More About Greg
Greg Verdine is a venture partner on the Bio + Health team.
Greg is a leader in the discovery, development and commercialization of new drug modalities. A passionate and accomplished inventor of novel approaches and drug classes to engage targets widely believed intractable, Greg coined the phrase “drugging the undruggable” to describe his life’s mission. Greg is presently the co-founder and CEO of LifeMine Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company refashioning drug discovery by mining genetically-encoded small molecules from the fungal biosphere. Greg is also the co-founder, Vice Chair and CEO emeritus of FogPharma, a clinical-stage company distinguished by its discovery engine that promises to drug any and all human targets. FogPharma has its roots in the scientific work of Greg and his academic team at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, a hotbed of innovation and invention in the new modality therapeutics space.
Greg has moved seamlessly between roles as an academic scientist, biotech entrepreneur, investor, and company executive. As Erving Professor at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, he co-founded two burgeoning fields of academic enterprise, chemical biology and new drug modalities. The Verdine Lab at Harvard has made seminal contributions to understanding fundamental mechanisms of DNA repair and epigenetic DNA methylation. On the more applied side, the Verdine Lab invented hyperstabilized alpha-helical peptides and created the direct precursor to the Phase 2 hydrocarbon-stapled peptide ALRN 6924. The lab also developed the next-generation Helicon technology, which was licensed exclusively to FogPharma.
As co-founder, Chairman and CEO of FogPharma, Greg led the discovery and development of the clinical Helicon drug FOG-001, a first-in-modality and first-in-class drug binds the oncogene beta-catenin and selectively blocks its oncogenic signaling through TFC4. Prior to this, Greg conceived of, launched and ran both Warp Drive Bio and Wave Life Sciences. At Warp Drive, Greg led the team that created the first drug discovery engine to design so-called “molecular glues” and deployed this new modality to discover the first drug leads that target the oncogene KRAS in the “ON” state; following the merger of Warp Drive with Revolution Medicines, this foundational work gave rise to three KRAS antagonists currently in clinical testing. At WAVE, Greg led the invention and establishment of the company’s stereopure oligonucleotide platform, which ultimately gave rise to the company’s 4 current clinical programs. Greg has founded several other public biotechs, namely Variagenics, Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Eleven Bio, Tokai Pharmaceuticals, and Aileron Therapeutics, and a private biotech, Gloucester Pharmaceuticals, which was acquired by Celgene. Together, his companies have succeeded in achieving FDA approval for three marketed drugs and have more than 10 drugs across multiple new modalities currently in development.
Greg has served on the board of directors of Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Wave Life Sciences, Warp Drive Bio, FogPharma and LifeMine Therapeutics. Greg also conceived of, co-founded and served as the founding president and chairman of the tandem non-profits Gloucester Biotechnology Academy, which trains high school graduates for technical careers in biotech, and Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute, which is supporting fisheries science and economic development on Cape Ann.
Greg earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University and served as an NIH postdoctoral fellow in molecular biology at MIT and Harvard Medical School. He also holds an honorary Ph.D. degree from Clarkson University.
In his so-called spare time, Greg loves to cruise New England waters on his beloved boat, M/Y QQ.
