Dirk Thye, M.D., has served as Quince’s Chief Executive Officer and a member of its Board of Directors since May 2022, and as Chief Medical Officer since December 2023. To these roles, he brings nearly 25 years of broad biotechnology industry experience ranging from company creation to running a subsidiary of a large pharmaceutical company, in addition to possessing expertise across multiple disciplines, including drug discovery, research and development, and executive leadership.
Dr. Thye has achieved FDA approval for several drug programs that he led the development of and has worked in a variety of therapeutic areas such as infectious diseases, antibody/ADC discovery, CRISPR, oncology, inflammation, and metabolic disease, among others. He has served as Chief Executive Officer at ten companies and as Chief Medical Officer at several others, in addition to founding seven companies – five of which were sold with excellent returns for investors. He has led or participated in private, initial public offerings, and follow-on public financings that resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of company investment, in addition to a number of successful exits that generated billions of dollars in shareholder value.
Prior to joining Quince, Dr. Thye served as Chief Executive Officer of Novosteo, a privately held biotech company focused on targeted therapeutics to treat rare skeletal diseases, bone cancer, and bone injury, prior to its acquisition by Quince in May 2022. Previously, he was the Founder and Executive Chairman of Geom Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel antibiotics for multidrug-resistant Gram-negative infections. Dr. Thye also served as Chief Executive Officer of Agenovir, a CRISPR company focused on the discovery and development of gene editing therapies for human latent viral infections and cancer, where he led the build-out and expansion of the organization through its acquisition by Vir Biotechnology in January 2018. In addition, he served as Chief Medical Officer at Cidara Therapeutics, a biotech company focusing on therapeutic and immunomodulatory applications for invasive infections, where he led building and managing all aspects of drug development and was instrumental in securing funding and building the Cidara organization from inception. Dr. Thye also served in roles of increasing responsibility at Cerexa Pharmaceutical, a biopharmaceutical company with a portfolio of anti-infective therapies for the treatment of life-threatening infection, continuing as President following the company’s acquisition by Forest Laboratories in December 2006.
Dr. Thye holds a M.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a B.A. in Molecular Biology with an emphasis in Cell and Development from the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Stanford University and holds a physician and surgeon license from the Medical Board of California.