Company

Management

Kenzo Kosuda

Chief Executive Officer; Member of the Board of Directors

Mr. Kenzo Kosuda currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of REGiMMUNE since 2016 and as a member of Board of Directors since 2013. He previously served as the company’s Chief Financial Officer from 2013 to 2018. In this role, he was responsible for finance, investor relations, operations, strategy and corporate development. He has over twenty years of extensive experience in financial area throughout his experience at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, PwC as professional consultant, and his own accounting firm to help emerging companies. Prior to join REGiMMUNE, he served as Chief Financial Officer at Sparx Asset Management where he led the first IPO of an asset management company in Japan. He has a B.A. degree in Economics from the Keio University in Japan and is a Chartered Accountant.

Ping Zhong, Ph.D.

Chief Technology Officer

Dr. Ping Zhong currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer of REGiMMUNE. Dr. Ping Zhong has served as Chief Technology Officer of REGiMMUNE since 2019, leading all efforts on the antibody program. Dr Zhong has over 30-year experiences in startup biotech, med-size and global pharmaceuticals, and academic institution. He joined the industry in Silicon Valley after his postdoc training at Stanford, was involved in drug discovery at Neurex Corp. & Elan Pharmaceutical. He later co-founded Abmaxis, an antibody technology startup. After a corporate merger, he continued his leadership in antibody technology & discovery in Merck. He then joined Singapore Immunology Network of A*STAR (Agency of Science, Technology and Research, Singapore), and extended his research to immune checkpoint antibodies, bispecific molecules, and protein scaffolds. He was the winner of Singapore National Research Foundation’s grant on developing antibody-like molecules for next generation biologics, for which he was also supported by industry fund for developing these molecules to monitor immune checkpoint biomarkers in vivo. Dr. Zhong received his Ph.D. of Pharmacology in Georgetown University.

Reiko Namikawa

Scientific Advisors

Leonard Presta, Ph.D.

Dr. Leonard Presta, with more than 20 years of experience in the biotechnology industry, is one of the most internationally respected scientists in the fields of antibody and protein engineering. Most recently, Len served as a Distinguished Fellow at Merck & Co., Inc. where he was responsible for the protein engineering of all internal therapeutic antibodies. Len also held positions of increasing responsibility at Genentech, Inc., including Director of the Antibody Technology Group where he was directly responsible for or led the protein engineering of notable antibody therapeutics including Herceptin®, Perjeta® Raptiva®, Xolair®, Avastin®, and Lucentis®. Len is an inventor on more than 130 U.S. patents and has served on the editorial boards of notable journals including the Journal of Biological Chemistry, PROTEINS, and MABS. Len received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Texas A&M University in the computational modeling of protein-ligand interactions.

Omar Duramad, Ph.D.

Dr. Omar Duramad has over 15 years of industry experience in Immunology research and early drug development for both small molecule and antibody therapeutics. Most recently, he was the founder & CEO of Abmuno Therapeutics, a company focused on discovering and developing innovative monoclonal antibody-based therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases. Notably, he led the early development of a checkpoint therapeutic antibody to TIGIT, which was out-licensed to Arcus Biosciences for clinical development. Prior to Abmuno, he held a variety of positions with increasing responsibility at IGM Biosciences and Neothera Biosciences, leading immunology research & preclinical teams focused on oncology and autoimmune disease indications. As a researcher at Dynavax Technologies, he was part of the Drug Discovery group that identified novel Toll-like Receptor inhibitors for diseases such as lupus, psoriasis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Additionally, Dr. Duramad previously advised multiple clients including Loxo Oncology, Sirenas MD, Holoclara, and Bryologyx, each a biopharmaceutical company and iQ Biosciences, a contract research organization, regarding early development programs or therapeutic platform development. Dr. Duramad has received several awards such as the Schissler Foundation Fellowship in Cancer Research, American Legion Auxiliary Fellowship for Outstanding Scholarship, and the Vivian L. Smith Award for Outstanding Immunologist. He has been an invited speaker at prestigious conferences such as Keystone Symposia, American Society of Hematology, and American Transplant Congress. Dr. Duramad obtained his B.S. in Biochemistry & Cell Biology from University of California, San Diego and Ph.D. in Immunology & Cancer Biology from the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.