Watertown, Mass., USA - May 4, 2015, Watertown, Mass., USA - Syros Pharmaceuticals, a therapeutics company, announced the addition of three senior members to the company.
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Jonathan Garen joins the Company as Chief Business Officer; Christopher Roberts, Ph.D., as Vice President of Chemistry and Early Development; and Colleen DeSimone as Vice President of Finance and Controller.
Mr. Garen joins Syros from Actavis, where he served as Assistant Vice President of Corporate Development following Actavis' acquisition of Forest Laboratories in 2014. Prior to the acquisition, he was Assistant Vice President of Business Development at Forest.
Prior to Forest, Mr. Garen was a Director in the Global Licensing department at Pharmacia Corporation, and before that he was a founder and Vice President of TechEx. He earned his Master's degree in Environmental Sciences from Yale and his B.S. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mr. Roberts joins Syros from GlaxoSmithKline, where he held several leadership positions, most recently as Vice President of the AntiViral Discovery Performance Unit as part of the global GSK Infectious Disease Therapy Unit.
Mr. Roberts also served as Director of Medicinal Chemistry in the HCV Discovery Performance Unit, and worked as an Early Clinical Development Leader throughout his time at GSK. Before that, he held several positions in Medicinal Chemistry at Genelabs Technologies prior to its acquisition by GSK in 2009.
Mr. Roberts has led multiple assets from discovery into clinical development, with two establishing successful clinical proof-of-concept outcomes. He holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of California, Riverside, and a B.A. in Chemistry from Whitworth College.
Mr. Roberts completed a postdoctoral fellowship in bioorganic chemistry at the University of Bern in Switzerland with Prof. Christian Leumann.
Ms. DeSimone joins Syros from Takeda Pharmaceuticals where she served as Senior Director, Finance and Controller, responsible for all aspects of financial reporting, accounting and internal controls of Takeda's oncology business unit in Cambridge, MA.
Ms. DeSimone held several financial and operational positions at Millennium Pharmaceuticals before its acquisition by Takeda in 2008. She has more than 18 years of financial analysis, accounting and management experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. ■