Juvena Therapeutics, Inc. (“Juvena”), a biotechnology company scaling a computational platform to map the therapeutic potential of secreted proteins, announced today the hiring of four senior leaders with significant industry experience in both small and large pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The company plans to continue growing its team to power the expansion of Juvena’s drug discovery platform and advance the company’s biologics pipeline targeting chronic and age-related diseases.

“We are thrilled to announce the addition of Neil, Gayathri, Mo and Eddie to the team. Their expertise and experience will be invaluable as we continue our mission to unlock the therapeutic potential of secreted proteins and engineer them into life-saving therapeutics,” said Hanadie Yousef, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder of Juvena. “With this talented management team on board along with the outstanding experienced scientists and engineers who have joined our growing team, we will continue to scale our platform and pipeline to develop innovative treatments to rejuvenate lives for patients in need.”

The hires follow the company’s oversubscribed Series A in 2022, bringing its total funding to $60 million. The senior management team contributes extensive industry knowledge and leadership in biologics drug discovery and development, data science, and business development.

• Neil Berkley, MBA, Chief Corporate Development Officer, brings over 20 years of business and corporate development experience in private and public pharmaceutical and biotech companies, including AbCellera, Halozyme, GSK and Cadence, among others.
• Gayathri Swaminath, PhD, MBA, Senior Vice President of Discovery, brings over 17 years of preclinical and translational research and drug development experience. Her leadership and extensive drug development experience at Amgen, Merck, and Greenfire Bio aligns with the company’s drug discovery interests across multiple therapeutic areas, including cardio-metabolic, pulmonary, inflammatory ophthalmology, renal and fibrotic diseases.
• Mo Tabrizi, PhD, Vice President of Preclinical and Nonclinical Development, brings over 25 years of experience in integrative pharmacology, translational research, and biologics drug development, and builds on preclinical leadership roles at Merck, Medimmune (acquired by AstraZeneca), Abgenix (acquired by Amgen), and multiple startup biotech companies.
• Eddie Moler, PhD, Vice President of Data Science, brings over 20 years of experience in bioinformatics, predictive modeling, biomarker and diagnostics discovery, machine learning, Omics, cell-based assay technology and automation. He has held leadership and senior roles at Novartis, GE Healthcare, Quest Diagnostics, Tethys Bioscience and the US Department of Energy.