PIR International supports appointment of Chief Business Officer at Slingshot Therapeutics

PIR International was delighted to partner with Slingshot Therapeutics on the appointment of Bobby Soni as Chief Business Officer.

Slingshot Therapeutics provides an innovative platform with access to centralised expertise, resource, funding and operational support to accelerate exceptional academic science into attractive biotech assets ready for clinical development. Slingshot aims to accumulate a pipeline of small molecule programmes across a range of therapeutics areas where there is significant unmet medical need, identified from world-leading academic institutions in the UK, US and Europe.

As CBO, Bobby Soni will oversee all business development activities comprising the Company’s outreach, engagement and partnership strategy. This includes the acquisition and in-licensing of drug discovery programmes. Upon identification of a drug candidate, Bobby will drive partnering or company formation efforts around assets to progress them into clinical development. In this role, Bobby will work alongside Slingshot’s scientific leaders and the Syncona team.

Bobby is highly experienced in the life sciences sector with over 25 years of experience in roles spanning science, project leadership, venture capital investing, non-executive directorships and start-up acceleration. He has held scientific and investment positions at Maxygen, LEO Pharma, Novo Holdings and Imperial Innovations. Most recently, Bobby was CBO at BioInnovation Institute, Europe’s largest bioscience accelerator, where he was responsible for their acceleration programme and supported over 100 companies, which have raised more than €1bn in capital.

Edward Hodgkin, Executive Chair of Slingshot, said:

We see a valuable opportunity to translate academic innovation into drug candidates that are ready for clinical development. The combination of Slingshot’s industry-experienced drug development team with Syncona’s investment expertise is creating a powerful platform for the acceleration of academic research. John and Bobby will play an invaluable role in this, and we are delighted to welcome them to the team.

Bobby Soni, Chief Business Officer of Slingshot, commented:

I look forward to working alongside an excellent team to expand Slingshot’s network and pipeline. I will be focused on in-licensing world-class therapeutic programmes and advancing the company’s partnering programme, leveraging the strength of Syncona’s network as a key differentiator.