PLYMOUTH, MI--(Marketwire - September 27, 2012) - BioSavita, Inc. announced today that its board has appointed James Kuo, M.D., M.B.A., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. He plans to lead the company’s growth through development of its portfolio of biosimilar products and additional corporate partners for its Twin Cassette® yeast expression technology, which allows rapid production of fully functional antibodies in secreted form.
Dr. Kuo has over 20 years of life science industry experience as a venture capitalist, pharmaceutical business development executive and senior manager of private and publicly-traded biotech companies. Prior to joining BioSavita, Dr. Kuo served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Adeona Pharmaceuticals, a publicly-traded Michigan biotech company. Prior to Adeona, he served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BioMicro Systems, a genomic tools company. Dr. Kuo is also a founder and served as Chief Executive Officer of Discovery Laboratories, a publicly-traded company commercializing surfactant-based respiratory therapeutics. He has been Associate Director of Licensing and Development at Pfizer and Vice President of Business Development at Myriad Genetics. Dr. Kuo was Managing Director of Venture Analysis at HealthCare Ventures, a venture capital firm with $378 million in funds under management. He is Chairman of the Board at MSK Pharma, a company developing pharmaceutical therapies for pain and musculoskeletal diseases. He is also Chairman of the Board at Monarch Labs, a company commercializing medical devices for wound care. Dr. Kuo received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and his M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business. He received his B.A. in molecular biology from Haverford College.
“On behalf of the board of directors, I welcome Jim’s appointment as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,” stated Joseph DeAngelo, BioSavita’s board director. “His past experience shows that he can inject more commercial focus to our biosimilar pipeline and establish more partnerships for our high-throughput yeast expression cassette technology.”
“It is a pleasure to join a company that is seeking to develop a portfolio of biosimilars, which potentially offers a more rapid regulatory pathway to commercial approval. I am excited that BioSavita has already established five corporate collaborations to validate its Twin Cassette® yeast expression technology,” stated Dr. Kuo.
About BioSavita, Inc.
BioSavita (formerly known as ApoLife) is focused on rapidly bringing new biosimilar medicines to patients in partnership with biopharmaceutical companies. The company has developed proprietary genetically engineered strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast and Twin Cassette™ yeast expression platform technology. BioSavita’s high throughput synthetic DNA technology enables the manufacture of fully functional antibodies (glycosylated and aglycosylated), single domain antibodies, fusion proteins in secreted form. For further information, please visit the company’s website at www.biosavita.com.
James Kuo
Email Contact
