24 May 2018 - - US-based tumor drug resistance-focused company Deciphera Pharmaceuticals has elected Steven L. Hoerter, chief commercial officer at Agios Pharmaceuticals, Inc., to its board of directors, the company said.
Hoerter will serve as an independent director and a member of the nominating and corporate governance committee. The number of Deciphera directors was increased from eight to nine in connection with Hoerter's election.
Hoerter has served as chief commercial officer of Agios since early 2016. He has more than 25 years of global pharmaceutical and biotechnology experience.
Prior to joining Agios, Hoerter was executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Clovis Oncology, Inc.
Before joining Clovis, he was general manager and management center head at Roche for the Sub-Saharan Africa and Indian Ocean Region.
From 2005 to 2010, Hoerter held a variety of positions at Genentech, Inc., and prior to that, he held commercial roles at Chiron Corp. and Eli Lilly and Company in the US, Europe, and Hoerter received his B.A. from Bucknell University, M.B.A. from Tilburg University and M.S. in management from Purdue University.
Deciphera Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company tackling key mechanisms of drug resistance that limit the rate and/or durability of response to existing cancer therapies.
Its small molecule drug candidates are directed against kinases, known to be directly involved in the growth and spread of many cancers. The company designs compounds that maintain kinases in a "switched off" or inactivated conformation.
These investigational therapies comprise tumor-targeted agents designed to address therapeutic resistance causing mutations and immuno-targeted agents designed to control the activation of immunokinases that suppress critical immune system regulators, such as macrophages.