Valence Discovery Grows Leadership Team with Key Drug Discovery Hires

Following successful partnerships with leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies, Valence adds industry veterans to its leadership team to support development of its in-house drug discovery pipeline

MONTREAL & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#AI--Valence Discovery (“Valence”), a leader in AI-driven drug discovery harnessing the power of computation and fit-for-purpose data generation to design differentiated small molecules, announced today the expansion of its leadership team with the additions of Guillaume Barbe, Ph.D. as Vice President, Head of Drug Discovery, Mike Nolan, Ph.D. as Vice President, Head of Biology, and Brian DeChristopher, Ph.D. as Senior Director, Head of Chemical Sciences.

“Following successful partnerships with leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies, we have built strong conviction on the challenges in drug discovery that our AI-based technologies are uniquely suited to address,” said Daniel Cohen, co-founder and CEO at Valence Discovery. “We are thrilled to welcome Guillaume, Mike, and Brian to the team as we deploy our platform to build our pipeline of internal drug discovery programs.”

Guillaume Barbe, Ph.D. brings more than 15 years of drug discovery and development experience across multiple therapeutic areas, including oncology, autoimmunity, cardiovascular disease, and virology. Guillaume joins Valence after spending several years as a biotech executive building, managing, and leading drug discovery teams within RA Ventures and Third Rock Ventures portfolio companies. Prior to joining the biotech industry, Guillaume spent over a decade in pharma, holding roles of increasing responsibility at Pfizer, Merck, Novartis, and GSK.

Mike Nolan, Ph.D. is an experienced entrepreneurial biologist joining Valence following two company builds within the Atlas Venture portfolio – first as co-founder of the 2020 “Fierce 15” company Quench Bio and recently within the stealth-mode company Matchpoint Therapeutics. Mike brings more than 18 years of biotech and pharma industry experience spanning multiple target classes, therapeutic areas, and platform technologies at Wyeth, Tempero Pharmaceuticals, and GSK.

Brian DeChristopher, Ph.D. brings more than 12 years of experience in biotech and pharma across multiple disease areas, target classes, and chemical modalities. Brian joins Valence from Rheos Medicines, where he was serving as the Head of Chemistry and was a member of the R&D Leadership Team. Brian led both pipeline and Precision Medicine platform projects, including Rheos' lead program culminating in the company’s first IND filing. Prior to Rheos, Brian spent 8 years in roles of increasing responsibility at Novartis.

“Valence is uniquely positioned to deliver on the promise of AI-driven drug discovery and development,” said Dr. Barbe. “Valence’s AI-first commitment and data-centric drug design technologies will enable our exceptional team of drug hunters and computational scientists to deliver transformative medicines for patients.”

About Valence Discovery

Valence is harnessing a revolution in computation to improve human health. The company is a leader in developing and deploying AI and physics-based technologies to support the design of differentiated therapeutics that address unmet clinical needs. Valence launched publicly in 2021, is supported by leading biotech and deeptech investors, and is headquartered in Montreal with additional facilities in Cambridge, Mass. To learn more, please visit www.valencediscovery.com or follow @Valence_AI.

Company: Therence Bois, Chief Operating Officer, Valence Discovery, hello@valencediscovery.com

Media: Jessica Yingling, Ph.D., Little Dog Communications, Inc., jessica@litldog.com, +1.858.344.8091