Senda Biosciences Bolsters Executive Leadership Team

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Senda Biosciences, Inc., a company that is harnessing nature to program targeted, potent, and tunable medicines, today announced the appointments of Lori Rudolph-Owen, Ph.D., as Chief Operating Officer, and Barbara Bispham, J.D., as SVP, General Counsel.

"We're delighted to add Lori and Barbara to the Senda leadership team as we work to build a world-class organization," said Guillaume Pfefer, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Senda Biosciences and Partner at Flagship Pioneering. "Each of these seasoned executives brings the skills and experience necessary to help us refine our proprietary platform and advance our first pipeline candidates to the clinic. I look forward to working with them and the rest of the team to reach our ultimate goal of improving patients' lives by developing new classes of comprehensively programmable medicines."

Lori brings a wealth of experience overseeing product development activities in both large pharma and small biotech settings. In her role at Senda, she will ensure efficient operations in our R&D and platform functions and help develop our clinical trials and regulatory capabilities.

Lori most recently served as Chief Development Officer at Goldfinch Bio, a venture-backed biotech developing therapies for patients with kidney disease. Prior to Goldfinch, she held the role of Vice President, Portfolio Management and Assessment and was responsible for pipeline portfolio programs and milestones as well as cross-functional alignment for long-range strategic planning and annual budgeting. Her experience includes a range of roles of increasing responsibility at Pfizer, Inc., AMAG Pharmaceuticals, MGI Pharma, and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. She began her career in industry as a discovery scientist at Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Lori holds a B.S. in Biology from Carroll University and a Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where she was also a postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry.

"It's wonderful to be joining Senda at such a pivotal time for the organization," said Dr. Rudolph-Owen. "Senda's truly novel approach to programming medicines both within and to cells and tissues of interest has enormous potential to overcome some of our industry's greatest challenges. The company is now poised to identify its lead programs to bring to the clinic, so it's a privilege to help drive this important work forward."

Barbara joins Senda from BridgeBio Pharma, Inc., where she was most recently Vice President, Head of Legal. At Senda, Barbara will oversee all corporate legal and intellectual property operations and support potential future financings, licensing arrangements, and partnerships.

Barbara transitioned in-house from Goodwin Procter LLP, where she was a member of the firm's Tech & Life Sciences Group. While at Goodwin, Barbara led BridgeBio Pharma's $400.8 million initial public offering and completed a secondment to Moderna, Inc., as its interim Senior Corporate Counsel. Barbara has deep experience leading and advising life sciences companies on various legal matters relating to corporate governance, business development, licensing, financing, securities law, intellectual property, and regulatory matters. Prior to joining Goodwin, Barbara was a corporate associate at Cooley LLP where she was a member of the public companies and emerging companies practice groups. Barbara joined Cooley as part of a 13-person Capital Markets team from Reed Smith LLP, where she commenced her career. Barbara received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from Cornell Law School.

"Following its successful Series C financing, Senda is at an exciting inflection point as it focuses on expanding the programming capacity of its platform and advancing its initial pipeline candidates to the clinic," said Ms. Bispham. "I look forward to supporting the team in a range of legal capacities as it continues to pioneer the development of comprehensively programmable medicines in the pursuit of developing breakthrough therapies for patients in need."

Senda Biosciences, Inc. is committed to bringing life-changing treatments to patients by harnessing nature's code to program human cells—both from within and from outside—for targeted, potent, and tunable medicines. Senda's proprietary platform includes an mRNA engine and the first-ever atlas of nature-derived programmable systems at the molecular level and across all kingdoms of life—accessing the entire code provided by nature required to program cells. With this platform, Senda is developing a new class of SendRNA™ medicines for infectious, genetic, metabolic, and autoimmune diseases, as well as oncology and powering new frontiers for mRNA therapeutics and vaccines and gene-editing and protein-based therapies. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Senda was founded by Flagship Pioneering. For more information, visit sendabiosciences.com or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Contact:
Jessica Yingling, Ph.D., +1.858.344.8091, [email protected]

SOURCE Senda Biosciences