BEDFORD, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Stoke Therapeutics, Inc., (Nasdaq: STOK), a biotechnology company pioneering a new way to treat the underlying cause of genetic diseases by precisely upregulating protein expression, today announced the appointment of Garry E. Menzel, Ph.D., to both its Board of Directors and Compensation Committee.
“Garry brings more than 25 years of executive management experience in the global healthcare sector, including senior leadership roles at TCR2 Therapeutics, DaVita Healthcare, and Regulus Therapeutics. His training as a scientist along with his deep financial and operational expertise in life sciences will make him an important resource for the Stoke team, especially now that we are a clinical stage company following the start of our Phase 1/2a clinical trial in Dravet syndrome and as we work to expand the pipeline using our TANGO platform,” said Edward M. Kaye, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Stoke Therapeutics.
“As a long-serving board member of the Epilepsy Foundation, I have learned how challenging epilepsy can be, particularly for people who are living with severe genetic epilepsies like Dravet syndrome and their families,” said Dr. Menzel. “The pace of discovery and innovation in this space is gathering momentum and patients are in dire need of creative therapies such as those being developed by Stoke. I look forward to working with Ed and his team to further their efforts not only with Dravet syndrome but also expanding use of TANGO to other severe genetic diseases.”
Dr. Menzel currently serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of TCR2 Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: TCRR), a clinical stage oncology company with three novel immunotherapies for solid tumors and hematological malignancies. He is a co-founder of Black Diamond Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: BDTX), a clinical stage oncology company, where he continues to serve on the Board of Directors. Dr. Menzel previously served as Chief Financial Officer of DaVita Healthcare Partners (NYSE: DVA), which at the time operated one of the largest networks of kidney dialysis centers and primary care physician practices in the United States. Prior to that, Dr. Menzel served as Chief Operating Officer at microRNA therapy company Regulus Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: RGLS). He began his career in the banking industry, starting as a consultant at Bain & Company and subsequently held global leadership roles running the biotechnology practices at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse where he advised on more than $100 billion in strategic transactions.
Outside of his corporate board positions, Dr. Menzel serves on the National Board of the Epilepsy Foundation, and previously served on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Systems Biology and the Board of Directors of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Pharmacy. Dr. Menzel holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from St. John’s College, University of Cambridge, a Master of Business Administration from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.
About Stoke Therapeutics
Stoke Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: STOK), is a biotechnology company pioneering a new way to treat the underlying causes of severe genetic diseases by precisely upregulating protein expression to restore target proteins to near normal levels. Stoke aims to develop the first precision medicine platform to target the underlying cause of a broad spectrum of genetic diseases in which the patient has one healthy copy of a gene and one mutated copy that fails to produce a protein essential to health. These diseases, in which loss of approximately 50% of normal protein expression causes disease, are called autosomal dominant haploinsufficiencies. The company’s lead investigational new medicine is STK-001, a proprietary antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) that has the potential to be the first disease-modifying therapy to address the genetic cause of Dravet syndrome, a severe and progressive genetic epilepsy. Stoke is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts with offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, visit https://www.stoketherapeutics.com/ or follow the company on Twitter at @StokeTx.
