Viamet Pharmaceuticals has landed a healthcare heavyweight in naming prostate cancer expert and former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach to the company’s board of directors.
Durham, North Carolina-based Viamet has a proprietary technology that identifies and blocks certain enzyme targets. The technology can be used to develop new drugs and Viamet last year signed a licensing agreement with Novartis (NYSE:NVS) that could be worth more than $200 million if Viamet is able to develop certain enzyme inhibitors for the Swiss drug company.
Besides his background from the FDA, von Eschenbach brings to Viamet experience as a urologist and healthcare administrator. He has held several leadership positions at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and is also a former director of the National Cancer Institute. In 2006, he was named by Time to the magazine’s “TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World.”
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Viamet was co-founded by Holden Thorp, who is now chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The company has raised more than $24 million in venture capital from Novartis Option Fund, Lilly Ventures, Lurie Investment Fund and Astellas Venture Management.
