Tahoe welcomes drug discovery veterans Wayne Spevak, Ph.D., and Ben Powell, Ph.D., to leadership team

Advancing Tahoe’s mission

Tahoe Therapeutics was founded to build better precision medicines for large cohorts of patients. Our work combines deep biological insights, derived from our large-scale single cell datasets and AI,and the commitment to turn these insights into better medicines.

Today we move closer to that mission, as we welcome two experienced leaders to further build and scale its drug discovery organization: Wayne Spevak, Ph.D., as Vice President of Chemistry, and Ben Powell, Ph.D., as Vice President of Drug Discovery.

Together, they bring more than five decades of experience in small molecule drug design, discovery biology, and translational research. Their collaboration represents a milestone in Tahoe’s evolution, one that builds on the platform’s deep understanding of biology to inform the design and development of new medicines.

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Proven experience in discovery and development

Wayne Spevak is a medicinal chemist with nearly 30 years’ experience in small molecule discovery and development. Over his career, he has contributed to 13 novel clinical compounds, including two first-in-class, FDA-approved therapies, vemurafenib (BRAF) and pexidartinib (CSF1R).

Before joining Tahoe, Wayne served as Senior Vice President of Chemistry at Terremoto Biosciences, and previously spent nearly two decades at Plexxikon, where he led one of the industry’s most productive discovery chemistry organizations.

Ben Powell joins as Vice President of Drug Discovery, after more than 20 years leading protein chemistry, discovery and translational biology programs at Plexxikon and Kinnate Biopharma. His teams have contributed to 17 IND applications including potential best in class MEK and cMET inhibitors, advanced clinical compounds -bezuclastinib (KIT D816V), plixarafenib, (PLX8394) and zavabresib (PLX2853) as well as FDA approved therapies vemurafenib and pexidartinb, with a focus on oncology and precision medicine.

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A partnership rooted in shared experience

Wayne and Ben first collaborated at Plexxikon, where they helped establish an integrated model of chemistry and biology that delivered breakthrough targeted therapies. Their reunion at Tahoe reflects a shared belief that the most powerful drug discovery engines are built on deep biological insight.

“At Plexxikon, we saw how tightly linking chemistry and biology could accelerate discovery,” Powell said. “What excites me about Tahoe is how its platform models that relationship at a scale and level of precision that simply hasn’t been possible before.”

“Tahoe’s models provide an entirely new window into how biological systems behave,” Spevak added. “That knowledge will allow us to make more informed design decisions, faster, and increase the odds of finding the right therapy for the right patient.”

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Translating insight into impact

Tahoe’s drug-perturbed single-cell data, their scale, and foundation models trained on them reveal mechanisms that underlie disease and response. With Spevak and Powell leading the company’s drug discovery efforts, those insights will be translated into programs that combine predictions from AI models with proven medicinal chemistry and translational expertise.

“Medicines come from the creativity of people like Ben and Wayne,” said Nima, CEO and co-founder of Tahoe. “What I am excited about is equipping them with a new transformational technology that we are building at Tahoe. When their experience is paired with the power of our foundational datasets and models, it gives us the ability to reach new heights in how we understand and design therapeutics.”

Together, Spevak and Powell strengthen Tahoe’s ability to move from understanding biology to shaping it, accelerating the path from model to medicine. Welcome to the Tahoe team, Ben and Wayne!