Vizgen Taps Akoya Biosciences Executive Terry Lo As New President and CEO

Biotech Startup Ramps Up Plans for Commercial Release of Novel Spatial Genomics Platform

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Sep 14, 2020, 06:00 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Vizgen, the company illuminating biology with the next generation of spatially resolved, single-cell genomics tools, today announced the appointment of Terry Lo as President and Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. A recognized pioneer in the burgeoning Spatial Biology market, Mr. Lo brings over two decades of expertise in developing successful commercialization strategies for world-leading life sciences companies. Peidong Wang, PhD, who served as Vizgen's Interim CEO, will remain onboard as VP of Engineering.

Terry Lo Named President & CEO of Vizgen, the company illuminating biology at the network level to advance human health.

"On behalf of our entire board of directors, we wholeheartedly welcome Terry to his new role as President and CEO of Vizgen," said Dr. David R. Walt, Cofounder of Vizgen; Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School; Professor of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital; Core Faculty, Wyss Institute for Bioinspired Engineering, Harvard University; HHMI Professor. "Terry's technical savvy combined with his demonstrated business acumen in building out product and service offerings on a global scale will benefit Vizgen as the Company enters the next phase of commercial development."

Prior to joining Vizgen, Terry was President of Akoya Biosciences, a post he assumed after an acquisition from PerkinElmer where he served as General Manager, Quantitative Pathology Solutions. Previously, he held several executive positions at global biopharma and diagnostic companies including Roche, Hologic, and Bristol-Myers Squibb, and has extensive experience in launching innovative technologies in new markets. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, an MS in Microbiology from Virginia Tech, and dual BS degrees in Molecular Genetics and Psychology from The Ohio State University.

"I'm excited to take the helm at Vizgen to work together with an incredibly talented team of scientists and innovators to bring an unsurpassed spatial profiling technology to market," said Mr. Lo. "Gene expression with spatial context has now become the new research frontier in unlocking core biological questions, and Vizgen's technology is regarded as a premier solution to gain insight into the molecular underpinnings of health, the progression to disease, and the development of new therapies and vaccines."

Vizgen's MERFISH technology was developed in the laboratory of Dr. Xiaowei Zhuang, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and David B. Arnold, Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University. Dr. Zhuang and Dr. Jeffrey Moffitt, a former postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Zhuang's lab and now an Assistant Professor at the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital and the Department of Microbiology at Harvard Medical School, are also cofounders of Vizgen. MERFISH enables spatially resolved, single-cell genomic profiling at extremely high levels of throughput and accuracy. The novel technology is used as a tool for several Human Cell Atlas projects and was named a "Technology to Watch" by Nature for mapping the transcriptome.

Vizgen launched in January 2020 with a $14M Series A Financing led by ARCH Venture Partners and Northpond Ventures. Last month the Company announced an early release program for its spatial genomics platform to provide scientific investigators an opportunity to gain access to the proprietary technology to accelerate their research. Vizgen's technology is already being employed by world-leading academic research institutions including the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and The Rockefeller University.

For more information email: [email protected]

About Vizgen
Vizgen is developing the next generation of spatially resolved genomic profiling tools that enable researchers to gain new insight into the biological systems that underlie human health and disease. The company's patented MERFISH technology enables massively multiplexed, genome-scale nucleic acid imaging with high accuracy and unrivaled detection efficiency at subcellular resolution. MERFISH provides transformative insight into a wide range of tissue-scale basic research and translational medicine in oncology, immunology, neuroscience, infectious disease, developmental biology, and regenerative medicine. For more information, go to www.vizgen.com, connect on social media

@Twitter, @LinkedIn and Facebook, and join the MERFISH Group at: https://bit.ly/merfishgroup.

SOURCE Vizgen