NEW HAVEN, Conn., Oct. 27, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Arvinas, Inc. (Nasdaq: ARVN), a clinical-stage biotechnology company creating a new class of drugs based on targeted protein degradation (TPD), announced Katherine Donovan, Ph.D. of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School as the winner of the 2022 Arvinas Early Career Research Award last night at the 5th Annual Targeted Protein Degradation Summit in Boston. This award marks twenty years since Arvinas’ founder Craig Crews and his collaborators published the first paper on protein degradation technology and aims to recognize the efforts of up-and-coming researchers bringing innovation, new approaches, and creative thinking toward advancing the field of targeted protein degradation. Dr. Donovan received a monetary award of $25,000 to honor her leadership, innovation, and key scientific contributions to the field of TPD. Dr. Donovan has brought the TPD community together to share cutting-edge scientific advances, research tools to assess degradability across important biological targets classes, and professional networking to foster interactions across academia and biotech.
“Arvinas is committed to supporting the work of researchers advancing the field of TPD around the world, and we’re thrilled to recognize Dr. Donovan and her contributions as our Arvinas Early Career Research Award winner,” said John Houston, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer at Arvinas. “Not only has Dr. Donovan made valuable strides toward increasing our understanding of the potential applications of targeted protein degraders, but her efforts to make TPD information and data accessible to the entire community was a massive undertaking, and its benefits will be recognized by the TPD community for years to come.”
In 2018, Dr. Donovan, who received her Ph.D. from the University of Canterbury, developed a quantitative mass spectrometry-based global expression analysis method to identify targets of degraders, and focused her attention on human embryonic stem cells as the model system. Following her efforts to map the degradable proteome and passion for thorough degrader mapping, Dr. Donovan developed a pipeline that would allow her to help the community identify and map the targets of their degraders. Then, in September 2020, she, along with colleagues, worked to initiate and set up the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute TPD Seminar Series – an online, free and open-source webinar series that they continue to run on a bi-monthly basis. In addition to a regular live attendance of 200-1,000 TPD enthusiasts, the talks are recorded and posted to their YouTube channel to allow accessibility across all time zones.
“I am both humbled and honored to be the recipient of the Arvinas Early Career Researcher Award and I hope the recognition of this award will contribute to my mission of making TPD research more accessible and bringing together TPD researchers from all over the globe,” said Dr. Donovan. “My work has been made possible through fantastic collaboration with some incredibly talented colleagues and collaborators. I am very grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this field and am excited by the potential and advances being made in TPD as well as the potential impact this field of research offers to patients.”
About Arvinas
Arvinas is a clinical-stage biotechnology company dedicated to improving the lives of patients suffering from debilitating and life-threatening diseases through the discovery, development, and commercialization of therapies that degrade disease-causing proteins. Arvinas uses its proprietary PROTAC® Discovery Engine platform to engineer proteolysis targeting chimeras, or PROTAC® targeted protein degraders, that are designed to harness the body’s own natural protein disposal system to selectively and efficiently degrade and remove disease-causing proteins. In addition to its robust preclinical pipeline of PROTAC® protein degraders against validated and “undruggable” targets, the company has three investigational clinical-stage programs: bavdegalutamide and ARV-766 for the treatment of men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer; and ARV-471 for the treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic ER+/HER2- breast cancer. For more information, visit www.arvinas.com.
Arvinas Contacts
Investors:
Jeff Boyle
347-247-5089
Jeff.Boyle@arvinas.com
Media:
Kirsten Owens
203-584-0307
Kirsten.Owens@arvinas.com
