BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Verseau Therapeutics, Inc. today announced the appointment of John Edwards as Chief Executive Officer. John brings over 30 years of biopharmaceutical leadership experience and has been involved in the discovery, development or global commercialization of 10 FDA-approved biologics and eight biotech companies with successful exits.

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John Edwards, Chief Executive Officer of Verseau Therapeutics (Photo: Business Wire)

“John has a proven track record of guiding biotech companies through pivotal growth points during all stages of development, including taking companies from discovery to clinical stage and through newly marketed therapies reaching patients,” said Verseau Board member Robert Langer, who co-founded Verseau in 2017 with Tatiana Novobrantseva, Igor Feldman, and Dan Anderson. “We welcome John to the Verseau team and look forward to benefitting from his experience as the company pursues its mission to develop an important new class of cancer immunotherapies based on macrophage repolarization.”

“Repolarizing macrophages not only leads to a direct attack on tumor cells, but also sets in motion a coordinated immune response to attract and turn on other important cancer-fighting immune cells in the tumor microenvironment,” said John. “This breakthrough approach could expand the potential of immunotherapy across more tumor indications and benefit a greater number of patients compared to current T-cell-targeting therapies. I am honored to join Verseau and to help guide the company’s trajectory as it rapidly progresses toward clinical trials later this year.”

John previously served as Executive Chair at Tilos Therapeutics, where in less than two years he helped advance the company from its formation to its acquisition by Merck. John has also served as Executive Chair of F-star, where he helped grow the company from discovery-stage to a leading developer of clinical-stage bispecific antibodies, which included bringing over $200M in revenue from business development deals. John has also played a key role in building Siamab and Exonics, both having successful M&A exits in 2019. During his tenure as Chief Operating Officer at Adnexus, he took the company from start-up through a $450M acquisition by Bristol Myers Squibb. Following the acquisition, he served as President of Adnexus and worked within BMS during the early days of immuno-oncology. John also previously held the role of Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Medical Affairs at Transkaryotic Therapies and served a 15-year tenure with Genetics Institute/Wyeth, where he was responsible for leading the company’s first product from research to FDA and EMA approvals. John started his career as one of the first employees at Genzyme. In addition to his role at Verseau, John is Executive Chair at Abcuro. John received his MBA from Boston University and his B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

About Verseau

Verseau is focused on developing the next major wave of cancer immunotherapies directed at a broad and potent reprogramming of the tumor microenvironment to attack tumors. This is accomplished by stimulating macrophages to shift their phenotype from immunosuppressive to a pro-inflammatory, anti-tumor state in a process called macrophage repolarization. Verseau developed a unique target discovery engine that leveraged patient data and computational biology to discover and validate over 20 novel macrophage targets. Verseau’s first-in-class monoclonal antibody candidates, VTX-0811 targeting PSGL-1 and VTX-1218 targeting VSIG4, are in late preclinical development and progressing toward clinical trials. https://www.verseautx.com/

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