San Diego, CA and Ottawa, Canada – Fate Therapeutics, Inc. announces the appointment of Tom Novak, Ph.D., as vice president of research and drug discovery. Dr. Novak brings to Fate more than 15 years of experience working with large pharmaceutical companies, including Roche and Wyeth, to apply transformative technologies to advance exploratory research and drug discovery efforts. Dr. Novak will be responsible for Fate’s drug discovery and development activities focused on advancing the Company’s pipeline of “stem cell modulators,” small molecules or biologics that guide cell fate in vivo for therapeutic benefit.

“Dr. Novak has a proven record of implementing leading-edge technologies to establish successful platforms for target discovery and validation,” said Paul Grayson, president and CEO of Fate Therapeutics. “As the team at Fate continues to identify novel mechanisms to selectively intervene in adult stem cell biology, Dr. Novak’s expertise will be invaluable in translating those breakthroughs into drug candidates for clinical testing.”

Dr. Novak was most recently senior director and head of discovery technologies at Roche where he directed novel target discovery and assessment and formed and led Stem Cells for Research, a team designed to implement the use of stem cells as a drug discovery platform. Prior to Roche, he worked at Wyeth where he held the positions of senior research scientist and associate director. At Wyeth, Dr. Novak coordinated research for ion channel modulation and orphan G protein-coupled receptor identification and established a transcriptional profiling lab to apply leading gene expression technologies to exploratory research efforts. Dr. Novak performed his post-doctoral training at Yale University School of Medicine in immunobiology, received his Ph.D. in biology from California Institute of Technology, and graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College in Massachusetts with a B.A. in biology and chemistry. He is the author of more than 45 scientific abstracts and publications.

“Fate Therapeutics is the first company to singularly pursue adult stem cells as therapeutic targets of conventional drug discovery,” said Dr. Novak. “I look forward to working with the unmatched team at Fate to translate the Company’s unique approach to novel stem cell biology for the discovery and development of a pipeline of new medicines for a broad range of diseases and conditions.”