Eikon Therapeutics Announces the Appointment of Dr. Roy D. Baynes as Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer

HAYWARD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Eikon Therapeutics, Inc., a California-based biotechnology company that applies advanced engineering and high-performance computing to the identification of important new medicines, today announced the appointment of Roy D. Baynes, MB, BCh, MMed, PhD, as Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, effective July 11, 2022. A gifted physician-scientist and leading oncologist, Dr. Baynes is among the most experienced – and most successful – clinical development leaders in the biopharmaceutical industry. Dr. Baynes will serve as a consultant to Eikon Therapeutics beginning April 1, 2022 before transitioning to his full-time role as Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer in July.

Currently Senior Vice President, Global Clinical Development and Chief Medical Officer at Merck, Dr. Baynes received his MB, BCh (Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery) from the University of Witwatersrand, where he also received an MMed (specialist registration), and completed a PhD exploring mechanisms of human iron metabolism. After additional clinical training in Johannesburg, and service on the faculty of the Department of Medicine at the University of Witwatersrand Medical School, Dr. Baynes moved to the United States and joined the Division of Hematology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center where he served as Professor of Medicine in both hematology and bone marrow transplantation. From 1997 until 2002, Dr. Baynes led the bone marrow transplantation service at the Karmanos Cancer Institute at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he was also a Professor of Medicine (Hematology and Oncology), and the Charles Martin Professor of Cancer Research. Thereafter, Dr. Baynes joined Amgen, Inc., where he became Vice President of Global Development and head of the hematology/oncology development team. He left Amgen in 2012 to become Senior Vice President at Gilead, Inc., and joined Merck in 2013. At Merck he was responsible for the development of the entire clinical portfolio in Merck Research Laboratories, and was the architect of the development strategy for dozens of important new medicines including Keytruda^®, a drug that has revolutionized cancer treatment around the world. Dr. Baynes has received innumerable awards for his activities as a physician/scientist, and is currently a board member at Travere, Inc. (NASDAQ: TVTX), Atara, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATRA), and Natera, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTRA).

“Roy is both a deeply knowledgeable physician and an extraordinary leader, who has assembled top-flight clinical teams in multiple different settings, and has led the development of pioneering new treatments across a broad range of therapeutic areas including cardiovascular medicine, metabolism, infectious disease research, and of course, oncology,” said Roger M. Perlmutter, MD, PhD, Chairman and CEO of Eikon Therapeutics. “I consider it a great privilege to have the opportunity to work alongside Roy once again, and to pursue our shared goal of bringing significant new medicines to patients suffering from grievous illness. By any measure, Roy ranks among the most important leaders of clinical development in our industry.”

In his new role, Dr. Baynes will assume responsibility for building the company’s clinical research and development team and, eventually, serve as the site leader for a new Eikon Therapeutics facility on the eastern seaboard.

“I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with Roger again, to join the remarkably talented Eikon Therapeutics team, and to take advantage of their extraordinary skill in applying super-resolution microscopy to the identification of important new medicines,” said Dr. Baynes. “I expect that the computational expertise of Eikon’s scientists and engineers across machine learning and artificial intelligence will both promote the identification of novel compounds, and the analysis of clinical trial data in powerful new ways that together enable the company to advance new and potentially life-extending medicines.”

About Eikon Therapeutics

Eikon Therapeutics is a drug discovery and development company. Our proprietary platform leverages Nobel Prize-winning super-resolution microscopy, advanced engineering, and automation with the goal of bringing important new medicines to patients suffering from grievous illness. Scientists at Eikon measure the real-time movement of individual proteins in living cells to develop differentiated therapeutics. Eikon is based in Hayward, California and can be found online via our website or on Twitter or LinkedIn.