People on the Move
Visterra
MIT-based biotech Visterra has made changes to its management team and Board of Directors.
José Trevejo has been appointed VP of Development and Akshay Vaishnaw, of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, has been elected to the company’s Board.
Before Visterra, Trevejo served as Medical Director at Genentech, where he led the clinical and biomarker strategy for development of an influenza vaccine. Before that, he was the Medical Director and Clinical Disease Area Lead for Infectious Diseases at Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
Vaishnaw is currently Executive VP and Chief Medical Officer of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, which he joined in 2006. Under his leadership at Alnylam, the company is developing RNAi therapeutics, from which seven difference programmes have entered clinical trials.
Visterra uses a proprietary platform, powered by computational tools called Atomic Interaction Network (AIN) analysis, to identify disease targets and design therapeutics. The technique identifies an area, or epitope, to serve as a target for new drugs. The company’s lead candidate is a broad spectrum human monoclonal antibody for the prevention and treatment of both seasonal and pandemic influenza.
(Picture credit: Flickr/Nathan Forget)