Discovery of Therapeutic Antibodies that Target Specific GPCRs Using a Novel Discovery Platform
Peter McNamara
Senior Vice President, Head of Research, Tectonic Therapeutic
Tectonic Therapeutic is a pre-clinical stage biotechnology company transforming the discovery of novel G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCR)-targeted therapies, using our GEODe platform. The GEODe platform is a suite of discovery tools comprising biochemistry techniques, reagents, and protocols that enable presentation of GPCR antigens in the correct conformation and enable successful discovery campaigns using yeast-display antibody libraries. Our antigen engineering approaches boost receptor expression to produce enough material for selection campaigns, bias receptor conformation to facilitate agonist / antagonist selections and improve receptor thermostability for compatibility with selection conditions.
Peter brings nearly 20 years of drug discovery experience in Pharma and Biotech to Tectonic. Most recently he was Head of Biotherapeutics and Biotechnology at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF), where he was responsible for GNF’s platform technologies in biotherapeutics discovery and optimization, structural biology, functional genomics, HTS, automation and engineering. Prior to this he was Head of Pharmacology and General Medical Biology and responsible for the scientific strategies and drug discovery activities pertaining to GNF’s programs across a broad range of disease areas with special emphasis on regenerative medicine and tissue repair. Peter led teams and functions that resulted in bringing over 10 molecules into clinical trials including FXR agonists LJN452 and LMB763 and contributing to three FDA approved drugs including Zykadia and Braftovi. Peter earned his PhD in Biochemistry from the National University of Ireland at Galway and was a post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania where he became a member of the Faculty at the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics in the School of Medicine.