Following The Science To Develop Best-In-Class Cancer Drugs

Accomplished biotech executive and physician Ahmed Hamdy, M.D., is determined to deliver best-in-class cancer therapeutics to save and improve patients’ lives. He and his long-time business partner Raquel Izumi, Ph.D. have co-founded multiple companies, including Acerta Pharma and most recently Vincerx Pharma. At Acerta, their lead candidate acalabrutinib (known commercially as Calquenc®) was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2017 as a Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor to treat blood cancer. In 2015, AstraZeneca acquired a majority share of Acerta for $4 billion, and Hamdy and Izumi went on to found Vincerx.

Per Hamdy, “We started the company with the premise of developing drugs for cancer, a highly unmet medical need. We have a very exciting pipeline that we acquired from Bayer that could be paradigm-shifting.” With Hamdy and Izumi’s leadership and experience in tow, multiple drugs in the Vincerx pipeline are headed toward their investigational new drug (IND) application filing and subsequent clinical phase. Download the full article to read more about how Vincerx’s lean team is striving to bring candidates to clinic as quickly as possible.