Cempra Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Veteran biotech and pharmaceutical executive will help company increase its growth and international impact SEOUL, South Korea, Aug. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Standigm Inc. ("Standigm"), the leading workflow artificial intelligence (AI) drug discovery company, today announced the appointment of Chief Business Officer Carl Foster. Based in our U.S. office, Foster will be responsible for expanding strategic partnerships for novel drug target discoveries and first-in-class lead candidate identifications. "Carl has established a reputation for increasing company value. He has significant experience building and growing biotech companies, like Standigm, through creative deal-making," said Jinhan Kim, CEO of Standigm. "We're confident Carl can help us meet our aggressive goals." Foster spent over 30 years working for drug and platform technology companies in various areas including genomics, proteomics and antibodies. Throughout his career, he has built a strong track record of business planning, establishing strategic relationships and financial modeling. Foster began his career with Merck and Co., Inc. where he had spent nine years in business development, marketing, and sales. Most recently, he was executive vice president, business development for Cempra Pharmaceuticals. Prior to that, he was CEO of Jurilab, a European-based genomics company. Foster has also held vice president-level positions at Nanogen, King Pharmaceuticals, Oxford GlycoSciences and Praecis Pharmaceuticals. In addition, he was general manager of Intracel BV, a Netherlands-based immunology company and managing director of Ferghana Partners, a New York-based investment banking group. Foster holds an MBA in marketing and an M.S. in biochemistry from the University of Kansas. "Our goal is to shorten the drug discovery process, reduce costs and increase the probability of success by combining the Standigm AI platform with disease-specific data from our strategic partners," said Foster. "I believe combining AI with drug discovery will result in major advances in how we understand diseases and create solutions. Standigm's first-class AI platform is backed by a strong team of biologists, chemists and AI engineers who have collectively created a tremendous opportunity for me. I look forward to helping them build a novel and industry-leading company." To date, Standigm has: Raised approximately $71.2 million in funding from multiple investors, including Pavilion Capital, whose successes in AI drug discovery include Schrödinger and Insilico Medicine. Expanded its operations from the world, opening offices in the U.S. and U.K. in 2021. Established a synthetic research center to improve the efficiency of AI drug discovery. Proven its technology competitiveness with multiple partnership with pharmaceutical companies and research institutions in Asia, the U.S. and Europe, such as SK Chemicals, Hanmi Pharmaceutical and Milner Therapeutics Institute. Established confidential relationships with a European big pharma company, a U.S. biotech company, and a U.S. research institute. Produced strong preclinical opportunities for multiple disease areas, including Parkinson's disease, autism, mitochondrial diseases, and NASH. Collaborated with global companies such as Merck KGaA, Oracle and Deepmatter, to enhance further AI drug discovery capabilities. The Standigm AI platform is used for both drug discovery and repurposing. The latter accelerates time to market and lowers costs because the drugs have either been commercialized or demonstrated some level of stability in clinical trials. About Standigm Standigm is a workflow AI-driven drug discovery company headquartered in Seoul, South Korea and subsidiarized in Cambridge, U.K. and Cambridge, MA. Standigm has proprietary AI platforms encompassing novel target identification to compound design, to generate commercially valuable drug pipelines. Founded in 2015, Standigm has established an early-stage drug discovery workflow AI to generate multiple First-in-Class compounds within average seven months. Pursuing full-stack, AI-driven industrializing drug discovery, Standigm has achieved the automation of molecular design workflow, and the automation effort has been expanding to the whole drug discovery process based on Standigm AI platforms, including Standigm ASK™ for novel target discovery, Standigm BEST™ for novel compound generation and Standigm Insight ™ for novel indication. Learn more at . Katie Morales, PRforStandigm@Bospar.com Company Codes: Korea:285130

Bay Area's HealthQuest Capital Debuts With $110 Million With Healthcare, Medtech Focus August 19, 2014 By Krystle Vermes, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff Today, California-based investment company HealthQuest Capital announced the end of its debut fund at the hard cap of $110 million. This is an excess of its original target fund of $50 million. "HealthQuest is focused on funding innovation that can be quantified in terms of both improvements in patient outcomes as well as healthcare economics,” said HealthQuest Founding Managing Partner, Garheng Kong. “We believe these opportunities can deliver valuable medical advances that translate into excellent financial returns.” Kong founded HealthQuest Capital in 2013. He has been an investor in the industry since 2000. Some of the companies Kong has invested in include Cellective Therapeutics, Novamin Technologies, Cempra Pharmaceuticals, Serenex and Alimera Sciences. Most recently, he has invested in Histogenics, Salveo Specialty Pharmacy, SARcode Bioscience Inc. and First Aid Shot Therapy. Now, Kong is shifting his focus to his own company. "We are excited to launch our debut fund, and appreciate the support of our investors for the HealthQuest strategy and team,” Kong continued. Following this round of funding, HealthQuest is expected to focus on areas of the healthcare community where there is unmet clinical need for innovation. The HealthQuest investor team includes Randy Scott, Founder and CEO of Novamin Technologies; David Kabakoff, Co-founder, CEO and Chairman of Salmedix and Chairman of Trius; and Venture Partner Tom Callaway, President and Founder of Life Science Partner. HealthQuest views itself as a “venture growth” fund, seeking commercial stage investments. The company will not take “binary risks” such as clinical studies or regulatory submissions where its investments represent an “all or nothing” bet. Instead, HealthQuest will focus on growing revenues and scaling the company over time through its investments. Currently, HealthQuest has partners in California, Florida and Georgia. The company is considering investments from all parts of North America. Its target sectors include medical devices, diagnostics, consumer/OTC health, patient care products, mHealth and Health IT that directly impacts patient treatment or care. Additionally, HealthQuest gives preference to companies that need less than $20 million to achieve profitability. Its initial investment is typically between $2 to 4 million. HealthQuest is a part of the Sofinnova Ventures network, which has been making investments for more than 40 years. Its investment capabilities have been extended through its partnership with Sofinnova Ventures to three continents around the world.