In the News Archives - Avilar Therapeutics

December 7, 2022 – We are proud to announce today that Avilar’s Chief Scientific Officer, Effie Tozzo, PhD, has been named to the Endpoints News list of top women in biopharma research and development in 2022. Each year since 2019, Endpoints News has spotlighted twenty extraordinary women who have blazed trails at the upper echelons of the drug development business.

“This is a well-deserved honor for Effie and we are honored to have her as a member of our scientific and leadership teams,” said Daniel Grau, CEO and President of Avilar Therapeutics.

With a focus on drug discovery and translational sciences, Dr. Tozzo has more than 25 years of experience in leadership roles in both biotech startups and large pharma, including more recent roles at Cellarity and Mitobridge (an Astellas company), as well as roles at Merck, Roche, BMS, Millennium, and Chiron earlier in her career. She has initiated and advanced dozens of drug discovery programs to the clinic. Dr. Tozzo joined Avilar in November 2021 to create a broad and diverse pipeline of protein degraders that could become first-in-class medicines that degrade extracellular proteins. While targeted protein degradation has emerged as one of the most promising new therapeutic modalities, and more than 15 novel degraders have entered clinical studies, she was motivated to expand the scope of protein degraders to encompass extracellular or membrane-bound proteins – which account for an estimated 40% of human proteins (including antibodies, growth factors, enzymes, receptors, and cytokines) and represent a host of important targets to treat a range of serious diseases.

The Endpoints News article highlighting Effie Tozzo as one of the top twenty women in biopharma R&D in 2022 can be found here.