Character Biosciences, a drug discovery and development company leveraging human genetics and medical imaging-based machine learning to target disease progression, today announced the appointment of Laura Carter, Ph.D. as Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Carter brings a track record of more than 20 years of scientific leadership and expertise to Character, spanning target ID/validation through late stage clinical development across multiple therapeutic areas.

“We are thrilled to welcome Laura to the Character team, and to tap into her strategic vision and strong history of developing innovative therapeutics,” said Cheng Zhang, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Character Biosciences. “Laura’s deep experience will prove invaluable as we progress our lead drug candidates into the clinic for dry Age-related Macular Degeneration, an area of significant unmet need, and expand our therapeutic pipeline leveraging proprietary insights into disease progression.”

“Character is on the cusp of meaningful innovation using precision medicine to understand and target genetic modifiers of disease progression,” said Dr. Carter. “Character’s unique data platform has informed compelling pathways for its first two development candidates and helped optimize clinical trial designs with machine learning-enabled patient stratification and clinical endpoints selection. I am excited to be a part of this talented team and to maximize the full potential of the platform and pipeline.”

Dr. Laura Carter joins Character Biosciences from Gossamer Bio, where she served as Chief Scientific Officer, leading the company’s research team to advance a pipeline of preclinical assets targeting autoimmune disease and cancer and support the clinical portfolio. Previously, Dr. Carter served as Senior Vice President-Biology at Lycera Corporation, where she led the development of several immunology and immuno-oncology clinical candidates. Dr. Carter started her biopharma career at Wyeth then moved to Array Biopharma and MedImmune.

Dr. Carter currently sits on the Board of Directors at Asteroid Therapeutics, on the Scientific Advisory Board for Aurinia Therapeutics and on the Scientific Review Board for Bank of America’s Falk Medical Trust. Dr. Carter received her Ph.D. from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and her S.B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

About Character Biosciences

Launched in 2019, Character Biosciences is a biotechnology company developing best-in-class therapies for ophthalmic and other progressive polygenic diseases. The company has built a comprehensive platform integrating genomics with longitudinal clinical data to select drug targets and match therapies to the right patients. Character Bio is currently advancing two lead drug discovery programs through preclinical development for dry Age-related Macular Degeneration. To learn more, please visit www.characterbio.com.

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