(Photo: Mathai Mammen, CEO, Parabilis)
June 13, 2026
Parabilis is developing medicines, based on its helicon peptide platforms, to treat both rare and common cancers. Helicons are a type of peptides capable of modulating proteins in a cell, a task which conventional medicines could not accomplish. Peptides are short chains of molecules called amino acids, which make up a protein.
“(W)e have advanced a new class of medicines, Helicons, designed to reach targets long considered undruggable and move closer to our goal of creating extraordinary medicines for patients with serious diseases.” Mathai Mammen, Chairman and Chief Executive of the company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, posted on LinkedIn.
Mammen earned his MD from Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his PhD in Chemistry from Harvard University. He received his BSc in Chemistry and Biochemistry from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
His mother Molly Mammen was a technician scientist in a cancer lab at Dalhousie University. “I witnessed both overt and subtle discrimination, bias and powerful perseverance and courage, and success in everything that my mother took on professionally and personally,” Mathai Mammen states in a LinkedIn post. His parents migrated to Canada, from Kerala, India, when he was a toddler.
By Ignatius Chithelen. He is the publisher of Global Indian Times and author of Six Degrees of Education and Passage from India to America. A Chartered Financial Analyst, he is manager of Banyan Tree Capital, New York. Neither he nor Banyan has any financial or other interests in any of the companies mentioned in this story.
