Mantra Bio Announces Appointment of Maria Fuentes, Ph.D. as Chief Scientific Officer

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mantra Bio today announced the appointment of Maria Fuentes, Ph.D. as the company’s Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Fuentes joins Mantra Bio after holding research leadership positions at Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and most recently Blade Therapeutics, where she was Executive Vice President of Research.

“Dr. Fuentes is a seasoned drug discovery and development executive with an outstanding track record of bringing multiple assets into the clinic across a range of therapeutic areas, including respiratory, autoimmune, and fibrotic diseases,” said Alex Mok, CEO of Mantra Bio. “Maria’s appointment reflects the significant progress Mantra Bio has made in refining and validating our REVEAL Targeted Exosome Delivery platform and drug discovery efforts. Her deep experience in translational development will accelerate these programs towards clinical trials.”

At Blade Therapeutics, Maria led the company’s biology and translational activities to advance programs to clinical development. She developed the preclinical biology and biomarker strategy and led research that provided key data for advancing three cysteine protease inhibitors in fibrotic and neurodegenerative diseases.

Prior to Blade, Dr. Fuentes served as Group Director, Fibrosis Discovery Biology at Bristol-Myers Squibb. While there she had responsibility for advancing into the clinic small molecule and antibody therapeutics for the treatment of fibrotic diseases, including interstitial pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

Dr. Fuentes previously held leadership positions at Roche (Palo Alto) and Hoffmann-LaRoche (Nutley, NJ), including as Research Director and Head of the Respiratory Drug Discovery Group. During her tenure, she was responsible for progressing several products to clinical trials and collaborated closely with the company’s Early Development Groups to establish translational approaches, including biomarker discovery and proof of mechanism.

Dr. Fuentes received her Ph.D. degree from Catholic University of Chile and was a Fogarty post-doctoral fellow in the Pharmacology Department, School of Medicine at the University of California San Diego.

About Mantra Bio
Mantra Bio is developing novel next generation, targeted therapeutics based on its proprietary platform for engineering Targeted Exosome Vehicles (TEVs). The Company’s REVEAL™ platform, which integrates computational and wet biology, and automation, leverages the diversity of exosomes to enable the rational design of therapeutics directed at a wide range of tissue and cellular targets. Mantra Bio has also established a scalable biomanufacturing process and related technologies to ensure this new class of therapeutics is reproducibly made at high purity. The Company’s strategy is to build a therapeutic pipeline internally, and through partnerships. Investors include 8VC, Viking Global Investors, Box Group, Allen & Company LLC, and Illumina. Learn more about Mantra Bio at www.mantrabio.com.

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SOURCE Mantra Bio