Quiver Bioscience Appoints Graham Dempsey, PhD as Chief Executive Officer to Lead Scaling of AI-Driven CNS Platform and Advance Lead Program into the Clinic

Business Wire

16-06-2025

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Quiver Bioscience ('Quiver'), a discovery technology and therapeutics company advancing programs for treatment of serious central nervous system (CNS) disorders and chronic pain, announced the appointment of co-founder Graham Dempsey, PhD as Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Dempsey assumes the CEO role after more than a decade of scientific and operational leadership at Quiver, most recently serving as Quiver's Chief Scientific Officer, directing the planning and execution of all scientific, medical, engineering and AI/machine learning activities at the company. This appointment comes as Quiver aims to advance its lead program into the clinic, an antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) targeting Na v 1.7 for the treatment of chronic pain, while scaling its CNS-focused AI-driven drug discovery platform to accelerate a portfolio of therapeutic programs. Paul Roma, Quiver co-founder and interim CEO will transition to Chairman of the Board of Directors.
'We're excited by the potential of our genetic medicine strategy and platform to unlock this important target towards creating a transformative product for patients suffering from chronic neuropathic pain," said Dr. Dempsey
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Dr. Dempsey has successfully led the development and rapid evolution of the company's technology platforms since the company's inception, as well as its first small molecule and antisense oligonucleotide therapeutic programs, resulting in several foundational patents and peer-reviewed publications. He has also led more than a dozen pharma collaborations and the execution of several grants from non-dilutive funding sources such as the NIH SBIR Programs and CNS Foundations. Dr. Dempsey holds a B.A. in biochemistry (Roy and Diana Vagelos Scholar) and biophysics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard Medical School, where he co-invented novel fluorescence-based imaging platforms for investigating biological systems and was part of the team that developed the super-resolution imaging technique called stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM) that was subsequently commercialized by Nikon Instruments. Dr. Dempsey serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Dan Lewis Foundation for Brain Regeneration Research and the editorial board of Molecular Therapy Nucleic Acids.
Under Dr. Dempsey's leadership, Quiver will advance their lead asset, an ASO targeting the genetically validated pain target Na v 1.7, a voltage gated sodium channel implicated in several neuropathic pain disorders, through IND and early clinical studies. 'Despite the longstanding promise of Nav1.7 as a target for pain, it has remained elusive for drug developers. We're excited by the potential of our genetic medicine strategy and platform to unlock this important target towards creating a transformative product for patients suffering from chronic neuropathic pain,' said Dr. Dempsey. Quiver's Na v 1.7 ASO is expected to deliver durable relief for chronic pain while overcoming limitations of other Na v -targeted small molecules currently under development and recently approved. Quiver's strong data package demonstrates the efficacy of Na v 1.7 ASOs in rescuing pain phenotypes in in vitro and in vivo models with a favorable CNS tolerability profile. The ASO program is approaching development candidate selection in 2025 and is expected to begin critical IND enabling studies shortly thereafter.
Quiver is also scaling their human-centric AI-driven novel CNS drug discovery platform with in silico models of target, efficacy and toxicity prediction, and is further bolstering a pipeline of fast-follower programs in pain, neurodevelopmental disorders, and other diseases of the CNS including the advancement of its UBE3A -targeting ASO for the neurodevelopmental disorder, chromosome 15q duplication syndrome (Dup15q) to IND. The company will be attending the BIO International Convention in Boston this week to showcase their programs and platform.
About Quiver Bioscience
Quiver Bioscience is a technology-driven company established to create transformational medicines for the brain while simultaneously uncovering new biology and novel, effective drug targets. Using advanced single-cell imaging and multi-omics, we are building the world's most information-rich neuronal insight map via our "Genomic Positioning System." Our approach integrates cutting-edge scalable human models, state-of-the-art technology and proprietary engineering, and learning and surrogate AI/ML models to identify novel therapeutic targets and the best candidate molecules to deliver new and meaningful therapeutics to patients. For more information, including partnerships and publications describing application of Quiver's GPS to drug discovery, visit www.quiverbioscience.com or follow us on LinkedIn.