Vedere Bio II Appoints Accomplished Clinician and Researcher Anna-Maria Demetriades as Chief Medical Officer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 26, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Vedere Bio II, Inc., a company developing transformative, next-generation therapies for vision restoration and preservation, today announced the appointment of Anna-Maria Demetriades, M.D., Ph.D. as Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Demetriades is a board-certified ophthalmologist with over 20 years of experience in clinical ophthalmology and ocular gene therapy research as well as ophthalmic drug development from her time at Genentech.

"We are very excited to have Anna join our leadership team," said Cyrus Mozayeni, M.D., Chief Executive Officer and President, Vedere Bio II and Atlas Venture Entrepreneur in Residence. "Anna brings a broad range of expertise to Vedere, gained through her leadership on foundational studies in gene therapy and ocular diseases, along with industry experience in clinical development. Her expertise will be invaluable to Vedere as we advance our lead program toward the clinic." 

"I am thrilled to join the Vedere team as we work to advance and grow our pipeline of pioneering ocular therapies," said Dr. Demetriades. "Having spent my entire career in ophthalmology, there continues to be a need for innovative solutions for patients suffering from vision loss. Vedere's scientific approach has the potential to transform the way we treat eye diseases with the opportunity to not just slow down vision loss, but to restore sight." 

Prior to joining Vedere, Dr. Demetriades served as the lead clinician for VABYSMO™ (faricimab-svoa) in neovascular age-related macular degeneration at Genentech (a member of the Roche Group), where she played a key role in successfully driving the Phase III clinical program and global regulatory approval process, including the recent FDA (United States) and MHLW (Japan) approvals and regulatory submissions to the EMA (Europe) and Access Consortium. Prior to Genentech, Dr. Demetriades served as Chief of the Glaucoma Service at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York Presbyterian Hospital for five years and as an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology for ten years. During that time, she also led a research laboratory focused on AAV-mediated neuroprotective gene therapy for glaucoma.

Dr. Demetriades completed her ophthalmology residency at The Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins Hospital and her glaucoma clinical fellowship at The Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She completed a retina research fellowship at The Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins Hospital and received her Ph.D. in ocular gene therapy for the treatment of retinal and choroidal neovascularization from the University of Oxford, England. Dr. Demetriades also earned her M.D. and B.A. in Physiological Sciences from the University of Oxford.

About Vedere Bio II, Inc. 

Vedere Bio II is a privately held, emerging biopharmaceutical company leveraging proprietary optogenetics and photoswitch technologies along with novel AAV capsids to restore vision in all patients with vision loss due to photoreceptor cell death. Comprised of a diverse team of pioneering scientists and drug developers, Vedere Bio II is discovering and developing next generation ocular therapies to restore and preserve vision for those patients. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, MA and is funded by Atlas Ventures, Octagon Capital, Mission BioCapital, Samsara BioCapital, the RD Fund and Casdin Capital. For more information, please visit www.vederebio.com or follow Vedere Bio II on Twitter and LinkedIn.

SOURCE Vedere Bio II, Inc.