02.07.2024

Cartography Biosciences Expands Leadership Team with Appointment of Dan Rock, Ph.D., as Chief Scientific Officer to Advance Novel Oncology Programs into Clinic

— Dr. Rock to support Cartography in the translation of tumor-specific targets into therapeutics, with initial focus on its lead program for colorectal cancer (CRC) —

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, February 7, 2024 Cartography Biosciences, an oncology company advancing a pipeline of antibody therapeutics that more precisely target tumors, today announced the appointment of Dan Rock, Ph.D., as Chief Scientific Officer. In this role, Dr. Rock will be responsible for guiding the company’s scientific strategy and leading efforts to advance Cartography’s internal programs into the clinic.

“As Cartography moves into the next phase of development focused on advancing our internal pipeline discovered from our Atlas platform, we are thrilled to welcome Dan to the team. As an experienced drug discovery leader with a proven track record advancing research programs across a wide range of therapeutic areas and modalities into the clinic, Dan brings a wealth of invaluable knowledge to the Cartography team,” said Kevin Parker, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Cartography Biosciences. “Dan will play an invaluable role at Cartography, and I am excited to partner with him as we progress our highly differentiated pipeline of T-cell engagers and ADCs, with an initial focus on our lead CB21 program targeting colorectal cancer.”

Dr. Rock joins Cartography from Merck, where he most recently served as Vice President of Pharmacokinetics, Dynamics, Metabolism, Bioanalytics and the interim Cardiometabolic Therapeutic Area Head. Previously, Dr. Rock was the Global Head of Pharmacokinetics and Drug Metabolism at Amgen, where he rose through the R&D organization after joining as a Senior Scientist. In his 20+ years in the industry, Dr. Rock has played a pivotal role in the design and optimization of 16 clinical stage molecules, including multiple bispecific T-cell engagers and ADCs. He remains active in drug discovery research with over 70 publications, and notably, in his career he has advanced numerous in vitro technologies to accelerate design cycle times for biologic therapies. He earned his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Washington State University and his B.S. in Chemistry from University of Northern Colorado.

“Cartography is building a modern engine for drug discovery – the data from its comprehensive antigen profiling of healthy and tumor cells is unparalleled and uniquely enables the company to identify new targets that can pair with existing modalities to generate therapies with greater efficacy and improved safety,” said Dr. Rock. “I’m honored to be joining a team at the forefront of innovation and I look forward to leading the team as Chief Scientific Officer in the pursuit of better treatment options for patients with cancer.”

About Cartography Biosciences

Cartography Biosciences is building a differentiated oncology pipeline of antibody-based therapies designed to target tumors more precisely than existing therapeutics. Cartography’s Atlas and Summit platforms are powered by an industry-leading, fully integrated dataset spanning over a thousand cell types across the healthy body and large-scale profiling of individuals cells from patient tumors. By leveraging petabytes of proprietary data, along with insights from machine learning and AI, Cartography is identifying highly specific targets and target pairs to develop a pipeline of molecules with the greatest patient impact. Cartography’s lead program in preclinical development, CB21, is being advanced for colorectal cancer (CRC). To learn more about Cartography and our mission to treat every patient with cancer, visit cartography.bio and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @cartographybio.

Contacts

Media:
MacDougall Advisors
Karen Sharma
ksharma@macdougall.bio
781-235-3060