BLACKSBURG, Va., Sept. 5, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Intrexon Corporation (NYSE: XON), a leader in synthetic biology, today announced the appointment of Keith Canada, Ph.D., as Vice President, UltraVector® Division, effective September 15. He will report to Chief Operating Officer Krish Krishnan. Dr. Canada's recruitment coincides with the recent introduction of the BeyondBio™ portal, which further expands the accessibility of Intrexon's UltraVector® platform to its diverse commercial collaborators.
Dr. Canada brings to Intrexon significant experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, including 11 years at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he most recently led a global engineering group responsible for high-throughput gene recovery, bioinformatic analysis, optimization, and formatting of novel biotherapeutics. He led projects in the cardiovascular and immunological disease areas, gaining extensive knowledge of multiple biological formats including monoclonal antibodies, fusion proteins, nanobodies, and bi-specific antibodies. Dr. Canada has a diverse research background yielding proficiency in microbiology, enzymology, molecular biology and protein biochemistry. Prior to joining Boehringer Ingelheim, he was Project Manager and Scientist in the Process Development Group at Protein Sciences Corporation.
Intrexon's Founder and CSO, Thomas Reed, Ph.D., stated, "Over the past 16 years, UltraVector® has continuously evolved, maintaining a technology lead that we believe is unsurpassed today in the field of synthetic biology. Now in its fifth-generation, UltraVector® is designed for the rapid generation of complex transgene variants encoding greater than 20 gene programs in excess of 200 kilobases of DNA, yet the immensity of power enabled by the platform remains largely untapped." Dr. Reed continued, "We have invested significantly to develop the informatics systems that will enable our collaborators to catalog the biofunctional requirements associated with their Target Product Profile. Dr. Canada's knowledge of end-to-end biotechnology discovery and development requirements, along with his management of high throughput operations, positions him well to lead the next stage in the UltraVector® platform's evolution."
With remote access to its archive of millions of genetic parts and combinations thereof, Intrexon's BeyondBio™ platform facilitates development of customizable biologically-based products with its collaboration partners. The platform combines the principles of precision engineering, statistical modeling, automation, and lean production to generate vector variants required for exploring the solution spaces associated with complex biological problems. Additionally Intrexon's partners can choose from multiple organisms, from microbe to mammal, allowing selection of the most efficient host system for the desired application.
Dr. Canada stated, "The industry-leading UltraVector® platform enables the rapid design and industrialized assembly of complex transgenes, and captures the design intent and the performance of those components in an ever-expanding database of information. Access to this proprietary catalog, along with the ability to integrate UltraVector® across Intrexon's suite of bioinformatics, cellular, and molecular engineering technologies via BeyondBio™ provides a powerful ability to develop well-controlled cell systems for specific applications across broad industries. Working with the team at Intrexon, I look forward to further advancing these offerings and achieving their full potential to enable collaborators to optimize DNA-based solutions."
About Intrexon Corporation
Intrexon Corporation (NYSE: XON) is a leader in synthetic biology focused on collaborating with companies in Health, Consumer, Food, Energy, and Environment Sectors to create biologically-based products that improve the quality of life and the health of the planet. Through the company's proprietary UltraVector® platform and suite of technologies, Intrexon provides its partners with industrial-scale design and development of complex biological systems. The UltraVector® platform delivers unprecedented control over the quality, function, and performance of living cells. We call our synthetic biology approach and integrated technologies Better DNA®, and we invite you to discover more at www.DNA.com.
Trademarks
Intrexon, BeyondBio, UltraVector, and Better DNA are trademarks of Intrexon and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Safe Harbor Statement
Some of the statements made in this press release are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based upon our current expectations and projections about future events and generally relate to our plans, objectives and expectations for the development of our business. Although management believes that the plans and objectives reflected in or suggested by these forward-looking statements are reasonable, all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and actual future results may be materially different from the plans, objectives and expectations expressed in this press release.
Intrexon Contacts:
Corporate Contact:
Marie Rossi, Ph.D.
Senior Manager, Technical Communications
Tel: +1 (301) 556-9850
publicrelations@intrexon.com
Investor Contact:
Christopher Basta
Vice President, Investor Relations
Tel: +1 (561) 410-7052
Investors@intrexon.com
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SOURCE Intrexon Corporation
