Bicycle Therapeutics Promotes Michael Skynner to Chief Operating Officer

Bicycle Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering a new class of therapeutics based on its proprietary bicyclic peptide (Bicycle) product platform, announced the promotion of Michael Skynner, Ph.D., to the role of Chief Operating Officer. Dr. Skynner has served as Bicycle’s Vice President of Operations and Discovery since January 2016.

“Michael has made significant contributions to the company, playing a key role in establishing and guiding Bicycle’s strategic alliances with AstraZeneca, Bioverativ and Cancer Research UK and in securing the recent anti-infectives award from Innovate UK,” said Kevin Lee, Ph.D., MBA, Chief Executive Officer of Bicycle. “His strategic insights and business partnering experience will be invaluable as we continue to advance our lead drug candidate BT1718 through clinical development, expand our therapeutic pipeline, and pursue additional opportunities to broaden the therapeutic potential for Bicycles.”

“I am delighted at this opportunity to help maximize the enormous potential of the Bicycle technology, which could transform treatment options for patients in oncology and in other therapeutic areas,” said Dr. Skynner. “With our recent initiation of the first-ever clinical trial of a Bicycle, the company has entered a pivotal new stage of growth. I look forward to continuing to work with our talented team to pioneer the discovery and progression of this new therapeutic class of molecules.”

Dr. Skynner joined Bicycle from Pfizer in 2016, where he led rare disease efforts in Europe and founded and ran the Pfizer Rare Disease Consortium (RDC), a novel vehicle for academic collaboration. Previously, he established and headed a discovery performance unit at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) focused on developing anti- inflammatory kinase therapeutics using an externalized partnered model. Prior to GSK he co-founded a successful biotech start-up company, Cambridge Biotechnology Ltd., (CBT), which specialized in developing small molecule and peptide therapeutics. Dr. Skynner obtained his Ph.D. in biochemistry at Imperial College and is an author on over 30 peer-reviewed scientific publications.