Blackhawk, Calif., March 17, 2026 – Vesicor Therapeutics, Inc., a San Gabriel, California-based early development stage biotechnology corporation focused on the development of p53-based cancer therapeutics delivered via precision-engineered microvesicles and a proposed de-SPAC acquisition target for Black Hawk Acquisition Corporation (Nasdaq: BKHA, BKHAU, BKHAR) today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Michael Tolentino, M.D., an accomplished biotech leader with deep industry experience, as Chief Executive Officer, effective March 17. He succeeds Founder and CEO Luo Feng, Ph.D., who has been appointed Chief Scientific Officer
“Dr. Tolentino is an exceptional leader whose biotech industry expertise, deep relationships across the CRO and pharma ecosystems, and proven track record of creating shareholder value is exactly what Vesicor needs in its next CEO,” stated Warren Hosseinion, M.D., Chairman of the Board of Vesicor Therapeutics. “We are honored to have Dr. Tolentino as our new CEO as we work to complete our de-SPAC with Blackhawk Acquisition Corporation and accelerate our IND-enabling studies and IND-submission to the FDA.”
“I am delighted to join Vesicor as CEO. I have tremendous respect and admiration for the company, its science and its Founder and am eager to build upon the technology and work the team has been doing to position itself for an IND submission in 2027. I see significant opportunities to develop potent therapeutics against cancer and create value for our shareholders,” stated Michael Tolentino, M.D.
Dr. Tolentino is a serial entrepreneur and longtime biotechnology leader and widely respected executive with more than 20 years of experience and deep relationships across the drug discovery, pre-clinical development, clinical development, and pharmaceutical industry. In the laboratory of Dr. Judah Folkman, he discovered the importance of the VEGF pathway in retinal disease and cancer. While at Harvard, he helped invent and pre-clinically develop Avastin with Genentech, the drug that launched both the retinal and oncologic anti-VEGF industry. He subsequently invented and was the pre-clinical and clinical developer of Bevasiranib, the first RNA interference and siRNA drug taken to clinic for diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration. He was the Founder and served as CEO, CSO and CMO of Acuity Pharmaceuticals, which merged to form OPKO Health (NASDAQ: OPK) in 2007.
In 2008, he was the scientific founder and consultant for Promedior, Inc., a privately held biotech company that advanced the anti-fibrotic PRM-151 for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and myelofibrosis. Promedior was sold to Roche in 2018 for $390 million in cash and contingent payments up to $1 billion.
He Co-founded and was a Board member of Panther Pharmaceuticals from 2018-2023. Concurrently, he was the Co-founding physician and partner of Vision Integrated Partners, a PE-funded ophthalmic roll-up where he founded, directed and incorporated a clinical trial site management organization called Blue Ocean Clinical Research that ran clinical trials with Dr. Tolentino as the principal investigator.
Dr. Tolentino Co-founded Aviceda Therapeutics, invented AVD-104 and served as CSO from 2018-2021 and CTO/CIO from 2018 until 2025, when Aviceda secured $207.5 million Series C financing. He also served on the board of the company from 2018-2024 and helped design and manage the Phase 2-3 clinical trial.
Dr. Tolentino is the Co-founder, CEO and Chairman of Avdarna Therapeutics since 2021. Avdarna is a pre-clinical to clinical developer of novel AI-generated proprietary protein/peptide therapeutics that mimic and enhance the efficacy of current blockbuster drugs like GLP-1, GIP-1, glucagon agonists, checkpoint inhibitors, targeted nucleotide therapeutic gene delivery, cancer-targeted antibodies, nanobodies and ADCs. Avdarna is the pre-clinical to clinical developer for assets generated by Aikium.
He is also the Co-founder and Chief Development Officer of Aikium, Inc. Aikium is revolutionizing therapeutics discovery and development with Yotta-ML², the world’s first proprietary 10^24 protein/peptide sequence structured data-set trained, drug discovery AI platform. The Yotta platform is taught to identify therapeutic agonists or antagonists that bind clinically validated targets such as GLP-1, GIP-1, Glucagon, and checkpoint receptors, as well as previously undruggable targets such as GPCRs, cancer associated antigens, and intracellular proteins. Aikium with Avdarna is rapidly developing novel therapeutics replacing drugs going off patent with more efficacious, longer acting, less toxic, multi-specific and oral drugs. Aikium has also identified protein binders to be developed for novel targets leading to the next-generation peptide/protein therapeutics, antibody drug conjugates, gene therapies and beyond. Cancer antigen targeted peptides discovered by Aikium can be conjugated to microvesicles and be used to specifically target cancer cells for p53 gene delivery and other cancer killing agents such as topoisomerase inhibitors, alkylating agents and microtubule inhibitors.
Dr. Tolentino holds a BA in both Computer Science and Organizational Behavior and Management from Brown University, a M.D. from the University of Massachusetts Chan School of Medicine, completed his Research Fellowships and Residency in Ophthalmology from Harvard Medical School and a Retinal Surgical Clinical Fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania. He served on the Faculty of Cellular, Molecular Biology and Gene Therapy, was a Scientist at the FM Kirby Center for Molecular Ophthalmology, and Clinical Faculty at the Scheie Eye Institute, all organizations at the University of Pennsylvania.