Absci Strengthens Executive Leadership Team with Strategic Hires to Support Business Growth
Jul 07, 2021
Biotechnology industry veterans Dr. Sarah Korman and Nikhil Goel to lead legal and business development teams
Vancouver, Wash., July 7, 2021 — Absci, the synthetic biology company unlocking the potential of proteins as next-generation therapeutics, today announced two strategic hires joining its executive team: Nikhil Goel as Chief Business Officer and Dr. Sarah Korman as General Counsel. These appointments come at a time of significant growth for Absci, as it scales its technology development programs and partnerships and integrates its recent acquisitions of Totient and Denovium.
“As we continue to innovate and expand our work with partners to create new next-generation proteins, Nikhil and Sarah are well-positioned to help us strategically grow our business,” said Sean McClain, founder and CEO of Absci. “Their extraordinary individual expertise, and combined experience building teams, executing transactions, and securing value around biotechnology innovations, will allow us to apply our technology platform more broadly, and enable the development of exciting new drug candidates.”
Dr. Korman joins Absci as General Counsel and will be responsible for leading the legal team that oversees business transactions, intellectual property strategy and patent estate expansion, compliance, corporate governance, and risk management. She has more than 15 years of strategic legal and intellectual property experience. Previously, she served as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at NEUVOGEN, and before that at Amgen, where she was Head of Intellectual Property for Final Drug Products. Under her supervision, Amgen meaningfully expanded its patent estate to encompass multiple new combination products. She also held senior legal positions at Onyx Pharmaceuticals, where she managed intellectual property, transactional, and commercial matters and participated in the Amgen acquisition. Dr. Korman holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University and a J.D. from DePaul University College of Law. She is a National Science Foundation Fellow and an inventor on various patents directed to nano-enabled therapeutics and drug delivery.
As Chief Business Officer, Mr. Goel will be responsible for overseeing the company’s business development and alliance management team focused on driving partnerships within the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. He brings nearly a decade of experience working with biotechnology companies as an investment banker, most recently as a Director in Credit Suisse’s Mergers and Acquisitions business, where he was responsible for sourcing and executing transactions. Prior to joining Credit Suisse, Mr. Goel spent more than three years at Barclays and Wells Fargo in their healthcare investment banking practices. While working as an investment banker, he successfully executed more than $150 billion in announced mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Goel holds an MBA from the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, and a Masters in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology. Together, Dr. Korman and Mr. Goel will help Absci continue to scale its business and pursue its goal of making the best medicines available to patients in need.
These new additions to the executive team come as Absci continues to build critical momentum.
About Absci
Absci is the AI-powered synthetic biology company unlocking the potential of proteins as the next generation of therapeutics. We built our Integrated Drug Creation™ Platform to accelerate discovery of novel biotherapeutic drug candidates and generation of the cell lines to manufacture them in a single efficient process. Biotech and pharma innovators partner with us to develop new protein-based drugs, including those that may be impossible to make with other technologies. Our goal is to enable the creation of better medicines by Translating Ideas into DrugsTM. For more information, please visit absci.com.
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