Pearl Huang, Ph.D, has been appointed the CEO of U.K.-based Dunad Therapeutics, a Novartis-backed biopharmaceutical startup.
Pearl Huang, Ph.D., has more than 20 years of leadership experience in pharma and biotech, and she just added a new line to her resume. Dr. Huang is now the CEO of Dunad Therapeutics, a Novartis-backed biopharmaceutical startup.
Although Huang has seen a lot in her career, there are some unique aspects of Dunad she hasn’t seen before that make her excited to lead the new company.
“It was an instant match for me: the company, the technology, the people and the culture,” she told BioSpace. “My goal for this organization is to harness the technology they’ve developed and apply it to drug discovery.”
Over the last 20 years, Huang has proven her mettle in high-level roles at big-name companies. In 2001, she started as GlaxoSmithKline’s VP of biology MMPD CEDD, then moved to VP of the oncology franchise integrator at Merck. After that, she co-founded BeiGene in 2010, where she served as the company’s acting chief scientific officer and helped develop its first drugs. She later returned to GSK and subsequently headed Roche’s therapeutic modalities before jumping back into the startup scene when she became CEO of Flagship Pioneering’s Cygnal Therapeutics in 2019.
However, her time at Cygnal came to an end as Flagship decided to merge Cygnal with another startup, Inzen Therapeutics, ultimately forming Sonata Therapeutics.
Now it appears Huang has found her newest adventure. In May, she became CEO and the 12th employee of Dunad Therapeutics, a U.K.-based company working on developing protein-degrading drugs that can be taken orally and that can penetrate the blood-brain barrier.
“When I started in drug development, there was a random element to it. You had to be good, but you also had to be lucky,” Huang said in the same interview. “You still have to be good and lucky, but now Dunad has a technology that behaves predictably in a space where molecules didn’t behave predictably before. These molecules are bulky and difficult to work with. They don’t travel effortlessly through the human body.
“With our technology, instead of having a bivalent molecule, we have a monovalent molecule. A couple of other companies have developed something similar, but it was by accident. We have a way to do this deliberately and systematically. That understanding and our platform are a huge opportunity to make a difference in protein degradation and small-molecule therapies.”
Dunad forged a collaboration with Novartis in November 2021. In a $1.3 billion deal, Novartis pledged to provide Dunad with access to unique assays and models and provide full funding for its platform to generate novel covalent and targeted protein-degrading small molecule drugs focusing on up to four drug targets.
“Pearl is a highly respected leader in the industry, with experience working in both biotech and pharma, and we are thrilled to have her joining Dunad at this critical time of growth for the company. We are building our North American presence while continuing to expand our platform and optimize our internal drug discovery programs,” Patrick Gunning, Ph.D., co-founder and chief scientific officer at Dunad said. “Pearl’s leadership and experience will ensure success for Dunad during this transformational time as we build on our strong scientific foundation and seek to realize the full value of our platform. I look forward to working together to bring transformational therapies to patients.”
