Invenra Appoints Anu Hoey Vice President, Corporate Development

MADISON, Wis., May 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Invenra has tapped veteran business development executive Anu Hoey to oversee its pipeline of immuno-oncology bispecific antibodies and strategic partnerships with antibody drug makers looking to win the race to market using Invenra's high-throughput screening technologies, which simultaneously assess antibody binding and biological function in cell-based assays, instead of performing these activities sequentially, as other screening systems do.

The company today announced that Ms. Hoey has been appointed vice president of corporate development to lead business strategy for a Treg-depleting bispecific and an effector T cell-recruiting bispecific, two Invenra drugs entering preclinical trials. Ms. Hoey also will develop strategy for several other bispecifics in the lead-generation stage.

In addition to strategy for Invenra's bispecific pipeline, Ms. Hoey will expand alliances with other antibody drug makers seeking to employ Invenra's B-Body™ bispecific antibody format and mAbSeq™ antibody lead-generation platform to gain an advantage over competitors.

These technologies quickly identify molecules with biological relevance and a strong chance of making it to the clinic, saving critical time by eliminating development of molecules that ultimately will prove useless, have poor drug characteristics or cannot be efficiently manufactured.

The B-Body™ format is easier to manufacture than standard bispecific formats, while mAbSeq™ can screen for function in a living cell – a critical advantage over other platforms that enables drug developers to hone in on matches for targets that are difficult to identify with standard screening technologies.

mAbSeq™ rapidly scans Invenra's diverse libraries and selects molecules with good drug characteristics as well as desired biological activity.

Building Better Molecules & Getting There Faster

"Using our B-Body™ technology, we rapidly screened large numbers of bispecific combinations and optimized our own functional, high-quality antibodies faster than other companies can," Roland Green, Invenra's CEO and cofounder, said. "We expect our in vivo data in the second half of 2017, and with Anu joining us, business development will progress quickly, too."

Ms. Hoey has over 18 years of experience running multiple internal and external corporate development programs. "It's great to join at a time when Invenra has redefined itself in the biotherapeutics space and is in a strong position to grow both on its own and in partnership with others," Ms. Hoey remarked.

Prior to joining Invenra, Ms. Hoey was vice president of business development for Arcus Biosciences, where she was a member of the senior management team leading a Series B financing round and was responsible for licensing in new immuno-oncology programs.

Prior to Arcus, Ms. Hoey was senior director of business development at Sutro Biopharma, where she helped to bring in over $150M in non-dilutive funding through partnerships with Celgene Corporation and EMD Serono and played a key role in raising $26M in Series D funding to launch Sutro's immuno-oncology program and to create SutroVax, a spinoff company for vaccine development.

Before joining Sutro, Ms. Hoey was a business development consultant to Igenica, Bioseek, OncoMed, QLT, AGY and Celera. She earned a B.S. degree in molecular genetics from the Ohio State University; an M.S. degree in molecular biology from Case Western Reserve University, where she worked on interferon signal transduction in Dr. George Stark's Cleveland Clinic Foundation laboratory; and an M.B.A. from the University of San Francisco.

About Invenra

Invenra, Inc., is an antibody discovery and development company focused on bispecific antibodies for immuno-oncology.  Invenra has developed its own pipeline of bispecifics and has several strategic alliances in which antibody drug developers use Invenra's high-throughput screening technologies to identify molecules with biological relevance and a strong chance of making it to the clinic.

The competitive nature and blockbuster potential of antibody therapeutics development for immuno-oncology makes speed to market critical. Yet often time is wasted on developing antibodies that turn out to be of no use, have poor drug characteristics or  cannot be efficiently manufactured.

Invenra's mAbSeq™ high-throughput screening technology and B-Body™ bispecific format enable drug developers to overcome these problems by simultaneously assessing antibody binding and function in cell-based assays. No other company can optimize antibodies as quickly and effectively as Invenra can.

Invenra is based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Media Contacts
David Schull
Russo Partners
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Amiad Finkelthal
Russo Partners
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[email protected]

SOURCE Invenra

Related Links

https://www.invenra.com