Morphic Therapeutic, a biopharmaceutical company developing a new generation of oral integrin therapies for the treatment of serious chronic diseases, has welcomed Simon Cooper, M.B.B.S. as Chief Medical Officer.
 
Dr. Cooper is an accomplished leader in drug development with success and a proven history across all phases of clinical development and in a variety of therapeutic areas, particularly autoimmune, inflammatory, cardiovascular, and pulmonary diseases. Cooper most recently served as Chief Medical Officer of Keros Therapeutics.
 
“Simon brings clinical development expertise stemming from leadership roles across the entire spectrum of clinical development from first-in-human studies through FDA submissions and approvals of highly successful therapeutics. Of particular relevance to Morphic as we advance MORF-057, is Simon’s experience in the development and approvals for therapeutically effective and commercially successful autoimmune and inflammatory agents in the GI space,” commented Praveen Tipirneni, CEO of Morphic. “On behalf of the entire Morphic Team and our Board of Directors, I welcome Simon and look forward to collaboration on our exciting work.”
 
“In MORF-057, Morphic holds the possibility of creating a new treatment for inflammatory bowel disease with an ideal product profile: an orally administered, well tolerated and clinically meaningful therapeutic. I am also excited about the prospects for Morphic research programs for small molecules against non-integrin immunology targets and am looking forward to working with the Morphic Team,” Cooper remarked.

About Dr. Simon Cooper

Cooper was most recently Chief Medical Officer of Keros Therapeutics. Prior to Keros, He served as Chief Medical Officer of each of Kadmon Holdings and Anokion, where he drove significant advances in program development and building key functional areas to support clinical development for assets in the autoimmune, inflammatory, and immuno-oncology areas.
 
Cooper was previously Asset Strategy Leader at AbbVie where he played a key role in the development of risankizumab in a variety of indications including ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. He has also held the role of Vice President, Global Project Head for the sarilumab program at Sanofi and Group Program Medical Director at Novartis, leading the submission of the secukinumab program in psoriasis.
 
Earlier in this career, Cooper held roles of increasing responsibility at research and development organizations including Wyeth Research, Napp Pharmaceutical Research, Roche, Human Genome Sciences and MedImmune.
 
Cooper holds a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne Medical School.