Ginkgo Bioworks Appoints Dr. Behzad Mahdavi as Senior Vice President of Biopharma Manufacturing & Life Science Tools

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Sep 01, 2022, 07:00 ET

BOSTON, Sept. 1, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA), the leading horizontal platform for cell programming, today announced that Behzad Mahdavi, Ph.D., MBA, has joined as senior vice president of biopharma manufacturing and life sciences tools. In this new role, Dr. Mahdavi will lead Ginkgo's commercial efforts in the growing areas of bio-reagents, cell and gene therapies and new biopharmaceutical modalities. Dr. Mahdavi brings more than 20 years of experience in developing and leading innovative patient-centric growth strategies in challenging environments in the biopharmaceutical, cell and gene therapy, personalized medicine and life sciences sectors.

Prior to joining Ginkgo, Dr. Mahdavi most recently served as vice president of global open innovation at Catalent Pharma Solutions, where he created a distinctive portfolio of innovative services and expanded its customer base in new market segments. Prior to his work at Catalent, he held numerous leadership positions during his 13 years at Lonza and served as CEO of SAM Electron Technologies. Throughout his career, Dr. Mahdavi has built expertise in defining and developing optimal growth strategies and actionable business plans across biologics, cell therapy, and viral pharmaceutical modalities. In addition to his company leadership roles, he has also served in multiple Board of Directors and Advisory Board roles. Dr. Mahdavi holds a Doctorate in Chemistry from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, and also has a Master in Business Administration from the University of Quebec in Montreal.

Ginkgo has significant experience in the design of custom organisms and the discovery of novel enzymes that bring new biopharma products to life. Ginkgo's robust codebase and ability to search and screen candidates in high throughput allows it to support programs across all aspects of biopharma manufacturing and discovery. Ginkgo's projects in this space span its expertise with both microbial and mammalian cells, and include publicly announced collaborations with Antheia, Aldevron, Biogen, Microba, Moderna, Novo Nordisk, Optimvia, Persephone, SaponiQx, Selecta Biosciences, Synlogic, Tantu, Totient, and Roche, as well as additional programs at various stages in the pipeline. With its strong enzyme discovery, optimization and metabolic engineering capabilities, Ginkgo hopes to enable the creation of new products and to improve product development across all therapeutic modalities.

"Ginkgo is integrating capabilities at massive scale in genetic engineering, manufacturing process optimization and bioinformatics along with innovative technologies from third-party developers," said Dr. Mahdavi. "There are a tremendous number of opportunities in this space, and I joined Ginkgo because I believe this company is the partner of choice that the industry needs to realize those boundless opportunities. I am thrilled to work alongside Ginkgo's world-class team to help create a platform of choice for our partners, who strive to benefit patients around the world."

"Dr. Mahdavi brings outstanding experience in global business growth, expansion and commercial innovation, which will be instrumental as we aim to redefine the landscape of treating diseases," said Jennifer Wipf, senior vice president of commercial cell engineering at Ginkgo Bioworks. "We've proven how much our platform can help newcomers and incumbents in the growing biopharma space. As we continue to evolve our horizontal platform applications, having Dr. Mahdavi on our team will strengthen our ability to deliver innovative services to our customers and we can't wait to onboard more programs in the coming months and years."

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About Ginkgo Bioworks

Ginkgo is building a platform to enable customers to program cells as easily as we can program computers. The company's platform is enabling biotechnology applications across diverse markets, from food and agriculture to industrial chemicals to pharmaceuticals. Ginkgo has also actively supported a number of COVID-19 response efforts, including K-12 pooled testing, vaccine manufacturing optimization and therapeutics discovery. For more information, visit www.ginkgobioworks.com.

Forward-Looking Statements of Ginkgo Bioworks

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements regarding Ginkgo's growth and potential innovations. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words "believe," "can," "project," "potential," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "strategy," "future," "opportunity," "plan," "may," "should," "will," "would," "will be," "will continue," "will likely result," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are predictions, projections and other statements about future events that are based on current expectations and assumptions and, as a result, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual future events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this press release, including but not limited to: (i) the effect of Ginkgo's business combination with Soaring Eagle Acquisition Corp. ("Soaring Eagle") on Ginkgo's business relationships, performance, and business generally, (ii) risks that the business combination disrupts current plans of Ginkgo and potential difficulties in Ginkgo's employee retention, (iii) the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against Ginkgo related to its business combination with Soaring Eagle, (iv) volatility in the price of Ginkgo's securities now that it is a public company due to a variety of factors, including changes in the competitive and highly regulated industries in which Ginkgo operates and plans to operate, variations in performance across competitors, changes in laws and regulations affecting Ginkgo's business and changes in the combined capital structure, (v) the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations after the completion of the business combination, and identify and realize additional opportunities, (vi) the risk of downturns in demand for products using synthetic biology, (vii) the unpredictability of the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic and the demand for COVID-19 testing and the commercial viability of our COVID-19 testing business, (viii) changes to the biosecurity industry, including due to advancements in technology, emerging competition and evolution in industry demands, standards and regulations, and (ix) our ability to close and realize the expected benefits of pending merger and acquisition transactions. The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. You should carefully consider the foregoing factors and the other risks and uncertainties described in the "Risk Factors" section of Ginkgo's quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on August 15, 2022 and other documents filed by Ginkgo from time to time with the SEC. These filings identify and address other important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and Ginkgo assumes no obligation and does not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Ginkgo does not give any assurance that it will achieve its expectations.

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SOURCE Ginkgo Bioworks