Serimmune Appoints Counsyl and Verinata Veteran, Noah Nasser, CEO as it Pursues Commercial Partnerships Around SERA Platform

GOLETA, Calif., Aug. 6, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Serimmune today announced key appointments to strengthen its executive team. Noah Nasser has been appointed chief executive officer and Bill Welch, venture partner at Illumina Ventures, has been appointed to the company's board of directors. Both bring to Serimmune extensive diagnostic and therapeutic commercial expertise as it moves toward realizing the commercial potential of its platform. Patrick Daugherty, Ph.D., Serimmune's founder, will continue in his roles as chief scientific officer (CSO) and board member.

"It is an exciting time to join Serimmune at this critical point in the company's history as we push to commercialize this important breakthrough technology," said Noah Nasser, CEO of Serimmune. "I believe that Serimmune's SERA platform has the potential to revolutionize healthcare and could impact the diagnosis and treatment of a broad spectrum of human disease. The opportunities in infectious disease, oncology and autoimmune disease are remarkable. It is a privilege to work with such an accomplished scientific team to make the promise of their technology a commercial reality."

Serimmune's SERA technology platform reveals the diverse antigens that stimulate immunity to create a growing database that can be interrogated to uncover disease information. The platform has multiple applications spanning the healthcare landscape, including development of hypothesis-free multiplex diagnostics, as well as therapeutics and vaccines. The company is actively pursuing commercial partnerships around the SERA platform and has a number of ongoing collaborations with government, academic and commercial organizations.

"With the breadth and resolution of the SERA platform across disease areas, I see an abundance of short and long-term opportunities for Serimmune to build tremendous value," added Mr. Welch. "As a member of the company's board, I look forward to contributing strategic insights to support the company in efforts to maximize the market potential of its technology."

Patrick Daugherty, Ph.D., Serimmune's CSO added, "Noah and Bill bring strong leadership and commercial expertise in the genomics space that will drive Serimmune's success as we seek partnerships in diagnostics and drug discovery. As the company's founder, it is a pleasure to see the technology mature to this point and to work with such exceptional leaders as we advance Serimmune as a commercial organization."

About Noah Nasser

Noah Nasser is Serimmune's chief executive officer. With more than twenty-five years of experience in biotechnology, Noah brings a broad background in the development and commercialization of novel technology to advance human health. Noah joins Serimmune from San Diego biotechnology company, Human Longevity, Inc., a direct-to-consumer health screening organization combining proprietary imaging and genetic technologies, where he was chief commercial officer. Prior to Human Longevity, Noah was chief commercial officer at Counsyl, a market leading genetic testing laboratory focused on women's health applications, including non-invasive prenatal testing, expanded carrier screening and hereditary cancer screening. Noah led Counsyl's commercial team through its acquisition in 2018 by Myriad Genetics, Inc. He previously held senior leadership positions at San Diego-based biotechnology company AltheaDx, and San Carlos-based Verinata Health, a leader in non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), where he led his team through the company's acquisition by Illumina in 2013. Noah is an Executive in Residence at the University of Utah, Center for Technology and Commercialization and holds a B.S. in Molecular Biology from University of California, San Diego.

About Bill Welch

Bill Welch is a venture partner at Illumina Ventures and serves as board member at Serimmune. Prior to joining Illumina Ventures, Bill was CEO at Trovagene Inc., a precision oncology therapeutics and genetics company capitalizing on circulating tumor DNA in urine. Prior to Trovagene, Bill was president and chief executive officer at Sequenom Inc. a leading molecular diagnostics company specializing in clinical applications of whole genomic sequencing for the reproductive health & oncology markets. While at Sequenom, Bill led the development and commercialization of first non-invasive prenatal test (NIPT) for detecting and accurately measuring fetal genomic DNA in mother's blood and helped establish NIPT as the new global clinical standard for prenatal testing and a multibillion-dollar diagnostic market. Prior to Sequenom, Bill was chief commercial officer at Monogram Biosciences, a molecular immunology and oncology technology company. Bill entered the healthcare industry with Abbott Laboratories where he held progressive management positions in licensing, technology and therapeutics. Bill has an MBA from Harvard University and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from University of California at Berkeley.

About Patrick Daugherty, Ph.D.

Patrick Daugherty, Ph.D., is chief scientific officer of Serimmune. He founded Serimmune in 2014 with a vision to use the power of next-generation sequencing and machine learning to draw critical new insights into the relationship between antigens and disease. Before founding Serimmune, Dr. Daugherty was professor of chemical engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara from 2001 until 2016. While at UCSB, Dr. Daugherty co-founded CytomX Therapeutics, where he served as CSO and Board Member from 2007-2010. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.S. in chemical engineering from The University of Minnesota. In 2011, Dr. Daugherty was elected to the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) — an honor reserved for the top 2 percent of bioengineers. He is the recipient of a National Sciences Foundation Career Award, Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, and the Genentech Young Investigator Award from the ACS Division of Biochemical Technology.

About Serimmune

Serimmune is an immune intelligence company that provides a holistic view of immunity to identify environmental factors in disease and health. The company's Serum Epitope Repertoire Analysis (SERA) technology platform applies bacterial display peptide libraries, next generation sequencing, machine learning and custom bioinformatics to reveal the many diverse antigens stimulating immunity. Serimmune's human immunity map is a growing database that can be interrogated to uncover disease information for the development of multiplex diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics. The company was founded in 2014 and is backed by investors such as Illumina Ventures, LabCorp, and Merck. For more information visit www.serimmune.com.

SOURCE Serimmune

Related Links

http://www.serimmune.com