CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Syros Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SYRS), a biopharmaceutical company pioneering the development of medicines to control the expression of genes, today announced the appointment of Joseph J. Ferra as the Company’s Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Ferra brings significant financial, strategic and leadership experience in the biotechnology industry.
“Joe has a track record of leveraging his deep expertise in corporate finance and strategy to help companies develop important therapies for patients and deliver significant value for investors,” said Nancy Simonian, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Syros. “That experience, coupled with his leadership ability, will be critical as we advance our clinical-stage pipeline toward the market and continue our evolution to a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company with medicines that provide a profound benefit for patients.”
Mr. Ferra most recently served as Managing Director and Co-Head of Healthcare Investment Banking at JMP Securities. Prior to JMP, he was a member of the investment banking groups at UBS and JP Morgan. He joins Syros with over 13 years of investment banking experience, including advising on more than $20 billion in equity, debt and M&A transactions for leading biopharmaceutical companies. Earlier in his career, Mr. Ferra served in sales and engineering roles in the life science tools industry.
“Syros is at an exciting time in its evolution, with data readouts expected this year for its two clinical-stage programs, a growing early-stage pipeline and a leading gene control platform to fuel a robust and sustainable pipeline over the long term,” said Mr. Ferra. “I’m excited to work with the team to build a strong and enduring company that brings new medicines to market for patients with diseases that have largely eluded other approaches.”
Mr. Ferra earned his MBA from The Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He obtained a B.S. in Chemistry with Distinction from Purdue University, where he was an author on published papers and conducted research at the National Institutes of Health. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the YMCA of Greater Boston.
About Syros Pharmaceuticals
Syros is pioneering the understanding of the non-coding region of the genome to advance a new wave of medicines that control expression of genes. Syros has built a proprietary platform that is designed to systematically and efficiently analyze this unexploited region of DNA in human disease tissue to identify and drug novel targets linked to genomically defined patient populations. Because gene expression is fundamental to the function of all cells, Syros’ gene control platform has broad potential to create medicines that achieve profound and durable benefit across a range of diseases. Syros is currently focused on cancer and monogenic diseases and is advancing a growing pipeline of gene control medicines. Syros’ lead drug candidates are SY-1425, a selective RAR? agonist in a Phase 2 clinical trial for genomically defined subsets of patients with acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome, and SY-1365, a selective CDK7 inhibitor in a Phase 1 clinical trial for patients with advanced solid tumors. Led by a team with deep experience in drug discovery, development and commercialization, Syros is located in Cambridge, Mass.
