CAMBRIDGE, England, January 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Crescendo Biologics Limited (Crescendo) today announces the appointment of Mike Romanos as Chief Executive Officer. Dr Romanos has been Chief Scientific Officer of the company sinceMay 2009 and has led the formation of the company and the development of its proprietary antibody fragment technologies.
During this time, the company has made significant progress in the establishment of its team and its technology platforms. This has included the establishment of a colony of engineered mice completely devoid of endogenous antibody polypeptides, announced in September. The proprietary ‘triple knockout’ mice are believed to be unique and have the immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH), kappa light chain and lambda light chain loci all functionally silenced by large-scale genomic deletion.
Dr Romanos has more than 23 years’ biotech and pharma industry experience and within the last 10 years has held senior global positions leading major parts of GlaxoSmithKline Discovery.
Clive Dix, Chairman of Crescendo said: “Today’s announcement reflects the growing maturity of Crescendo and the progress the company has made under Mike’s leadership. We have seen significant advances in the technology platform and I am sure that with Mike now taking on the CEO position Crescendo will deliver real value from its world class, proprietary technology platforms and grow to become a leader in next-generation antibody therapeutics.”
About Crescendo Biologics Ltd
Crescendo Biologics will apply highly innovative antibody fragment technologies to the development of new targeted therapeutics. The Crescendo transgenic mouse platform under development has the potential to rapidly and predictably generate high-affinity human heavy chain antibodies that readily yield VH fragments that have no requirement for humanisation. This is combined with a powerful in vitro ribosome display technology which offers significant advantages over existing approaches in antibody optimisation. VH fragments provide great flexibility as a starting point for the development of new targeted therapeutics combining the specificity and binding affinity of antibodies with certain desirable characteristics of small molecules.
Crescendo’s technologies were invented by scientists at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge (UK). The Company has raisedGBP4.5 million in seed funding from leading life sciences investors, Sofinnova Partners with Aitua, Avlar BioVentures and the Rainbow Seed Fund also participating. http://www.crescendobiologics.com
