Leadership Archives - Vesigen Therapeutics

Paulash Mohsen

Paulash Mohsen is a seasoned biopharmaceutical executive who has served in a variety of roles across multiple disciplines. Prior to his appointment at Vesigen, he served as Chief Business Officer at Yumanity Therapeutics, and helped the company grow from a seed stage, research-based startup to a public company, with a lead clinical program in Parkinson’s disease. He was responsible for securing a strategic research collaboration and license agreement with Merck & Co. for two pipeline programs in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal lobar dementia. Before Yumanity, Paulash served as Country Manager in Canada for Cubist Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Merck), where he led the company’s first international operation from conceptualization through commercialization.

In this role, he oversaw the approval and launch of two novel anti-infective therapeutics and led the company’s commercial, scientific and administrative functions. Paulash joined Cubist via acquisition of Optimer Pharmaceuticals, where he was Vice President, Strategy and Business Operations and helped establish the U.S. commercial infrastructure and led launch preparedness for DIFICID, an anti-infective. Preceding Optimer, Paulash held strategic and operational roles at Pfizer, including Vice President of Strategy and Vice President, Multi-Channel Management. Paulash holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Brown University, an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Joseph Nabhan, Ph.D.

Joseph Nabhan is Chief Scientific Officer at Vesigen Therapeutics. Prior to joining Vesigen, Joe held scientific and leadership positions in several pharmaceutical companies. Most recently, he headed an RNA biology group at Astellas Innovation Management in Cambridge, where he initiated numerous early drug discovery programs and external collaborations using multiple modalities. Previously, Joe held roles of increasing responsibility in the Rare Disease Research Unit of Pfizer, where he led several programs from early discovery through lead development and a number of external collaborations with biotech and academic labs. At Millennium Takeda, he was involved in target validation activities for cancer therapy.

While a postdoctoral fellow in Quan Lu’s lab at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Joe led the study that discovered a new class of microvesicles called ARMMs (ARRDC1 mediated microvesicles). He received his Ph.D. from McGill University.

Lorien Moore

Lorien Moore is Vice President, Corporate Development and Business Operations at Vesigen Therapeutics. Lorien has experienced all stages of pharmaceutical development, from pre-clinical through to commercialization, including international expansion.

Prior to joining Vesigen, Lorien was VP, Program Management and New Product Planning at Yumanity Therapeutics, where she was instrumental in the asset sale to Janssen and reverse merger with Kineta. She was also interim head of Business Development, Clinical Operations and CMC. Lorien has previously worked in corporate development, program management, new product planning, strategy, and in various commercial roles at Constellation, Flexion, Seres, Merck and Cubist. A number of her roles have involved company and asset acquisitions, integrations, and collaborations.

Prior to her experience in the pharmaceutical industry, Lorien spent 10 years working in consumer products companies (Ford, Gillette and P&G), with roles in finance, marketing, and sales. Lorien holds a B.A. from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Qin Yu, Ph.D.

Qin Yu is Vice President of Research at Vesigen Therapeutics. She brings over 18 years of drug discovery and development experience to Vesigen, including her extensive experience with gene therapy vectors and extracellular vesicle-based vectors.

Most recently Qin served as the Vice President of Discovery at Carmine Therapeutics, leading the development of a novel extracellular vesicle-based gene therapy platform and the discovery pipeline. Prior to that Qin was the Senior Director of Viral Therapeutics at Ascidian Therapeutics and the Director of Platform Technology at Rubius therapeutics, focusing on developing viral vector-based cell and gene therapy and advancing programs to successful IND submissions.

Qin’s industry career started on leading antiviral drug discovery projects and teams at Phenomix Corporation and later at Novartis and AstraZeneca. She received her Ph.D. from University of Alabama at Birmingham and her postdoctoral training at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, studying lentivirus replication mechanisms.

Gary Hao, Ph.D.

Gary Hao has 17 years of experience in CMC development from discovery through commercialization. Prior to joining Vesigen, he served as Vice President of Analytical and Formulation Development at Codiak BioSciences, where he oversaw the CMC activities of three clinical-stage extracellular vesicle programs. Before Codiak, Gary worked at companies including Merck KGaA and TG therapeutics, where he co-invented BAVENCIO and filed BLA for BRIUMVI, respectively. Gary obtained his B.S. degree in biochemistry from Nankai University and Ph.D. degree in pharmacology from Cornell University.

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