SAN DIEGO, Aug. 06, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- aTyr Pharma, Inc. (Nasdaq: LIFE), a biotherapeutics company engaged in the discovery and development of innovative medicines, today announced the appointment of David Briscoe, MB, ChB, Director of the Transplant Research Program and Fellowship Program and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School as scientific advisor to the company.

“We are pleased to have attracted Dr. Briscoe as an advisor to help guide the expansion and development of our earlier stage pipeline based on NRP2 biology,” said Dr. Sanjay Shukla, President and Chief Executive Officer of aTyr. “As we advance our understanding of NRP2, Dr. Briscoe’s expertise in the field of immunobiology will complement our own robust research and development capabilities as we work to bring an entirely new class of therapeutics to market.”

“Having recently participated in aTyr’s inaugural summit meeting on NRP2 biology in April, it is clear that there is a rapidly growing body of evidence to suggest that NRP2 plays a key role in a broad range of disorders with significant unmet medical needs, including cancer, inflammation and vascular biology,” said Dr. Briscoe. “I look forward to working with the aTyr team to exploit this emerging pathway.”     

Dr. David Briscoe is a Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and the Casey Lee Ball Chair in Transplantation at Boston Children's Hospital. He trained in pediatrics, nephrology and transplantation immunology, and directs a research program focused on the understanding of chronic allograft rejection with a goal to enhance long-term outcomes following solid organ transplantation. Dr. Briscoe serves on National Institutes of Health (NIH) study sections and is a regular participant providing transplant expertise on special grant review committees. He has also served on the editorial board of several transplant journals and is currently a section editor of Transplantation Direct. Dr. Briscoe earned his medical degree at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and performed his initial residency training in General Medicine and Pediatrics in Dublin. He also completed Pediatric Residency training at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, Colorado, and a postdoctoral fellowship in Pediatric Nephrology at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

About Neuropilin-2 (NRP2)

NRP2 is a pleiotropic cell surface receptor that plays a key role in lymphatic development and in regulating inflammatory responses. In many forms of cancer, high NRP2 expression is associated with worse outcomes. NRP2 can interact with multiple ligands and co-receptors to influence their functional roles. aTyr is actively investigating NRP2 receptor biology, both internally and in collaboration with key academic thought leaders, to identify new product candidates for a variety of disease settings, including cancer, inflammation, and lymphangiogenesis.

About aTyr

aTyr is a biotherapeutics company engaged in the discovery and development of innovative medicines based on novel biological pathways. aTyr’s research and development efforts are concentrated on a newly discovered area of biology, the extracellular functionality of tRNA synthetases. aTyr has built a global intellectual property estate directed to a potential pipeline of protein compositions derived from 20 tRNA synthetase genes. aTyr is focused on the therapeutic translation of the Resokine pathway, comprised of extracellular proteins derived from the histidyl tRNA synthetase gene family. ATYR1923 is a clinical-stage product candidate which binds to the neuropilin-2 receptor and is designed to down-regulate immune engagement in interstitial lung diseases and other immune-mediated diseases. For more information, please visit http://www.atyrpharma.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

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Source: aTyr Pharma, Inc.