San Diego, California, January 16, 2024 – Plexium, Inc. (Plexium), a leading next-generation targeted protein degradation (TPD) company, today announced the appointment of Michael Martin, Ph.D. as President and Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board of Directors. Dr. Martin joins Plexium following his 12-year tenure at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, serving most recently as the Global Head of the Center for External Innovation where he was a key member of Takeda’s Leadership Team.
While in this role, he was responsible for external research & development activities including Business Development, Search & Evaluation, Strategy & Operations, Academic Alliances, and Takeda Ventures, Inc.
Mike brings tremendous experience to Plexium as a scientific executive, global R&D leader, venture investor and corporate board member. He has led the strategic, global development of highly innovative therapies, with significant expertise in accelerating and establishing valuable pipelines driven by novel biology and drug targets. I look forward to working with Mike to advance our clinical-stage pipeline and progressing more TPD programs against important cancer targets into the clinic.
Dr. Martin added, “I am proud to join the established team at Plexium and am eager to work together towards developing transformative therapies for difficult to treat cancers and other diseases. I believe that Plexium is well positioned for success with the recent advancement of PLX-4545 into Phase 1 and the advancing preclinical pipeline of small molecule monovalent degraders of SMARCA2, CDK2 and c-Raf. I am excited to lead Plexium and continue to build a leading TPD company focused on improving patients’ lives.”
Dr. Martin joined Takeda in 2012 and prior to his most recent role, he was President of Takeda Ventures, Inc., Takeda’s corporate venture capital company. Dr. Martin also previously held executive and scientific roles with Intellikine Inc. (acquired by Takeda), TargeGen, Inc. (acquired by Sanofi-Aventis), Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (acquired by Pfizer) and Monsanto Corporation (acquired by Bayer). Dr. Martin holds a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from University of Illinois, a M.S. in Analytical Chemistry and B.S. degrees in Chemistry and Mathematics. Dr. Martin has extensive experience as a corporate board member, for both private and publicly traded companies, and has acted as an advisor to several notable biotech investment funds in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
About Plexium
Plexium Inc. is the premier, next-generation Targeted Protein Degradation (TPD) company seeking to discover monovalent direct degraders and molecular glues to address difficult-to-drug targets for the treatment of cancer. The company’s proprietary drug discovery platform is designed to identify novel small molecules that induce selective degradation of pathogenic proteins through E3 ligase mediated proteasomal degradation. Plexium is advancing a pipeline of novel targeted monovalent direct degraders and molecular glues for the treatment of cancer and has also entered into a strategic collaboration with AbbVie to expand the potential of TPD to neurological conditions.
For more information, visit https://plexium.com/ and engage with us on LinkedIn.
Plexium Investor and Media Contact:
Amy Conrad
Juniper Point
amy@juniper-point.com
858-366-3243
