Antheia Appoints John Nicols to Chair its Board of Directors

Brings 30+ years of experience leading biotechnology and specialty chemical companies

MENLO PARK, Calif., April 6, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Antheia, the pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturer transforming supply chains, today announced the appointment of John Nicols to Chair its Board of Directors. Nicols joins co-founders Dr. Christina Smolke (CEO) and Dr. Kristy Hawkins (CSO), as well as Ram Shriram and Dr. Patrick Yang on the Antheia Board of Directors.

"Antheia's work to build more resilient processes for biomanufacturing essential medicines is mission-critical and will be transformative to the pharmaceutical industry," said Nicols. "Joining the Antheia Board as its Chair is an immense honor and I look forward to working alongside such an impressive team as the company transitions into commercial-scale operations and continues to future-proof pharmaceutical supply chains."

Nicols brings over three decades of experience in delivering sustained growth and value creation across diverse global businesses, from cutting-edge biotechnologies to traditional chemistry. He is the former president and CEO of Codexis, where he led the growth and transformation of Codexis into one of the leading synthetic biology companies. From 2013 to 2022, Nicols grew Codexis' product sales nine-fold to exceed $100 million, commercializing dozens of new products across pharmaceutical, food and nutrition, and life science tools verticals. Prior to Codexis, he held various executive roles spanning his 22 years at Albemarle Corp, where he grew their largest business unit to more than $1 billion in global sales. He received a M.B.A. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (now part of New York University).

"We're pleased to welcome John to the Antheia Board of Directors at this important stage of our company's growth," said Dr. Christina Smolke, co-founder and CEO of Antheia. "John is one of the most well-respected leaders in the industry, and his experience growing biotech companies from R&D to commercial scale operations will be invaluable as we work to bring our next-generation key starting materials (KSMs) and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) to market."

About Antheia
Antheia is pioneering a new approach to KSM (key starting materials) and API (active pharmaceutical ingredients) manufacturing to empower pharmaceutical companies to take control of their supply chains and ultimately, to prevent harmful drug shortages. Antheia's platform leverages synthetic biology to enable an agile, resilient, and scalable approach for biomanufacturing essential medicines across several critical therapeutic categories. Antheia's team of scientists and technologists is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. For more information, visit www.antheia.bio.

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Mission North for Antheia
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SOURCE Antheia