Anjarium Biosciences AG, a biotech company focused on creating and delivering a new class of non-viral gene therapies announced the appointment of Stephen Yoo, MD as the Company's Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
Stephen brings to Anjarium a wealth of experience in building early-stage life sciences companies, having worked in the industry for 14 years. He most recently worked as Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and Head of R&D at Third Harmonic Bio where, as one of its first two employees, he was instrumental in growing the company and securing key financing.
Before that, Stephen was the first CMO of Regenxbio, which he helped take from a private company through a successful IPO, expanding its capabilities and advancing a pipeline focused on AAV gene therapies for retinal, metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases.
Prior to Regenxbio, he held multiple roles in clinical development at MedImmune/AstraZeneca and at Abbott Labs within the autoimmunity and inflammation group.
Commenting on Stephen's appointment, Bali Muralidhar, Managing Partner at Abingworth and Director at Anjarium, said: "We're delighted to be bringing Stephen on board as Anjarium's CEO. His appointment marks an important milestone for the company as we leverage the success of our CHF 55.5 M ($61M) Series A round to advance our ground-breaking platform and progress therapeutic pipeline programs towards clinical development. His broad experience in building small companies and his knowledge of the gene therapy space make Stephen the perfect candidate to steer Anjarium through the next stages of its growth."
Stephen Yoo, MD, added: "Non-viral gene therapies represent an exciting opportunity to overcome the limitations of conventional viral-vector based approaches and tackle more diseases, more precisely and in a more personalized way. Anjarium's versatile technology shows exciting potential in multiple disease areas, and I'm thrilled to be joining a company at the cutting-edge of this science as it grows its organization and develops and advances its pipeline strategy."
Anjarium's innovative approach leverages breakthrough science and expertise at the interface of genetic medicine, synthetic biology and nanoparticle engineering to rationally design and produce tissue-targeted gene therapies, optimized to improve patient outcomes in a range of serious genetic diseases.
The Company's unique platform combines proprietary DNA-based gene vectors, natural and synthetic nanoparticle delivery modalities – including its novel Hybridosome™ technology – and cost-efficient, scalable manufacturing solutions.
Through this approach, Anjarium has the potential to deliver more predictable, lasting, and inclusionary ways to tackle genetic disease throughout a patient's lifetime. Further, this new class of gene therapy provides the opportunity to address key shortcomings of current viral gene therapy development by creating medicines with reduced immunogenicity, increased drug payload capacity, enhanced targeted delivery, and individualized multiple dosing.
Source: Anjarium Biosciences AG
