Arbor Biotechnologies Appoints Industry Veteran R. Nolan Townsend to Board of Directors
Arbor Biotechnologies®, a biotechnology company discovering and developing the next generation of genetic medicines, today announced the appointment of R. Nolan Townsend to the Company’s Board of Directors. Mr. Townsend is the Chief Executive Officer of LEXEO Therapeutics, a clinical stage gene therapy company advancing candidates for genetically defined cardiovascular diseases and a genetically defined sub-group of Alzheimer’s disease.
“We’re honored to have Nolan join our board and partner with our leadership team at this pivotal time,” said Devyn Smith, Ph.D., CEO of Arbor. “His knowledge of the genetic medicine field and decade of leadership across key functions in a global healthcare organization will be invaluable as we work toward our goal of obtaining 3 clinical filings in the next three years and advancing the first non-CAS9 nuclease into in vivo testing in humans.”
Prior to LEXEO, Mr. Townsend spent over a decade with Pfizer, most recently as President, Pfizer Rare Disease for the North America region and President, Pfizer Rare Disease for the International markets, where he oversaw overall strategy, the cross functional organization, and operating budgets in those regions. During his tenure, he also held roles of increasing responsibility across Corporate Finance, Corporate Strategy, Operations, Marketing, General Management and Commercial leadership in Pfizer’s New York headquarters, Asia, Africa/Middle East, and Europe. Prior to Pfizer, Mr. Townsend worked in the healthcare investment banking group at Lehman Brothers, advising healthcare companies on strategic financing transactions and mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Townsend serves on the Board of Directors of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), on New York City Economic Development Corporation’s Life Sciences Advisory Council, and as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Life Science Cares New York.
“I am delighted to join Arbor Bio’s impressive roster of senior leaders and board members,” said Mr. Townsend. “I look forward to working with this talented group to shape the strategic direction of the company and support their efforts to rapidly and efficiently translate their platform technologies into therapeutics.”
About Arbor Biotechnologies®
Arbor Biotechnologies is a next-generation gene editing company based in Cambridge, MA. Combining the promise of CRISPR with advanced computational AI-driven discovery, high throughput screening, and robust protein engineering approaches, our co-founders Feng Zhang and David Walt laid the groundwork for our proprietary discovery engine, which has yielded an extensive toolbox of gene editors, far exceeding the number of editors published in the literature to date. We envision a future of gene editing that extends beyond simple knockdowns to include precision writing, precise excisions and large insertions. This affords us the potential to treat a broad spectrum of patients, from ultra-rare to the most common genetic diseases. Guided by a deep understanding of the molecular basis of disease and our access to a unique suite of optimized editors, we are rapidly advancing our discovery-stage programs with an initial focus on genomic diseases of the liver and CNS for which there are no existing functional cures. As we advance toward the clinic with our lead program in primary hyperoxaluria type I, we look to expand our strategic partnerships around in vivo gene editing across multiple therapeutic areas and ex vivo cell therapy programs to broaden the reach of our novel nuclease technology. For more information, please visit: arbor.bio
Media Contact:
Peg Rusconi
Verge Scientific Communications
prusconi@nullvergescientific.com