AVI BioPharma Announces Key Leadership Appointments to Advance Capabilities in Drug Discovery, Research and Development
October 27 2010 - 8:30AM
Marketwired
AVI BioPharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVII), a developer of RNA-based
therapeutics, announced today three key leadership appointments
supporting the expansion of its drug discovery, research and
development capabilities.
Graham Johnson, Ph.D., has joined AVI as its Senior Vice
President, Preclinical Development and Research. Additionally,
Patrick Iversen, Ph.D., has been appointed Senior Vice President of
Research and Innovation, and Ryszard Kole, Ph.D., has been
appointed Senior Vice President and an AVI Distinguished Scientist.
With these appointments, AVI seeks to further accelerate its
leading scientific expertise and focus efforts on continuing to
expand and fully leverage its technology platforms to discover and
develop innovative RNA-based therapeutics for rare and infectious
diseases.
Graham Johnson, Ph.D.
Graham Johnson, Ph.D., joins AVI as Senior Vice President,
Preclinical Development and Research. He has overall responsibility
for pre-clinical development and research, including research
biology and chemistry initiatives. He will report to the Company's
Chief Executive Officer.
Dr. Johnson brings to AVI more than 30 years' experience in the
design, discovery and development of novel therapeutics, including
an extensive background in infectious diseases and neuroscience. He
has joined AVI after holding increasingly senior roles at several
companies, including a 10-year tenure at Bristol-Myers Squibb,
where he departed as Vice President, Discovery Chemistry, for
Connecticut and Canada, and oversaw approximately 135 scientists.
Most recently, he was President of NuPharmAdvise LLC, a
pharmaceutical consulting company. Other past positions include
Chief Research Officer of Rib-X Pharmaceuticals and increasingly
senior positions at Hoechst UK and Parke-Davis. Dr. Johnson is an
inventor on 54 patents and has co-authored more than 60
peer-reviewed publications. He has also authored multiple review
articles and is a regular speaker at scientific conferences. Dr.
Johnson received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Heriot-Watt
University, Edinburgh, and was then awarded a Fulbright Senior
Fellowship for postdoctoral studies in the U.S., where he joined
Professor Sir Jack Baldwin's research group at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. This was followed by two years of
additional postdoctoral studies with Professor Sir Derek Barton,
first at Imperial College and then at the Research Institute for
Medicine and Chemistry. Dr. Johnson was a steering committee member
and scientific advisor for the Spinomuscular Atrophy Project, a
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke-sponsored
collaborative program to accelerate therapeutics development for
spinal muscular atrophy. He is an Independent Observer for the
European Union's Innovative Medicine Initiative and sits on the
scientific advisory board for Galenea Corporation.
"We are very happy to welcome Graham to AVI, and we appreciate
the tremendous amount of experience he brings from both large and
small pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in bridging
research and development," said J. David Boyle II, AVI's Interim
President and Chief Executive Officer as well as Chief Financial
Officer. "At a time when we are poised for significant advancement
across multiple programs, I am confident Graham's background and
leadership will prove invaluable to AVI as we continue to build
recognition of our leading RNA-based therapeutics programs."
Patrick Iversen, Ph.D.
Patrick Iversen, Ph.D., has been appointed Senior Vice President
of Research and Innovation. In his new role Dr. Iversen will have
expanded responsibility for the identification and advancement of
new drug discovery initiatives and the development of novel
therapeutic applications of AVI's RNA-based technology. The
appointment as AVI's innovation officer is in recognition of Dr.
Iversen's role as a leading innovator of RNA-based science over the
previous two decades and his ongoing contributions to the
advancement of AVI's technology platforms and programs. He will
report to the company's Chief Executive Officer.
