Addition brings deep experience in disease biology, drug development, and big pharma business operations

San Francisco, CA, January 7, 2018 — Genialis, Inc., a data science company at the forefront of biomarker discovery for precision immunotherapy, today announced the appointment of Cara Williams, PhD, to its Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Williams will provide strategic and tactical guidance as the company extends its software platform for modeling disease biology and therapeutic outcomes. Rafael Rosengarten, CEO, said “Cara is a preeminent immunologist— she has a proven track record of leading the kind of multidisciplinary teams required to move the needle in drug development. From the outset of working together, we have found much common ground in our vision, values and interests. Cara’s expertise is a great asset as we continue to innovate and grow in the data-driven discovery space.”

Dr. Williams’ background as a senior leader in R&D organizations will be invaluable to Genialis as it realizes its vision to become the preeminent AI company in the field of oncology along the entire value chain, from bench (target ID) to bedside (patient selection biomarkers). Cara’s most recent R&D leadership role has been Vice President and Head of Immunology and Respiratory Disease Research at Boehringer Ingelheim (Biberach, Germany). Her work has enabled multiple compounds to advance in clinical development, including optimization of a breakthrough discovery research strategy that will generate the next wave of innovative first in class therapies for patients with lung fibrosis. Dr. Williams is recognized for her accomplishments as a seasoned drug hunter and her acumen for R&D business strategy. Prior to BI, she served as Senior Director of Inflammation and Remodeling Research at Pfizer (Cambridge, MA). In a career spanning over 3 decades, Dr. Williams has co-authored over 40 publications and served leadership roles in world renowned Immunology R&D organizations that have brought drugs like nintedanib (BI) and tofacitininb (Pfizer) to the market. Dr. Williams earned her PhD from Liverpool University and completed her fellowship training at Harvard Medical School and Stanford University.

Dr. Williams commented, “Getting to know the Genialis team, and synching with them on their mission, has been a great thrill so far. It’s rather refreshing to tackle problems with a truly fresh perspective, unencumbered by a fear of trying something hard and a bit risky. Their approach involves bringing to the table a wide range of expertise, so I hope I can be helpful in providing both domain and industry experience.”

The Genialis advisory board includes Dr. Elia Stupka—a renown computational biologist and healthcare disruptor, now Chief Analytics Officer and SVP of Life Sciences at Health Catalyst; and Dr. Blaz Zupan—a professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Ljubljana and Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Stupka, who overlapped with Dr. Williams at BI in his previous role as Director of Computational Biology, remarked: “Cara is such a strong addition to the Genialis family. She’s a world-class scientist, battle tested in the trenches of drug discovery and development. And she’s a great person who never loses sight of the human element of why we’re all working so hard to bring better therapies to patients in need.”

Genialis, previously known for NGS Informatics software, is extending its platform to enable comprehensive data integration and disease modeling. The company uses a novel machine learning-based approach to infer relationships from diverse and often sparse biomedical datasets. “Genialis believes that models of disease biology should consider a rich variety of data and knowledge sources,” says Dr. Rosengarten. “The complexity of biology demands it. And ultimately, this approach leads to more accurate and actionable predictions.” Genialis is expected to announce an early access program for its IO biomarker prediction platform in early 2019. Dr. Rosengarten will present additional details in his showcase at the Precision Medicine World Congress in Silicon Valley later in January.

About Genialis, Inc.

Genialis is a data science company based in San Ramon, California, Houston, Texas, and Ljubljana, Slovenia. Genialis’ team of biologists and informaticians, data scientists and software engineers, is passionate about helping realize the promise of precision medicine. Recognizing that each patient’s biology is her own, Genialis champions an approach of developing models that consider diverse data in concert with focused experiments and trials. Researchers on four continents rely on its expertise and software to drive discovery, including scientists from leading pharma companies and top research institutes such as Baylor College of Medicine.

For more information, visit www.genialis.com and follow Genialis on LinkedIn and Twitter. Or contact:

Nejc Škoberne
CCO, Genialis, Inc.
info@genialis.com

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