Verge Genomics Appoints Tony Altar, Ph.D., as Chief Scientific Officer
Tony Altar, Ph.D., to help advance Verge's goal of discovering and developing neuroscience therapeutics as Chief Scientific Officer
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (PRWEB) MAY 10, 2017
Verge Genomics (https://www.vergegenomics.com/), a leading drug discovery company utilizing genomic data for neuroscience therapeutics, announced today that C. Anthony (Tony) Altar, Ph.D., has joined the company as Chief Scientific Officer.
Dr. Altar has over 35 years of experience leading teams harnessing genomic data to discover and develop first-in-class medicines for the central nervous system. As the former Global Head of Neuroscience at Otsuka, he led the team that discovered aripiprazole (Abilify™), which was first approved by the FDA in 2002 and is now one of the highest grossing drugs for psychiatric diseases on market. Most recently, as Chief Scientific Officer of Assurex Health, he created pharmacogenomic products for ADHD and pain, whose commercial successes yielded an acquisition by Myriad Genetics in 2016. Dr. Altar also served as CSO of Psychiatric Genomics and held various scientific leadership positions at Regeneron and Genentech. Dr. Altar completed his postdoctoral training in Psychobiology at UC Irvine and holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from UC Santa Barbara.
“Tony has an unparalleled track record for driving forward the life cycle of medicine from inception to commercial success, which has immensely benefited numerous patients suffering from CNS-related diseases,” said Alice Zhang, Chief Executive Officer of Verge Genomics. “We are very excited to have him on board to help pioneer the next phase of Verge’s growth.”
About Verge Genomics
Verge is a next-generation drug discovery company that is using human genomic data to accelerate the discovery of treatments for neurodegeneration. Founded by scientists from leading neuro-genomics labs, the Verge team is 12 people including 10 Ph.D.’s in machine learning, neuroscience, applied math, biophysics, statistics, and computational biology from UCLA, Stanford, Oxford, and UCSF, two former professors, and two pharma veterans.