Over the last 21 years, Dr. Iversen has been a leading innovator
in the research and development of RNA-based therapeutics. In 1992,
he prepared the first IND submitted to the FDA for systemic use of
an antisense compound in humans and was the first to conduct a
clinical trial using a systemically administered antisense drug
candidate in patients. His work and expertise have also been
instrumental in the advancement of the Phosphorodiamidate
morpholino oligomer (PMO) based antisense backbone chemistry,
especially with regards to AVI's PMOplus™ backbone. He has
published extensively on a host of medical and scientific subjects
with more than 200 papers appearing in peer-reviewed literature,
and he has delivered more than 100 presentations to the academic
community. Dr. Iversen is an inventor on over 71 patents. Prior to
joining AVI in 1997 as Senior Vice President of Research and
Development, he was a Professor of Pharmacology at the University
of Nebraska Medical Center from 1987 through 1997. Dr. Iversen has
served on five different NIH study sections over the past 20 years
and as a consultant and advisor to a variety of companies and
institutions including Glaxo Inc., Innovir Pharmaceuticals, Lynx
Therapeutics and Isis Pharmaceuticals. He completed his
undergraduate studies at Westminster College in 1976 and was
honored as a distinguished alum in 2010. Dr. Iversen earned his
Ph.D. in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Utah
in 1984 with emphasis in biochemical toxicology under the direction
of Michael Franklin. He subsequently completed postdoctoral
training at the Eppley Institute for Cancer in 1987 with the
support of a National Research Service Award from the National
Institutes of Health and under the direction of Drs. Edward
Bresnick and Ronald Hines.
"With the appointment of Pat to this important new position, we
seek to more aggressively leverage his leading scientific expertise
and further enable his efforts on continuing to expand and fully
apply our technology platforms to discover and develop innovative
RNA-based therapeutics for rare and infectious diseases," Boyle
said.
Ryszard Kole, Ph.D.
In addition to his position as Senior Vice President, Ryszard
Kole, Ph.D. has been appointed an AVI Distinguished Scientist. Dr.
Kole's appointment reflects and acknowledges his 30-year career of
scientific leadership and pioneering achievements in the field of
alternative splicing and RNA research. In his new role, Dr. Kole
will serve as a key scientific liaison with both commercial and
academic institutions around the world, and he will continue to
support the advancement of AVI drug research and development
programs. He will continue report to the company's Chief Executive
Officer.
Over the last 25 years, Dr. Kole has been a leading pioneer in
the use of oligonucleotides for the modulation of RNA splicing, an
inventor on key patent families in the field, and the author of
more than 100 publications in leading scientific journals. He has
given over 100 invited presentations to the scientific community.
Prior to AVI, he served as President and Chief Scientific Officer
of Ercole Biotech Inc. from its founding until it was acquired by
AVI in 2008. He was also a professor in the Department of
Pharmacology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(UNC). While a faculty member at UNC, his work led to a discovery
that splicing provides a novel target for gene-based therapies of
numerous disorders, including genetic diseases, metabolic disorders
and cancer. As a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr.
Sidney Altman at Yale University, Dr. Kole provided early evidence
that an RNA component is essential for the activity of a tRNA
processing enzyme, RNase P. Working with Dr. Sherman Weissman at
Yale University, he was first to demonstrate accurate splicing of
human beta-globin pre-mRNA. Dr. Kole received his Ph.D. in Natural
Sciences from the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the
Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland, where he now serves
on a Scientific Advisory Board.
"Ryszard's appointment as an AVI Distinguished Scientist
recognizes his stature as a leading scientist since the field of
RNA research and alternative splicing was established," Boyle said.
"In his new role, we are looking to Ryszard to continue to support
and promote AVI's scientific leadership and the advancement of its
RNA platforms and technologies. We additionally will look to
Ryszard to act as a key resource in maximizing our opportunities to
leverage those platforms and technologies."
About AVI BioPharma AVI BioPharma is
focused on the discovery and development of novel RNA-based
therapeutics for rare and infectious diseases, as well as other
select disease targets. Applying pioneering technologies developed
and optimized by AVI, the Company is able to target a broad range
of diseases and disorders through distinct RNA-based mechanisms of
action. Unlike other RNA-based approaches, AVI's technologies can
be used to directly target both messenger RNA (mRNA) and precursor
messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) to either down-regulate (inhibit) or
up-regulate (promote) the expression of targeted genes or proteins.
By leveraging a highly differentiated RNA antisense-based
technology platform, AVI has built a pipeline of potentially
transformative therapeutic agents, including one in the clinical
development stage for the treatment of Duchenne muscular
dystrophy.
Editor's Note: Photographs available on
request
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