Frontier Medicines Strengthens Leadership Team with Appointment of Three Drug Development Veterans
Aaron Weitzman, M.D., named Chief Medical Officer; Mike Preigh, Ph.D., Chief Technical Operations Officer; and Joelle
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Frontier Medicines Corporation, a clinical-stage precision medicines company unlocking the proteome to develop small molecule oncology and immunology drugs against previously undruggable disease-causing targets, today announced three appointments to its leadership team: Aaron Weitzman, M.D., as Chief Medical Officer; Mike Preigh, Ph.D., as Chief Technical Operations Officer; and Joelle Lufkin, M.P.H., as Senior Vice President, Clinical Development and Strategy.
“Frontier is at an important stage of growth as we progress our programs and continue to realize the potential of our Frontier™ Platform. These appointments come at a crucial time, with the first clinical data for FMC-376, a dual KRAS G12C ON+OFF inhibitor, expected to be presented at the ESMO Congress 2026, and as FMC-242, a breaker of the PI3Kα-RAS interaction, approaches the clinic,” said Chris Varma, Ph.D., co-founder, chairperson, and Chief Executive Officer of Frontier Medicines. “Aaron, Mike and Joelle each bring deep expertise in advancing innovative medicines from early development through regulatory approval and commercialization. Their collective experience across clinical development, medical strategy and technical operations strengthens our leadership team as we build a pipeline designed to address targets previously considered undruggable.”
Aaron Weitzman, M.D., Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Weitzman is a board-certified medical oncologist with more than 25 years of pharmaceutical and biotechnology drug development experience, including 15 years in senior clinical leadership roles at major pharmaceutical companies and more than a decade as an independent consultant and acting chief medical officer. He specializes in the early clinical development of novel oncology therapeutics and has advanced programs from first-in-human studies through later-stage development and regulatory approval across a broad range of solid tumors. Most recently, Dr. Weitzman served as an independent consultant and principal clinical leader for multiple oncology programs, including Halda Therapeutics’ HLD-0915 and Arvinas’ ARV-110. He previously served as Chief Medical Officer of Tango Therapeutics and, earlier in his career, held clinical development leadership roles supporting approved medicines including cabozantinib (Cabometyx®), bevacizumab (Avastin®) and nilotinib (Tasigna®). Dr. Weitzman holds an M.D. from the Medical School at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He completed his medical residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center and completed his clinical fellowship in medical oncology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City.
Mike Preigh, Ph.D., Chief Technical Operations Officer
Dr. Preigh has more than 30 years of experience in pharmaceutical product development and manufacturing. Most recently, he served as Chief Technical Officer of Day One Biopharmaceuticals, where he led chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) development, the New Drug Application (NDA) filing and commercialization for Ojemda® (tovorafenib). Previously, Dr. Preigh served as an independent consultant supporting multiple venture-backed biotechnology companies. From 2005 to 2015, he led the CMC team at Array BioPharma, which developed, manufactured and filed Investigational New Drug (IND) applications for more than 20 new chemical entities, including the marketed medicines Mektovi® (binimetinib) and Tukysa® (tucatinib). He began his industry career at Pfizer, where he spent 12 years across manufacturing, quality and research and development. Dr. Preigh received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh and his B.A. in chemistry from Illinois Wesleyan University.
Joelle Lufkin, M.P.H., Senior Vice President, Clinical Development and Strategy
Ms. Lufkin is a clinical development executive with nearly 30 years of global industry experience spanning all phases of clinical development across oncology and other therapeutic areas. Prior to joining Frontier, she spent more than seven years as principal of JLK Clinical Consulting, advising emerging biotechnology companies and guiding programs from candidate nomination through IND-enabling activities and first-in-human studies. Previously, Ms. Lufkin served as Senior Vice President of Development at Imara Therapeutics and spent nearly eight years at Flexion Therapeutics, ultimately serving as Vice President of Clinical Development. At Flexion, she played a key role in advancing Zilretta® from IND through NDA approval and built the clinical development organization. Earlier, she held roles at Synta Pharmaceuticals (led global melanoma and lung cancer programs), Cubist Pharmaceuticals (led global program for the approval of Cubicin® in infective endocarditis and bacteremia), and Wyeth-Ayerst Research. Ms. Lufkin received her M.P.H. from Boston University and her B.S. in biology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
About the Frontier™ Platform
The Frontier™ Platform integrates chemoproteomics, artificial intelligence and direct-to-biology approaches to accelerate the discovery and development of precision covalent medicines. The platform maps covalent binding sites across the proteome, identifies actionable ligands and enables rapid optimization of compounds into clinical candidates. Years of systematic data generation have produced CoGT™ (the Covalent Ground Truth), which powers Frontier’s CovalentAI™ engine, a component of the Frontier™ Platform that characterizes and scores binding sites for covalent drug discovery, optimizes compounds and guides the design of Frontier’s proprietary covalent fragment library. Profiling this library against the human proteome has yielded Frontier’s Druggability Atlas™, covering approximately 90% of the human proteome.
About Frontier Medicines
Frontier Medicines is a clinical-stage precision medicines company pioneering groundbreaking medicines to transform treatment for genetically defined patient populations, starting with oncology and immunology. Our proprietary chemoproteomics-powered drug discovery engine, the Frontier™ Platform, leverages covalent chemistry and artificial intelligence to unlock difficult-to-drug, disease-causing proteins for drug development. Today, we are advancing a diversified pipeline of wholly owned precision medicines against the most critical drivers of cancer and high-value immunology programs. For more information, please visit www.frontiermeds.com. Follow Frontier on LinkedIn.
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