Mark Murcko appointed to Board of Directors and Lead Scientific Advisor

We’re delighted to welcome Mark Murcko, Ph.D. to the Board of Bind Research and our Lead Scientific Advisor.

Mark joins Tom Kalil, who was recently appointed Interim Chair of the Board. Tom is CEO of Renaissance Philanthropy, an organisation that has already played a vital role in Bind’s establishment.

Mark brings to Bind a deep understanding of what it takes to build the scientific infrastructure, the intellectual frameworks, and the culture needed to turn ambitious biological hypotheses into medicines that reach patients.

Mark is a pioneer in the application of cutting-edge technologies to drug design and has directly contributed to ten marketed medicines spanning glaucoma, HIV, HCV, cystic fibrosis, and cancer. Whilst CTO and SAB Chair at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, he co-invented the company’s three marketed HIV protease and HCV protease inhibitors, and he championed the early CF programme that has so far produced five transformative drugs. Before Vertex, his work at Merck on Trusopt produced the first drug in history to emerge from a structure-based design programme, a landmark moment for the field.

More recently, Mark is a founder, board member, and was the founding CSO at Relay Therapeutics, a company that has pushed the boundaries of what structural and biophysical insight can achieve in drug discovery. In addition, he was the founding CSO and is a board member at Dewpoint Therapeutics, the world’s leading company dedicated to developing therapies that engage cellular condensates. Mark holds a senior lectureship in Biological Engineering at MIT and is a co-inventor on over 50 patents and author of more than 90 scientific papers (H-index 62), as well as having served on numerous other scientific advisory boards and boards of directors, including a decade with Schrödinger advising on their computational drug discovery platform and strategy.

We are enormously grateful to have his experience, his rigour, and his vision alongside us as we build. Welcome to the Bind Board of Directors, Mark!