Client Corner: Meet Biotech Executive John Edwards

By: Joshua Fox

Our Client Corner: Perspectives from Founders, Financiers, and Friends podcast series hosted by Mintz Member Joshua Fox explores the dynamics of starting and running a business, investing in a business, and helping to support a business — through insights shared by entrepreneurs, investors, and members of the start-up community. We hope these conversations will provide valuable advice to you, the listener, as you’re working to successfully build your own business, as well as inspire others who are thinking about starting a new venture.

In this episode of Client Corner, Josh chats with John Edwards, an executive chair, board member, and senior adviser to start-up and clinical-stage biotechnology companies.

John will draw insights from his experience in key industry roles:

• Recently, CEO of Abcuro and Verseau Therapeutics, Inc.

• Executive Chair at Tilos Therapeutics, where, in less than two years, he helped advance the company from its formation to its acquisition by Merck

• Executive Chair of F-star, at which he helped grow the company from the discovery stage to a leading developer of clinical-stage bispecific antibodies which included bringing in more than $200 million in revenue from business development deals

• Pivotal roles in building Siamab and Exonics, which both had successful M&A exits in 2019

• Chief Operating Officer at Adnexus, a tenure that included taking the company from the start-up period through a $450 million acquisition by Bristol Myers Squibb, serving as President of Adnexus, and working within BMS’s R&D organization during the early days of immuno-oncology

• Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Medical Affairs at Transkaryotic Therapies

• 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

• One of the first employees at Genzyme