Clarus Ventures Hires Former Merck President Ed Scolnick and Broad Institute Scientist Finny...( CAMBRIDGE Mass. and SOUTH SAN FRANCIS...),Health

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarus Ventures, LLC ("Clarus Ventures"), a leading life sciences venture capital firm, announced today the hiring of Edward Scolnick, M.D., as a Venture Partner and Finny Kuruvilla, M.D., Ph.D., as a Principal in the Firm's Cambridge, Mass. office.

"Both Drs. Scolnick and Kuruvilla have clinical backgrounds rooted in their deep understanding of science and technology," said Nick Galakatos, Ph.D., a Managing Director for Clarus. "Their addition to our Clarus team will further enhance our ability to identify and build companies with highly innovative products that address significant unmet medical needs."

Dr. Edward Scolnick joins Clarus Ventures as a Venture Partner, exclusive to the firm, from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard where he is Director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. In this capacity he oversees the leading effort in the world to identify the genetic basis of schizophrenia and bipolar illness and to find innovative medicines to treat these illnesses. Prior to the Broad, Dr. Scolnick was President of the Merck Research Labs where over a 17-year period he oversaw the discovery, development and approval of over 16 new medicines across several disease indications. He joined Merck from the National Institutes of Health where for 15 years seminal discoveries were made on the nature of cancer-causing genes in humans.

Dr. Scolnick received his bachelor's degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard University and his M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He was a Senior Staff Fellow at both the National Heart Institute and National Cancer Institute. He was later Head of the Genetics Section in the Viral Leukemia & Lymphoma Branch, Chief of the Laboratory of Tumor Virus
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