London, UK, November 15, 2023 – Ori Biotech Ltd. (Ori), a leader in cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing technology, today announces new additions to the executive team to support the commercial launch of its platform and the status of enrolment into their oversubscribed Lightspeed Early Access Program (LEAP).
Ori has appointed Gillian Bonthron as Chief Financial Officer and John Machulski as Chief Operating Officer. Gillian joins Ori with a wealth of expertise in transactional finance, financial strategy and leadership within health technology, most recently at Healx and Perspectum. She has worked globally in senior finance and consulting roles. John, joins from Catalent, bringing extensive operational experience to Ori from past leadership roles at Lonza, GE Life Sciences (now Cytiva), Sanofi, Pfizer and J&J. John’s roles have covered operations, engineering and commercial, and included the building and startup of multiple cell and gene therapy manufacturing facilities in the US, Europe, and Asia. In addition to these new senior additions, Thomas Heathman, Ph.D has been promoted to Chief Commercial Officer and will lead the upcoming commercial launch of Ori’s cell therapy manufacturing platform.
Ori has also added additional expertise to its already world-class Advisory Board to support as the company enters the commercial phase. The following industry experts have recently been added to the Strategic Advisory Board:
- Jim Faulkner PhD, CTO at Ascidian Therapeutics and former SVP, Product Delivery at Autolus
- Matthew Hewitt PhD, Vice President, Technical Officer CGT & Biologics at Charles River
- Maik Jornitz, Former CEO G-Con, Board Member Sunflower Therapeutics, DIANT Pharma
- Bruce Thompson PhD, CEO at Kincell Bio
Ori’s full-stack manufacturing system fully automates, digitizes and standardizes CGT manufacturing, enabling therapy developers to seamlessly transition from pre-clinical process discovery to commercial scale. The platform’s hardware, software and analytical tools promise increased throughput and reproducibility, while reducing costs – ultimately helping manufacture life-saving therapies at scale, in order to enable widespread patient access.
Bruce Thompson PhD stated, “As the CGT industry continues to mature, we need technologies that are flexible enough for use in R&D and process development as well as scalable enough to enable commercial manufacturing. The Ori platform has incredible potential to shorten development times, lower COGS, increase throughput and improve consistency. We are pleased to join the Ori Biotech Strategic Advisory Board and excited to advise the company as they make this revolutionary technology commercially available.”
Taking a LEAP toward commercialization
Since 2022, Ori’s LEAP program has been giving leading industry partners, like Inceptor Bio, CTMC (a joint venture between Resilience and MD Anderson), adthera bio and an undisclosed big pharma partner, access to Ori’s proprietary CGT manufacturing platform prior to commercial launch in 2024. These LEAP partners have been doing feasibility testing of Ori’s digitally native manufacturing platform to accelerate their progress toward the scalable production of novel cell therapies.
Ori’s CCO Thomas Heathman remarked: “We are looking forward to seeing our first product reach the market so we can begin enabling our partners to deliver cell therapies to more patients in need. Our team, our advisors and our partners have the deep expertise necessary to ensure our platform delivers on both the research and GMP requirements for flexible and scalable manufacturing that our industry requires. Our collective ambition is to ensure that this new generation of therapies are not just approvable, but also affordable and accessible.”
Jason C Foster, CEO of Ori Biotech added: “If we can’t produce cell and gene therapies affordably, and at scale, their potential may never be realized. Over the last 3 years, we have generated best-in-class biological data from over 500 runs, with 9 different partners, using 10 different protocols to demonstrate the potential of the Ori platform. We are honored to be joined by experienced industry veterans and key opinion leaders on our mission to enable widespread patient access to life-saving cell and gene therapies.”
View the Ori platform scientific results presented at the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine’s Meeting on the Mesa.
About Ori Biotech
Ori is a London and New Jersey-based manufacturing technology company pioneering flexible process discovery with seamless translation and scalable commercialization of cell and gene therapies. Ori has developed a proprietary, full-stack manufacturing platform that closes, automates and standardizes CGT manufacturing, allowing therapeutics developers to develop and bring their products to market at commercial scale. The promise of the innovative Ori platform is to fully automate CGT manufacturing to increase throughput, improve quality and decrease costs by combining proprietary hardware, software, data and analytics. For more information, visit oribiotech.com