An Ar­ray co-founder re-emerges as CEO of a small aca­d­e­m­ic spin­out, look­ing to re­make an old class of can­cer drugs

Tony Pis­co­pio hadn’t worked as a bench sci­en­tist in years when, around 2011, he got put in touch with a team at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado try­ing to re­vi­tal­ize an old ap­proach to treat­ing can­cer.

Pis­co­pio, who had co-found­ed Ar­ray Bio­phar­ma be­fore head­ing to South Ko­rea to launch a new com­pa­ny, was back in the states, un­at­tached and in­trigued. He found­ed a three-per­son com­pa­ny with two pro­fes­sors, Xue­dong Liu and Gail Eck­hardt, and while they worked on the bi­ol­o­gy side, he re­turned to his old chemist chair and be­gan draw­ing up po­ten­tial com­pounds on a com­put­er, along with man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es to make them. Out­sourc­ing com­pa­nies syn­the­sized or an­a­lyzed the re­sults.

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