CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Passkey Therapeutics has appointed Mandeep Kaur, MD, MS, as chief medical officer as the company advances its computational genetics-based drug combination platform toward clinical validation.
The Cambridge-based company is developing Locksmith, a platform designed to identify new therapeutic opportunities from synergistic combinations of approved drugs. Passkey said Kaur will lead its clinical and medical strategy as it moves a series of Locksmith-identified drug combinations into clinical studies across multiple therapeutic areas.
Kaur most recently served as senior vice president of global medical affairs and outcomes research for rare disease at Amgen after its acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics. Passkey said she has contributed to 19 product launches and supported multiple major biopharmaceutical transactions.
Passkey said its Locksmith platform combines human genetics, biology and pharmacology to identify combinations of approved medicines that may produce therapeutic effects not seen when the individual drugs are used alone. Because the combinations involve drugs with established safety profiles, the company said it and its partners may be able to move more quickly into patient studies to test new treatment hypotheses.
“There is vast untapped potential within existing approved medicines,” said Bruce Beutel, PhD, Passkey’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “Locksmith is purpose-built to enable biopharmaceutical partners to realize this potential by predicting emergent combinatorial pharmacology and mapping it to drugs in their own portfolios. With Mandeep’s leadership, our team is distinctly equipped to demonstrate that Locksmith enables a direct path to the clinic and rapidly identifies new treatment options for patients.”
Kaur joins a leadership team that includes Beutel and co-founder William Chen, PhD, the company’s chief technology officer.
“Patients with common chronic diseases often require more than a single therapeutic mechanism to achieve meaningful outcomes,” said Dr. Kaur. “Passkey’s Locksmith platform unlocks novel and synergistic combinations of well-characterized drugs, enabling us to move earlier into clinical assessment and significantly broaden the universe of potential treatment options for patients with high unmet needs. I’m pleased to join this team and to help translate Locksmith’s predictions into rigorous clinical proof and, ultimately, real-world impact.”
