CEO and Co-Founder of Aiolos Bio and previous CEO of Gyroscope Khurem Farooq joins as independent board member
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, January 18, 2024 – VectorY Therapeutics, a biotech company developing innovative vectorized antibody therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, today announced the appointment of industry veteran Khurem Farooq as independent board member, effective immediately.
Khurem Farooq is an accomplished industry leader who brings more than 20 years of operational and drug development experience. He currently serves as the CEO at Aiolos Bio which recently announced an agreement to be acquired by GSK. Previously Khurem served as the CEO of Gyroscope, which was acquired by Novartis in 2021. Prior to Gyroscope, Khurem was Senior Vice President of the Immunology and Ophthalmology business unit at Genentech, part of the Roche Group, where he led the commercialization and launch planning of a number of medicines and contributed to the development of several pipeline products. Khurem holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration as well as an Honours degree in Biological Sciences.
The appointment follows VectorY’s $138m series A announced in November 2023, co-led by EQT Life Sciences and the Forbion Growth Opportunities Fund II, to support clinical development of the company’s lead program in ALS, and preclinical development of pipeline programs based on VectorY’s broad technology platform.
Sander van Deventer, CEO of VectorY, commented: “We are delighted to welcome Khurem to VectorY as an independent board member. He brings a wealth of leadership experience across operations, strategy and drug development in the pharma and biotech industry, which will be invaluable as we move in the next stage of growth of our company and advance our lead program VTx-002 for the treatment of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) towards clinical development.”
Khurem Farooq, Independent board member at VectorY, said: “I am excited to join this talented team at such a pivotal time. I am very impressed with VectorY’s unique capabilities to combine gene and antibody therapy drug development as well as its pipeline progress. The company’s innovative approach has the potential to overcome limitations of current therapies and translate into disease-modifying treatments across multiple neurodegenerative diseases, including ALS.”