Ori Appoints Morrie Ruffin, Jian Irish and Deanna Petersen to Advisory Board and Makes Key Senior Scientific and Technical Hires
London, UK and Woodcliff Lakes, NJ — December 15, 2020 – Ori Biotech Ltd (Ori) continues to add to its world-class team and advisors in order to assist the company in achieving its mission of enabling patient access to life saving cell and gene therapies (CGT). Today, Ori announced that Morrie Ruffin (ARM/Adjuvant), Jian Irish (ex-Kite), and Deanna Petersen (AVROBIO) have agreed to become members of the company’s advisory board. Well known in the industry, these outstanding individuals have pioneered new developments in cell and gene therapy manufacturing for many years.
“With Morrie, Jian, and Deanna joining our existing, outstanding group of advisors, Ori is well positioned for the next stage of development leading up to commercial launch” stated Jason C. Foster, CEO of Ori.
The company has also made several important senior hires to add to their experienced technical and scientific teams. David Smith PhD will serve as the new vice president of technical operations for the company’s North American division. Previously, David led the manufacturing development function at Minaris Regenerative Medicine (formerly HCATS) as well as the innovation and engineering team that ensured HCATS maintained visibility to novel technologies and continue to support the advancement of CGT manufacturing. In addition, Shaun Mansfield has been appointed as Scientist alongside Amisha Patel as Quality Manager. Bringing significant expertize in quality, bioreactor development, and cell therapy manufacturing, these great additions to the team will offer important support for Ori’s customers and partners bringing their experience from established industry leaders like UCL, Minaris, and Lonza.
Farlan Veraitch, co-founder and chief scientific officer, added, “We are delighted to have these outstanding individuals join the Ori team to help advance our strategic, technical and scientific objectives. Their collective experience in cell and gene therapy, combined with their demonstrated ability to lead and grow technical organizations, will ensure Ori is well positioned to become the preferred technology partner to the CGT industry.”
Ori continues to experience significant growth since announcing a $30 million Series A round of funding as it prepares to bring its platform to market.
About Ori Biotech
Ori Biotech is a London, UK and Woodcliff Lake, NJ 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 100 years of pharmaceutical, cell therapy and venture building experience including Chairman Barry Clare (Boots), CEO Jason C. Foster (Indivior), CBO Jason Jones (Miltenyi Biotec) and VP Tom Heathman (HCATS) alongside industry-leading expert advisors like Bruce Levine, Annalisa Jenkins and Anthony Davies.