Verseau Therapeutics Appoints John Edwards as Chief Executive Officer
BEDFORD Mass. – May 26, 2021 – Verseau Therapeutics, Inc. today announced the appointment of
John Edwards as Chief Executive Officer. John brings over 30 years of biopharmaceutical leadership
experience and has been involved in the discovery, development or global commercialization of 10 FDA approved biologics and eight biotech companies with successful exits.
“John has a proven track record of guiding biotech companies through pivotal growth points during all
stages of development, including taking companies from discovery to clinical stage and through newly
marketed therapies reaching patients,” said Verseau Board member Robert Langer, who co-founded
Verseau in 2017 with Tatiana Novobrantseva, Igor Feldman, and Dan Anderson. “We welcome John to
the Verseau team and look forward to benefitting from his experience as the company pursues its mission
to develop an important new class of cancer immunotherapies based on macrophage repolarization.”
“Repolarizing macrophages not only leads to a direct attack on tumor cells, but also sets in motion a
coordinated immune response to attract and turn on other important cancer-fighting immune cells in the
tumor microenvironment,” said John. “This breakthrough approach could expand the potential of
immunotherapy across more tumor indications and benefit a greater number of patients compared to
current T-cell-targeting therapies. I am honored to join Verseau and to help guide the company’s
trajectory as it rapidly progresses toward clinical trials later this year.”
John previously served as Executive Chair at Tilos Therapeutics, where in less than two years he helped
advance the company from its formation to its acquisition by Merck. John has also served as Executive
Chair of F-star, where he helped grow the company from discovery-stage to a leading developer of
clinical-stage bispecific antibodies, which included bringing over $200M in revenue from business
development deals. John has also played a key role in building Siamab and Exonics, both having
successful M&A exits in 2019. During his tenure as Chief Operating Officer at Adnexus, he took the
company from start-up through a $450M acquisition by Bristol Myers Squibb. Following the acquisition,
he served as President of Adnexus and worked within BMS during the early days of immuno-oncology.
John also previously held the role of Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Medical Affairs at
Transkaryotic Therapies and served a 15-year tenure with Genetics Institute/Wyeth, where he was
responsible for leading the company’s first product from research to FDA and EMA approvals. John
started his career as one of the first employees at Genzyme. In addition to his role at Verseau, John is
Executive Chair at Abcuro. John received his MBA from Boston University and his B.S. in chemical
engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
About Verseau
Verseau is focused on developing the next major wave of cancer immunotherapies directed at a broad and
potent reprogramming of the tumor microenvironment to attack tumors. This is accomplished by
stimulating macrophages to shift their phenotype from immunosuppressive to a pro-inflammatory, antitumor state in a process called macrophage repolarization. Verseau developed a unique target discovery
engine that leveraged patient data and computational biology to discover and validate over 20 novel
macrophage targets. Verseau’s first-in-class monoclonal antibody candidates, VTX-0811 targeting PSGL1 and VTX-1218 targeting VSIG4, are in late preclinical development and progressing toward clinical
trials. https://www.verseautx.com/