Burlingame, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 – Hinge Bio, Inc., a privately-held biotechnology company, today announced the expansion of its senior management team, which is expected to drive the Company’s GEM-DIMER™ programs, with an initial focus in oncology, to clinical development. Harold E. “Barry” Selick, Ph.D., a successful and distinguished biopharmaceutical scientist, senior executive and venture investor, was named as Chief Executive Officer. Carin Rollins, a Company co-founder, becomes Chief Operating Officer. Joshua Carle, an experienced business development executive from both the buy-side and sell-side, joins the Company as Chief Business Officer. 

“We have been making considerable progress demonstrating the advantages and breadth of our novel GEM-DIMER technology and solidifying a strong intellectual property position,” said Ms. Rollins, Chief Operating Officer of Hinge Bio. “Now is the time to add executives who can accelerate the clinical and business development activities of our powerful GEM-DIMER platform. We are thrilled to have Barry and Josh join Hinge Bio to facilitate these initiatives.” 

Dr. Selick has had a successful and distinguished career in the biopharmaceutical industry, managing growth and development of emerging biopharmaceutical companies as a scientist and executive and helping to fund and start early-stage companies.. As a biopharmaceutical executive, he was the CEO of Threshold Pharmaceuticals, a fully integrated oncology drug discovery/clinical development company that he led as CEO from its Series A financing through IPO to its eventual sale in 2017. Dr. Selick co-founded and was CEO and Chairman of Camitro, a California and UK-based drug discovery predictive modeling technology company, which was acquired two years after its founding. Dr. Selick was Vice President of Research, responsible for technology development and drug discovery, at Affymax Research Institute through its acquisition by Glaxo Wellcome, plc. Prior to Affymax, he was at Anergen and Protein Design Labs (PDL), the latter at which he co-invented the technology underlying fully humanized antibody therapeutics and applied that to daclizumab (Zenapax^®), the first FDA-approved fully humanized antibody therapeutic. 

Most recently, Dr. Selick was the Vice Chancellor of Business Development, Innovation and Partnerships at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) as the head of Innovation Ventures, which supports the translation of UCSF innovation from the laboratory to patient and societal benefit. He was also a Venture Partner at Sofinnova Ventures from June 2002 until July 2007. Dr. Selick has been a member of the Boards of Directors of a dozen both early-stage venture capital-backed as well as public biotech companies and Chairman and/or Lead Director of many of those. Dr. Selick earned a B.A. in Biophysics and a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and was a Damon Runyan-Walter Winchell Cancer Fund Fellow as well as a Senior Fellow of the American Cancer Society at UCSF.

“The opportunity to create novel technologies that can be translated into therapeutics that improve patients’ lives has motivated my entire career,” said Dr. Selick. “The unique GEM-DIMER platform’s wide range of addressable therapeutic indications and its ability to engage multiple target molecules in a novel manner enables broad opportunities in drug development for improved therapies against validated targets as well as first in class options for novel ones. The team has made remarkable progress so far in demonstrating the technical potential of the platform and I am excited to join them as we advance Hinge Bio’s programs toward product candidate selection and clinical development with an initial focus on therapeutics that will benefit patients living with cancer.”

Mr. Carle is a cross-functional executive with more than 20 years of strategic transaction and R&D investment experience while in management consulting and biopharma. Mr. Carle has led or advised on more than fifty potential strategic transactions, resulting in the successful execution of greater than $2 billion in disclosed deal value and committed R&D funds. Prior to joining Hinge Bio, Mr. Carle was Vice President, Business Development at Triumvira Immunologics, Inc., an immune-oncology company, where he executed a clinical collaboration for a leading checkpoint inhibitor, in-licensed a novel antibody, and executed multiple agreements with leading global and cell therapy companies. Before joining Triumvira, he was at Pfizer Inc., where he drove BD strategy, commercial assessments, and broad transaction support for licensing/M&A efforts for Pfizer Oncology. Previously, Mr. Carle held roles of increasing responsibility in business development activities at Daiichi Sankyo Inc. and Clearview Projects Inc., a strategic advisory firm focused on licensing/M&A for the BioPharma industry. Mr. Carle earned a B.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and M.B.A. from the Villanova School of Business.   

“The versatility of the GEM-DIMER platform, due to its multi-target engagement flexibility, ease of manufacture, and applicability to multiple therapeutic areas provides a wide variety of opportunities to execute strategic partnerships with top-tier biopharmaceutical companies,” said Mr. Carle. “I look forward to working with my colleagues and future industry partners to translate this platform into important medicines.”