Dr. Daryl Drummond

CHIEF SCIENCE OFFICER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, AND FOUNDER

Daryl C Drummond is the Founder, Chief Scientific Officer, and Senior Vice President of Akagera Medicines.  Through June of 2019, Dr. Drummond served as the Head of Research and Senior Vice President of Discovery for Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, a public biotechnology company headquartered in Cambridge, MA, where he oversaw the discovery efforts for Merrimack’s Nanotherapeutics and Biologics-based therapeutics. Dr. Drummond received a PhD degree in Biochemistry from Indiana University in 1997, with an emphasis on membrane biochemistry and biophysics, and later completed a postdoc under the renowned father of lipid-based drug delivery systems, Demetrios Papahadjopoulos at California Pacific Medical Center.

Dr. Drummond was a principle inventor for a wide range of nanotechnology-based drugs and platform technologies, most notably Onivyde, a highly stabilized liposomal formulation of irinotecan.  He joined Merrimack in 2009 following the merger of Merrimack with Hermes Biosciences.  Overall, Dr. Drummond has more than 25 years of experience in the research and development of advanced drug delivery systems, including five unique drugs or imaging agents that have been tested in various clinical trials, an NDA and EMA approval for Onivyde, >40 issued patents or patent applications, and more than 75 peer reviewed publications.

The focus of his research is in developing targeted nanotherapeutics for treating a wide range of solid tumors.  He successfully developed novel platform technologies for targeting lipidic nanocarriers such as liposomes using a range of novel ligands, but most notably Fab’ or scFv antibody fragments.  He has also developed platform technologies for dramatically improving the in vivo drug retention of difficult to stabilize small molecule drugs, and for systemic delivery of nucleic acids.  Three of their nanotherapeutics are being studied in clinical trials, including an ErbB2-targeted liposomal doxorubicin which was evaluated in a Phase II study in ErbB2-overexpressing breast cancers and a nanoliposomal formulation of irinotecan which was approved by both the EMA and FDA following promising results in a Phase III trial in gemcitabine-refractory pancreatic cancer.  Onivyde is currently being studied in front line pancreatic cancer in combination with oxaliplatin and 5FU and in second line small cell lung cancer by Ipsen Pharmaceuticals.  A fourth antibody targeted lipososomal drug (MM-310) was recently evaluated in a Phase I study in multiple EphA2 overexpressing solid tumors.  In addition, Dr. Drummond previously oversaw the discovery and development of more traditional biologics, such as a stabilized TRAIL-Fc fusion and a monoclonal antibody against the immuno-oncology target, TNFR2.

At Akagera, he is advancing the use of these sophisticated lipid-based nanotechnologies to deliver novel and highly potent anti-bacterial agents directly to innate immune cell reservoirs for these mycobacterium or bacterium, and assembling a highly experienced scientific team and network of collaborators to target some of the world’s most challenging and neglected diseases, including tuberculosis.