Robert A. Copeland

Robert A. Copeland, Ph.D., co-founded Accent Therapeutics in September 2017 and serves as its President and Chief Scientific Officer. He was formerly President of Research and Chief Scientific Officer of Epizyme, Inc. and before that, Vice President of Cancer Biology in the Oncology Center of Excellence in Drug Discovery at GlaxoSmithKline. He has contributed to drug discovery and development efforts leading to 19 investigational new drugs entering human clinical trials. These include the cancer drugs foretinib, afuresertib, pinometostat, tazemetostat, Tafinlar (dabrafenib) and Mekinist (trametinib) and the antibiotic Altabax (retapamulin). Robert has contributed more than 200 publications to the scientific literature, holds 14 issued U.S. patents and has authored five books in the areas of protein science and enzymology. He is a member of the editorial board of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, the advisory board of the Dana-Farber Accelerator Fund and multiple biotechnology scientific advisory boards. He received his doctorate in chemistry from Princeton University and did postdoctoral studies as the Chaim Weizmann Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. In 2016, Robert was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.