ChemoGenics BioPharma
The Future of Preclinical Drug Discovery

Dr. Francis Tavares, the President and CEO of ChemoGenics BioPharma, is in total agreement with what Jim Rohn, the American entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker, once said: “If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.”

Dr. Tavares took ChemoGenics BioPharma from a fledgling drug discovery research and service organization, to the partner of choice for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as academic and government institutions around the globe. “Perseverance, learning from life‘s challenges, and most importantly adapting and changing to dynamic situations that pivots you to a higher level of self-confidence at every step is critical if you want to succeed,” says Dr. Tavares.

“During my college days, both my mentors Dr. Albert I. Meyers and Dr. Philip D. Magnus unique in their style of training, prepared me for the challenges that lie ahead. Interestingly, I still remember with fond memory my time in Dr. Magnus’s lab where he mentioned about my post-doctoral training being a full-service organization. This is also where I met my wonderful wife whose selfless support played an important role in the journey to my success,” reminisces Dr. Tavares. With key life lessons and exceptional education qualifications under his belt, Dr. Tavares joined GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) as a Research Investigator in medicinal chemistry in 1998, where he progressed through the ranks to become a Group Manager. Dr. Tavares led medicinal chemistry programs while at GSK and strived to expand the discovery efforts at the company far beyond his job description. He started working with GSK biologists and has proposed over 15 metabolic targets when at GSK, encompassing the therapeutic areas of metabolic disorders, inflammation, immunology, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases After his productive decade-long stint at the company, Dr. Tavares realized it was time to put his skills into practice in the drug discovery space, on his own terms. “It was risky, but I was always interested in spreading my wings in this space and believed in myself and my ability to master new challenges,” says Dr. Tavares. In short order, Dr. Tavares taught himself mass spectrometry and leveraged his deep expertise in the pharmaceutical industry to establish ChemoGenics BioPharma in September 2008

In any fledgling pharmaceutical endeavor, a lot of bootstrapping is necessary to even start, and doing chemistry is a very expensive capital investment, so the more things you do yourself the greater the chances for success at an early stage. “I had to learn a multitude of skill sets because it was hard to pay somebody to get things done, ranging from updating my own website, fixing instruments to building networks to running the instruments etc.” states Dr. Tavares.

The rest, as they say, is history. A glorious one for that matter.

Delivery of Clinical Compounds and Drugs to Market

ChemoGenics BioPharma facilitates the entire spectrum of medicinal chemistry programs, including invitro metabolic profiling and invivo studies to transform lead compounds into viable drug candidates.

ChemoGenics has accomplished the phenomenally challenging task of designing and directing the synthesis of compounds that lead to two highly selective CDK 4/6 inhibitors.
 

We follow a streamlined drug discovery process, and the greatest benefit to our clients is that we achieve this with a rapid turnaround time and with absolute robustness in the quality of data

One of which, Trilaciclib, is a commercial drug and the other, Lerociclib, is in phase 2 clinical trials. Dr. Tavares is confident Lerociclib will be a commercial drug in the near future. Dr. Tavares’s breath of knowledge in drug discovery and biology, enables him to make judicious choices in research collaborators, so the combined team develops synergies that allow for successful development of compounds that enter the clinics and traverse beyond.

Due to his deep understanding of both chemistry and biology, and his unique ability to synthesize the two fields in his mind, he has proposed a unique molecular target for polycystic kidney disease that no expert in the area of kidney disease had previously considered. As a result, the company has patents on this technology and are actively pursuing this program toward clinical development. Dr. Tavares is also currently working on novel protein modulations of undruggable targets for which no proper treatments exist.

Indeed, Dr. Tavares anticipates placing a third compound into clinical trials, which will hopefully lead to a third commercial product. “Our approach to the problem is unique, so much so that given the same level of training in drug discovery, the ability to make better choices in candidate selection eventually helps our collaborators succeed. The proof is in the pudding as they say. With very limited resources, much less than what I was used to in big pharma, we are able to achieve astonishing results for vast majority of our programs” prides Dr. Tavares.

“It is very rare to find a small organization like ours that has several commercial and clinical compounds,” he adds. It is fair to say that the level of success achieved by Dr. Tavares and ChemoGenics BioPharma is unprecedented for a company of this size. Even big pharma would be envious of his demonstrated track record.

Redefining Drug Discovery Services

ChemoGenics BioPharma believes that it is vitally important to offer a full range of analytical services as an integral part of its drug discovery offerings. The state-of-the-art equipment, and modern analytical and clinical protocols located in the organization provides clients with the convenience of all drug discovery services such as medicinal chemistry, DMPK, scale up, bioanalytical studies, and in-vivo dosing, under one roof. Clients need not hire separate entities for each step of the process. After all, delays or low-quality analytical services often cause setbacks in the development of innovative new drugs.

“We understand the importance of lead optimization that considers criteria other than potency and selectivity. For faster lead to candidate selection, we have incorporated metabolism assays that could identify potential pitfalls in the selection of certain functional groups and/or active metabolite formation that might be problematic at end stages of the game,” mentions Dr. Tavares.

These unique capabilities have made ChemoGenics BioPharma the partner of choice for many pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic, and governmental institutions worldwide. The word-of-mouth recognition and a high percentage of repeat clients provide solid assurance for the company’s continued growth and success. “In our quest to be the leader in drug discovery services, we also offer evaluation of compounds in invivo studies in multiple species such as rats, mouse, and dogs. These in vivo studies will be an integrated part of our medicinal chemistry efforts for our customers, who need an extensive and comprehensive package of services,” adds Dr. Tavares.

Championing the Preclinical Aspects of Drug Discovery

We provide high quality and economically feasible solutions to multiple aspects of the drug discovery process,” says Dr. Tavares. When clients work with ChemoGenics BioPharma, they have access to not only the company’s expertise in the drug discovery aspects, but also recognize the deep biology knowledge the company offers. Dr. Tavares believes it is vital to understand the biology in the programs that he collaborates on. ChemoGenics BioPharma retains key scientific talent of high caliber, with a diverse skill set to serve the needs of its internal research team as well as its service-based clients.

The company’s core management team consists of experts with extensive experience in the early and late-stage drug discovery processes. This includes experienced scientists with over ten years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry enabling ChemoGenics BioPharma to provide services in molecular modeling, computer-aided drug design (CADD), and cheminformatics (CIX) in various target classes such as kinases, proteases, nuclear receptors, and GPCR’s.

Additionally, ChemoGenics BioPharma has Ph.D. scientists as collaborators, each with extensive experience in molecular biology techniques, bioinformatics, cloning, and recombinant protein synthesis. “The rich experience in molecular and disease biology combined with computational data mining, data analysis and data visualization to support drug discovery allows for a more complete package for in-house as well as client needs,” notes Dr. Tavares.

The Future of ChemoGenics BioPharma

Currently, ChemoGenics BioPharma has four active collaborations for developing new molecular entities. The company is confident that these drug development programs will progress into proof-of-concept studies soon. To support the growing client demands, ChemoGenics BioPharma plans to hire more research staff and move to a new facility. We also have capacity to add additional product offerings as we progress into other areas of research. “Over the past ten years, we have expanded our capabilities by focusing on making our clients succeed and have gained more knowledge in return. We plan to offer GLP compliant bioanalytical services as a natural progression of our company’s offering in the first quarter of 2022,” concludes Dr. Tavares.