Actym Therapeutics, which named a new CEO earlier this year, has appointed Mary J. Janatpour, PhD, as Chief Scientific Officer and Shouryadeep “Deep” Srivastava, MD, PhD, as Senior Vice President of Clinical Development.
 
Dr. Janatpour and Dr. Srivastava bring extensive therapeutic product discovery and development expertise as Actym continues the clinical advancement of its lead program and expands its portfolio of drug candidates.
 
“We are fortunate to attract exceptional individuals with the depth of experience and skills that Mary and Deep bring to the company,” said Tom Smart, CEO of Actym. “Their appointments complete the near-term expansion of our senior team, equipping us with the leadership necessary to drive our product development and achieve our business objectives.”

Mary J. Janatpour, Chief Scientific Officer

Janatpour is an oncology R&D executive and advisor with 25 years of experience helping biotech and pharma companies build value through strategic oncology pipeline development.
 
She is currently on the Board of Directors of Active Motif and the Bioconjugates Advisory Board at Catalent Pharma Solutions. Before joining Actym, she served as EVP and Chief Scientific Officer at Spotlight Therapeutics where she oversaw the build of the company’s therapeutic pipeline leveraging its gene editing platform.
 
She previously served as Vice President of Oncology Research at Dynavax Technologies, leading a research laboratory and an immuno-oncology clinical program through Phase 1 development. Janatpour also built a portfolio of early-stage oncology biologics at Chiron Corporation, Schering-Plough Biopharma and Novartis. She has also been an independent consultant for immuno-oncology start-ups with novel platforms.
 
Janatpour received a PhD in Biomedical Science from the University of California, San Francisco, and did her post-doctoral training in Immunology at the DNAX Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA.

Shouryadeep “Deep” Srivastava, MD, PhD, SVP of Clinical Development

Srivastava is an experienced clinical researcher with expertise in oncology drug development.
 
Prior to joining Actym, Srivastava served as Vice President of Clinical Development at Theseus Pharmaceuticals where he led early clinical development activities of targeted cancer therapies. He also served as a clinical development consultant at Jaguar Gene Therapy and played a pivotal role in the FDA IND clearance for a neurodevelopmental gene therapy program.
 
Before Theseus, Srivastava was Vice President of Clinical Development at iTeos Therapeutics. From 2018 through 2021, he was the Global Clinical Lead at Takeda where he led the sNDA approval, Phase 3 initiation, and pediatric development for the leukemia drug, ICLUSIG (ponatinib). Earlier in his career, he was on the development teams of early- and late-stage hemophilia programs at Baxalta/Shire.
 
Srivastava received his MD from B.R.D. Medical College, India, and holds a PhD from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.