CDXS - Codexis Announces Appointment of Masad Damha PhD and Jim Lalonde PhD to Strategic Advisory Board | Benzinga
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Feb. 20, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Codexis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CDXS), a leading enzyme engineering company, today announced the appointment of Masad Damha, PhD, and Jim Lalonde, PhD, to the Company's Strategic Advisory Board (SAB), joining John Maraganore, PhD, the founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. This board is now comprised of experts across oligonucleotide synthesis and manufacturing and was established to help guide the Company's strategic direction, providing critical insights to inform the continued development of Codexis' ECO Synthesis™ manufacturing platform.
"We are thrilled to have Masad and Jim lend their decades of experience in oligonucleotide research and development to our Strategic Advisory Board," said Stefan Lutz, PhD, Senior Vice President of Research at Codexis. "We now have Board representation across research, development, manufacturing, and commercialization, and with the forthcoming addition of our ECO Synthesis™ Innovation Lab at our headquarters, we're confident that we'll continue to see rapid progress toward our anticipated technical milestones and remain on track to initiate early access customer testing in the second half of this year."
Masad Damha, PhD, is the Distinguished James McGill Professor at McGill University. His research has been instrumental in the development of new therapeutic drugs based on RNA targeting and gene editing, and he has authored more than 200 publications. Dr. Damha is a co-founder of Anagenis, Inc., a start-up with proprietary antisense technologies (ANA and FANA). His FANA technology is being applied by multiple research laboratories and industries to assess and develop modified oligonucleotides against several biological targets, including cancer and infectious diseases. Dr. Damha has served as the President of both the International Society of Nucleosides, Nucleotides and Nucleic Acids and the Oligonucleotide Therapeutic Society, and currently serves on the Editorial Board of the journal Nucleic Acids Therapeutics. He received both his PhD and BSc in Organic Chemistry from McGill University.
"As someone who has witnessed exciting developments in our field, this opportunity to guide the development of an enzymatic route of synthesis was one I could not pass up. I am honored to be joining the innovative team at Codexis and help usher in a new wave of technology, potentially alleviating forthcoming challenges as the demand for RNA-based therapeutics increases through the back half of the decade," said Dr. Damha.
Jim Lalonde, PhD, is a biotechnology consultant for start-up companies in enzyme engineering and biotechnology. Presently, Dr. Lalonde serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors at Willow Biosciences and as a Scientific Advisory Board member at Bota Biosciences, bitBiome, Curie Co. and Invizyne. Most recently, Dr. Lalonde served as the head of ...