John Wagner (Cygnal)

Cyg­nal's Pearl Huang re­cruits for­mer Mer­ck col­league John Wag­n­er to re­al­ize broad ex­oneur­al vi­sion in the clin­ic

Long be­fore her cur­rent life as CEO of Flag­ship start­up Cyg­nal, Pearl Huang had the ti­tle of in­te­gra­tor at Mer­ck’s on­col­o­gy fran­chise.

Tasked with over­see­ing the tran­si­tion of ex­per­i­men­tal drugs from pre­clin­i­cal to ear­ly clin­i­cal, she worked close­ly with John Wag­n­er — an ex­pert in clin­i­cal phar­ma­col­o­gy — to fa­cil­i­ate ear­ly de­vel­op­ment and bio­mark­er re­search around can­cer pro­grams.

Now, as Cyg­nal it­self is on the verge of the clin­ic, she’s re­unit­ing with Wag­n­er to steer in­to the clin­ic a dif­fer­ent class of can­cer drugs: ones tar­get­ing the role of the pe­riph­er­al ner­vous sys­tem in can­cer pathogen­sis.

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