John Edwards is the Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors. John has over 35 years of experience in discovery, development, and global commercialization of biopharmaceuticals.
Prior to joining PanTher Therapeutics, John was involved with 10 FDA approved biologics and 8 biotech companies with successful exits. Most recently John was CEO and Executive Chair at Abcuro where he built the leadership team, raised $100M in financing, and successfully advanced the lead program from a preclinical stage asset to program now in a registrational clinical trial. Previously John was CEO at Verseau Therapeutics and Executive Chair at Tilos Therapeutics, where in less than two years he helped advance Tilos from founding to acquisition in 2019 by Merck. During 2019, two other preclinical-stage companies John helped build also had successful exits for investors (Exonics and Siamab). In addition, as Executive Chair, John helped lead the growth of F-star from a discovery-stage company to a leading clinical stage developer of bispecific antibodies, raising over $200M in non-dilutive capital, as well as completing several asset-based M&A transactions. As COO, John played a lead role at Adnexus, where the company went from start-up to a $450M acquisition by BMS within 4 years. He then continued as President of the company for next 3 years, working within BMS during the early days of immuno-oncology. John was Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Medical Affairs at Transkaryotic Therapies and had a 15-year tenure with Genetics Institute/Wyeth, during which time he built what has become a >$1B global pharmaceutical business in hematology. He started his career in R&D as one of the first employees at Genzyme.
John received his MBA from Boston University and his BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.