18 July 2022 - - US-based biotechnology company Rome Therapeutics has appointed Jeff Hatfield as chair of the Rome board of directors, the company said.

Currently serving as chief executive officer of Vividion Therapeutics, Hatfield brings more than three decades of successful industry leadership across biotech and pharmaceuticals.

Hatfield leads development of a portfolio of first-in-class oncology and immunology programs at Vividion, which was acquired by Bayer Pharmaceuticals for USD 1.5bn, and leverages a unique chemoproteomic discovery platform to target disease-causing proteins historically believed to be undruggable.

Prior to joining Vividion, Hatfield served as chief executive officer of Vitae Pharmaceuticals, a pioneer in computational structure-based drug discovery, where he oversaw the successful early development of several therapeutic programs and the company's ultimate acquisition by Allergan.

Earlier in his career, he held multiple senior leadership roles at Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY), including senior vice president, Immunology and Virology Divisions, president, BMS-Canada and Head of US Market Access.

Hatfield currently serves on the board of directors of Vir biotechnology and is a Key advisory board member for Harvard Business School's Blavatnik Fellowship in Life Science Entrepreneurship.

He is also a faculty member at Purdue University, where he teaches entrepreneurship to doctoral students. Hatfield holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in pharmacy from Purdue University.

Rome Therapeutics is developing novel therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases by illuminating the dark genome and decoding the repeatome within the vast stretches of uncharted genetic material comprising repeat sequence motifs derived from the integration of viruses into the human genome throughout evolution.