Translate Bio, Inc. announced the appointment of Dr. Richard Wooster as chief scientific officer. Dr. Wooster brings more than three decades of experience in pharmaceutical drug discovery and development and academic research, with expertise in genetics, oncology and translational medicine. In this role, Dr. Wooster will lead Translate Bio’s scientific strategy and research efforts to support current pipeline programs while also identifying and delivering new programs to expand the Company’s pipeline of mRNA therapeutics. The company’s scientific founder and current chief scientific officer, Dr. Michael Heartlein, will continue serving as chief technical officer, focusing on next-generation innovations with the Company’s proprietary mRNA therapeutic (MRT) platform expanding beyond the core capabilities of the technology, including novel delivery and mRNA construct design approaches to optimize all areas of the MRT platform. Dr. Wooster is expected to join the Company in May. Dr. Wooster has three decades of experience with a focus on cancer genetics and pharmaceutical drug discovery and development. In his most recent role as President of Research & Development and Chief Scientific Officer at Tarveda Therapeutics Inc., he was responsible for the company’s R&D strategy, successfully developing an innovative platform with multiple pipeline programs at different stages of development, from discovery to clinical-stage. Previously, he was Vice President and Discovery Performance Unit Head in Oncology at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) where he led the evaluation of the metabolic pathways that are deregulated in cancer and the PI3K portfolio of and other protein kinase inhibitors. Before this, Dr. Wooster led the translational medicine group in Oncology at GSK and worked on Tykerb®, Mekinist® and Tafinlar®. During his academic career, Dr. Wooster discovered the breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA2, was one of the founders of the Cancer Genome Project at the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute where mutations in BRAF were first discovered and developed the COSMIC mutation database and website.