Lena Biosciences appoints Dr. Eckhard von Keutz to its Business Advisory Board and Science Advisory Board
ATLANTA (PRWEB) August 08, 2023 -- Lena Biosciences is delighted to have Dr. Eckhard von Keutz join its board. Dr. von Keutz is a pharmaceutical subject matter expert with decades of experience in drug discovery and development. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President and Head of Translational Sciences at Bayer Pharmaceuticals where he spearheaded global activities for pre-clinical and early clinical drug development including Translational Medicine, Toxicology, Safety Pharmacology, DMPK, and Animal Management. He was also a lead decision-maker for non-clinical safety matters. Prior to that, Dr. von Keutz was the Global Head of Early Development at Bayer Healthcare where he designed and executed toxicological testing strategies for 50+ projects which were successfully transferred from pre-clinical to clinical development. His prior positions also include the Head of Pharma-Toxicology Institute, and the Head of Research Toxicology all with Bayer AG.
“Drug-induced liver injury has been a major problem for patients, pharmaceutical industry and regulatory agencies. The advances Lena Biosciences has made to begin to solve this problem are really remarkable. I want to express my deep admiration for the scientific knowledge, rigor and diligence of the Lena Biosciences team in their efforts to pinpoint the cause. I am delighted to help the company position their products for drug-induced liver injury and provide strategic and operational support to execute the business plan,” said Dr. von Keutz.
“We are very excited to be able to work with Dr. Eckhard von Keutz who has led and inspired multi-disciplinary teams to establish and implement innovative strategies which met industrial and regulatory requirements. This comes at the right time. Lena Biosciences products serve the in vitro toxicology market which is showing early, but consistent signs of emerging technological revolution. Soaring investments in new therapeutic modalities which work only in humans coupled with growing needs for new alternative methods to reliably protect human health while reducing the use of animals to meet sustainable development goals are indicators of potential future demand for human-relevant in vitro products. Orienting the business and positioning the products to meet this need while being mindful about specific requirements of industrial and regulatory stakeholders is our high priority. This is why we are extremely pleased to work with a forward-thinking subject matter expert in this field, Dr. von Keutz,” said Jelena Vukasinovic, Chief Executive Officer at Lena Biosciences.
About Lena Biosciences, Inc.
Lena Biosciences is a life sciences company providing exploratory microphysiological system platforms for human risk assessment of drugs and chemicals. The company has two active SBIR awards from the National Institutes of Health, a $300 K Phase I award from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, and over $1.8 MM Phase II award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to apply its screening platform to address key public health challenges such as drug-induced liver injury and chemical neurotoxicity, respectively. Lena Biosciences microphysiological platform assembles human cells into three-dimensional (3D) organotypic-engineered biosystems which are perfused via synthetic hemoglobin, Blood Substitute, in a manner similar to tissue perfusion by blood inside the human body. Perfusion by synthetic hemoglobin maintains cellular respiration of 3D organ models at or near the physiological levels required for human-pertinent drug metabolism, oxidative reactions and drug activity, thus providing human-relevant results in vitro. Proprietary, mechanism-informative screening assay panels (in development) coupled with machine learning-enabled decision-making tree (in development) will provide actionable intelligence for the development of safer and more effective medicines. To learn more, visit lenabio.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Jelena Vukasinovic, Lena Biosciences, https://www.lenabio.com/, 1 404-206-2676, [email protected]
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