children and adult patients.
Julien holds a PhD in Developmental Biology from the University of Nice, France. He did his post-doctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA.
Caroline Dive, CBE, PhD, FBPhS, FMedSci
Caroline is currently the Interim Director of the CRUK Manchester Institute and Director of the CRUK Cancer Biomarker Centre, where she leads research spanning tumor biology, preclinical pharmacology, biomarker discovery, biomarker assay validation and clinical qualification to regulatory standards, bioinformatics, biostatistics and most recently, digital clinical trials.
Caroline established her own group at Aston University’s School for studying mechanisms of drug induced tumour cell death prior to moving to The University of Manchester to continue this research. Caroline was awarded a Lister Institute of Preventative Medicine Research Fellowship before joining the CRUK Manchester Institute in 2003.
Caroline completed her PhD in Experimental Cancer Therapeutics at University of Cambridge.
Charles Rudin, MD, PhD
Charles is the Deputy Director of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Chief of the Thoracic Oncology Service, and holds the Sylvia Hassenfeld Chair in Lung Cancer Research. His research program spans basic discovery science, preclinical modeling, therapeutic target identification, first-in-human clinical testing, and leadership of definitive national and international phase 3 studies. He has a particular interest in small cell lung cancer and has chaired the NCI Small Cell Lung Cancer Research Consortium, a national network of lab investigators studying this aggressive disease, since its inception.
John Poirier, PhD
John (J.T.) is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. He is the Director of the Perlmutter Cancer Center Preclinical Therapeutics Program, which focuses on acquiring viable human tumor cells from the clinic for the development of advanced cancer models and on testing experimental cancer therapeutics in the preclinical setting.
His laboratory has made significant contributions to our understanding of the key molecular characteristics of small cell lung cancer, nominated candidate drug targets, and elucidated mechanisms that govern response to treatment as well as those that contribute to the development of acquired treatment resistance.
J.T. obtained his doctoral degree in Cellular and Molecular Medicine from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Pharmacology.
John Lambert, PhD
John is an experienced independent consultant in the biotechnology industry where he advises a number of Biopharma and Pharma companies, and some VC firms, on ADC technologies and ADC development.
John spent over 28 years at ImmunoGen where he held a number of leadership roles, most recently as EVP and CSO. During his time at ImmunoGen, the Company invented the ADC technology that ultimately resulted in the Genentech/Roche drug, KADCYLA® (approved in 2013 for treating HER2+ breast cancer) as well as numerous other ADCs taken into clinical development.
John is the author/co-author of over 125 peer-reviewed scientific publications, was elected as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and was appointed an Honorary Professorship at Queen’s University Belfast.
John holds a BA and PhD in Biochemistry from University of Cambridge and completed post-doctoral training at the University of California, and the University of Glasgow.
Rudolf Aebersold, PhD
Rudolf (Ruedi) is a pioneer in the field of proteomics. He has co-founded several companies and holds multiple public service appointments, including The Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle along with Lee Hood and Alan Aderem and The Institute of Molecular Systems Biology at ETH Zürich.
The research focus of the Aebersold group was the proteome. The group pioneered several widely used techniques and generated open access/open-source software and statistical tools that contribute to making proteomic research results more transparent, reproducible and accurate and, when applied, advanced the understanding of molecular processes in basic biology and clinical research. The group’s work was recognized with numerous national and international awards.
Ruedi entered emeritus status in 2021 and now serves as a member of the board of trustees of several foundations that support life science research.
Ruedi trained and obtained his PhD at the Biocenter, University of Basel, Switzerland and completed postdoctoral research at Caltech.
Our world leading investor syndicate, comprising of both corporate and institutional venture funds, believes that DISCO will redefine cancer drug discovery.
The development of new treatment modalities in oncology is growing at an ever-increasing rate, but the lack of cancer-selective cell surface targets limits their application to few clinically effective cancer drugs.
In particular, biologics, such as antibodies, bi-specific antibodies and antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), are on the rise, and have significantly improved the clinical care of cancer patients.
However, at present, fewer than 30 molecular targets form the basis of all approved antibody-based cancer therapies – a stark contrast to the countless newly developed therapeutic modalities to target cell surface molecules.
Novel cancer-selective targets are therefore urgently needed to translate such technologies into the clinic and to ultimately deliver a clinically meaningful benefit for patients. Only then can we unleash the true clinical potential and realize our ambition to replace toxic and often hardly tolerable chemotherapies.
At DISCO, we challenge the standard process in drug discovery. Applying our pioneering surfaceome mapping platform will allow expanding the drug target universe, boosting the creation of novel therapeutics.
Our scalable drug discovery platform comprehensively maps the cell surface to identify proteins and associated neighbouring proteins in so called “protein communities” thus providing target candidates for both mono- as well as bi-specific antibodies.
This insight enables the development of cancer-selective therapies, boosting efficacy and reducing side effects for patients.
Our first discovery program focuses on Small Cell Lung Cancer (SCLC), a detrimental tumor type with poor survival. No therapy specifically targeting SCLC tumor cells has been approved during the last decade. With our team of global experts in SCLC biology, proteomics, target assessment as well as drug discovery and development, we have completed the first-ever mapping of the SCLC surfaceome within months. This effort has revealed countless novel proteins and protein communities on the surface of SCLC cells and we have launched the development of therapeutics to target these.
The second discovery project has been launched in microsatellite-stable (MSS) colorectal cancer (CRC), another tumor type with high unmet medical need. The prognosis for these patients is poor with limited therapeutic options. We have therefore initiated efforts to map the surfaceome of MSS CRC and the preliminary analysis on the cell surface protein communities is currently being performed.
DISCO Pharmaceuticals GmbH
Gottfried-Hagen-Str. 60 – 62
51105 Cologne
Germany
Website by FisherPaul
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