Philadelphia, US and London UK, July 28, 2020 – Ori Biotech Ltd (Ori) is pleased to announce the appointment of Thomas Heathman, PhD as their new Vice President of Commercial Operations for North America. Dr Heathman has over 10 years’ experience in the cell and gene therapy (CGT) industry and a deep understanding of cGMP manufacturing for CGT products. He will join Ori on September 7, 2020.
Prior to this, Dr Heathman served as the Business Leader for North America for Hitachi Chemical Advanced Therapeutics Solutions (HCATS), a leading Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization for the CGT industry. During his time with HCATS, he led the unprecedented growth of the North America business including the recent signing of a commercial manufacturing agreement with bluebird bio. In addition to managing the North America region, he also served as the Global Head of Technology within HCATS in charge of evaluating and deploying new technologies, and played an instrumental role in the signing of a Joint Development Agreement between Ori and HCATS which was announced in January 2020.
In accepting this appointment, Dr Heathman stated “Ori’s innovative technology provides the industry the opportunity to solve the scalability challenges that currently face CGT manufacturing. The flexible platform that Ori has developed, specifically for cell and gene therapy, has the potential to transform the manufacturing of this new class of personalized medicines. Ori’s mission to enable patient access to life saving treatments inspired me to join their world-class team and I am honored to lead a North America region focused on close collaboration with Ori’s partners and customers.”
Farlan Veraitch, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, said, “We are delighted to have Tom join us to lead commercial operations for North America. His deep experience in CGT manufacturing, combined with his demonstrated ability to lead and grow organizations, will ensure Ori is best placed to be the preferred technology partner for the CGT industry.” Jason C. Foster, Chief Executive Officer, added, “Tom’s deep understanding of the manufacturing needs of CGT product developers will help us build a world-class organization to support our partners in providing widespread access for patients to life saving cell and gene therapies.”
Ori Biotech is a London- and Philadelphia-based CGT manufacturing technology company. Ori has developed a proprietary, flexible manufacturing platform that closes, automates and standardizes manufacturing allowing therapeutics developers to further develop and bring their products from pre-clinical process development to commercial scale manufacturing. The mission of the Ori platform is to fully automate CGT manufacturing to increase throughput, improve quality and decrease costs in order to enable patient access to this new generation of lifesaving treatments. Founded by Dr Farlan Veraitch and Prof Chris Mason in 2015, the Company has brought together a seasoned Board and executive management team with over 80 years of pharmaceutical, cell therapy and venture building experience including CEO Jason C. Foster (Indivior), CBO Jason Jones (Miltenyi Biotec) and Tom Heathman (HCATS) alongside industry-leading expert advisors like Bruce Levine, Annalisa
Jenkins and Anthony Davies.
Ori Biotech
Jason C. Foster
CEO
jasonfoster@oribiotech.com
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