GigaGen Announces Appointment of Jan Fredrik Simons, Ph.D., as Senior Director, Technology

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Feb. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- GigaGen Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing novel antibody therapies, today announced that Jan Fredrik Simons, Ph.D., has joined the company as Senior Director, Technology.

"Throughout his career, Dr. Simons has worked at the interface of biology and technology. He is not only an expert in using next generation sequencing technologies, but has been at the vanguard of inventing them," said Dave Johnson, Ph.D., CEO of GigaGen. "He is bringing this expertise to GigaGen to create custom sequencing devices for massively parallel bioassays in microfluidic droplet reactors, to further our understanding of immune dysregulation and accelerate the discovery of novel drugs to treat cancer."

"GigaGen leads the industry in using next generation sequencing technology to unravel the mysteries of the immune system," said Dr. Simons. "I have spent years perfecting how next generation sequencing technologies work and now look forward to focusing on how they can best be applied to understand immune system function, and to discover and develop novel antibody therapeutics against severe diseases like cancer."

Prior to joining GigaGen, Dr. Simons was at Quantapore, where he most recently serviced as Senior Director of R&D and was instrumental in achieving key milestones towards the company's novel single molecule sequencing technology, including several rounds of financing. Dr. Simons has also held senior leadership positions at Genapsys, Ion Torrent, and 454 Life Sciences, where he led development and commercialization of next-generation sequencing platforms and spearheaded pioneering sequencing applications in collaboration with thought-leaders in the fields of oncology, virology and evolutionary genetics.

Dr. Simons received a Ph.D. in Medical Science at the Karolinksa Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and a B.S./M.Sc. in Biochemistry at the University of Helsinki in Finland. He has over thirty peer reviewed publications including seminal publications in Nature and Science. He also has multiple granted or pending patent applications.

About GigaGen
GigaGen is a privately-held, preclinical biopharmaceutical company developing novel antibody therapies to treat diseases of immune dysregulation. GigaGen's deep understanding of immune dysregulation is enabled by industry-leading technology that quickly captures the genetic makeup of entire immune repertoires to analyze B cells at a rate of millions per hour, while simultaneously identifying their antigen and protein binders. GigaGen has a robust internal pipeline consisting of novel antibodies against immuno-oncology targets, in addition to the first recombinant intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) for patients with immune deficiency. For more information visit www.GigaGen.com.

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SOURCE GigaGen Inc.