Black Diamond Therapeutics Announces the Appointment of Rachel Humphrey, M.D., as Chief Medical Officer

Dr. Humphrey brings more than 20 years of experience as a leader in oncology drug development

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and NEW YORK, Sept. 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Black Diamond Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: BDTX), a precision oncology medicine company pioneering the discovery and development of small molecule, tumor-agnostic therapies, today announced the appointment of Rachel Humphrey, M.D., as Chief Medical Officer. Karsten Witt, M.D., who has been Senior Vice President of Clinical Development and acting Chief Medical Officer since May 2019, will continue to serve the Company as Senior Vice President (SVP), Non-Clinical Development.

“Rachel has pioneered the clinical development of numerous first-in-class oncology drugs spanning the broad landscape of oncology therapeutics, including first generation kinase inhibitors and immune checkpoint blockers. Her expertise in the field makes her the ideal person to lead Black Diamond’s strategy of using population-level cancer genome data to develop drugs that target rare and recurrent driver mutations across tumor types,” said David M. Epstein, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Black Diamond Therapeutics. “Rachel’s leadership and oncology drug development experience will be essential as we advance BDTX-189 through clinical development and move our early stage pipeline programs into the clinic. I’d also like to thank Karsten for his tremendous contributions to Black Diamond to date, particularly his leadership in advancing BDTX-189 into the clinic, and we welcome his continued insights as he transitions to his new role.”

“Black Diamond’s innovative platform and drug discovery engine, coupled with a tumor-agnostic approach to drug development, has produced a uniquely compelling pipeline with the potential to target a broad range of cancers unaddressed by currently approved therapies,” said Dr. Humphrey. “I’m thrilled to join the dynamic team at Black Diamond to execute on the vision of extending precision oncology therapies for patients with genetically defined cancers for whom limited treatment options currently exist.”

Dr. Humphrey joins Black Diamond from CytomX Therapeutics, Inc., where she served as Chief Medical Officer and as a member of its Board of Directors. While at CytomX, she supervised the clinical development of Probody Therapeutics for the treatment of cancer. Previously, she held numerous senior leadership roles in cancer drug development, including Vice President (VP), Head of Immuno-Oncology at Eli Lilly and Company, SVP and Head of Immuno-Oncology at AstraZeneca, Executive VP and Chief Medical Officer at Mirati Therapeutics, and VP, Clinical Development at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). Rachel also held multiple positions in global clinical development at Bayer. Rachel’s career is notable for, among other achievements, her overall supervision of the early and late-stage clinical development of ipilimumab (Yervoy) at BMS and sorafenib (Nexavar) at Bayer. Rachel received her M.D. from Case Western Reserve University and her B.A. from Harvard University. She received her training in internal medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and started her career as an oncology fellow and staff physician at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD. She is also the lead singer and one of the co-founders of the band, The Checkpoints, a blues band made up of luminaries in immuno-oncology, including the Nobel Laureate, Jim Allison, and is featured in the movie “Jim Allison: Breakthrough,” which was released in the fall of 2019.