Aarthi Jayanthan

Dr. Aarthi Jayanthan is a founding member of the Phoenix Molecular Designs team, launching the company’s discovery research and diagnostics program in 2015. By developing a sophisticated cancer modeling platform, she led the team in the advancement of the first in human RSK inhibitor by bridging computational biology, medicinal chemistry and functional cancer biology. She is a contributing inventor of several issued patents as a result of this pioneering work. On the companion diagnostics front, she led the biomarker co-development of RSK2 CDxV from pre-clinical method development and screening to a CAP/CLIA certified clinical stage assay with Roche Ventana. Aarthi has advanced several surrogate biomarker programs using gene expression profiling of model cancer systems and primary tumors on the Nanostring platform. More recently, she led the development of the first blood biomarker assay for RSK inhibitors. With a deep understanding of cancer cell biology, she has developed models of drug resistance to several breast cancer therapeutics, including paclitaxel and CDK4/6 inhibitors. Beyond this, Dr. Jayanthan identified novel drug combinations for PMD-026 which expand the potential to maximize life-cycle development following initial regulatory approval for the agent.

Aarthi earned her Ph.D. at the University of Calgary in the area of molecular cancer biology and cell signaling, with a focus on developing novel therapies for children with cancer. For over 10 years, she contributed to numerous preclinical studies of experimental therapies in childhood cancer, including leukemia, AT/RT, neuroblastoma and lymphoma. She also provided support in Phase 1 clinical trials sponsored by the Pediatric Oncology Experimental Therapeutics Investigators Consortium (POETIC).