LEADERSHIP
Management
Rick Wagner, Ph.D – Co-Founder and Executive ChairmanYan Chen, M.D., Ph.D. – Vice President, R&D
Tod Woolf, Ph.D. – Chief Business Officer
Board of Directors
Gordon Binder Co-Founder and Director
Brant Binder, MBA Co-Founder and Director
Rick Wagner, Ph.D Co-Founder, President & CEO
Rick Wagner, Ph.D – Co-Founder and Executive Chairman
Dr. Wagner is distinguished in having developed therapeutic platforms spanning the three major therapeutic approaches; nucleic acids, proteins and small molecules. Prior to founding X-BODY, he was Executive Vice President of Research at Praecis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he was an inventor of the DirectSelect small molecule screening technology that led to the creation of a ten billion compound screening library. Praecis was acquired by GlaxoSmithKline in 2007. Prior to joining Praecis, Dr. Wagner co-founded Phylos in 1997 and served as Senior Vice President of Research. At Phylos he was an inventor of a novel class of antibody mimetics which was ultimately acquired by Bristol Myers. Earlier, Dr. Wagner was a founding Director of Cell Biology and a member of the management team at Gilead Sciences, Inc. Dr. Wagner received his B.S. in Biochemistry from Trinity College and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Brown University.
Yan Chen, M.D., Ph.D. – Senior Vice President, R&D
Dr. Chen has over 15 years of experience in antibody discovery and therapeutic antibody development. Prior to joining X-BODY Biosciences, she was the Laboratory Head and Project Team Leader in Oncology Biological Therapeutics at Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research, where she led multiple cross functional teams for global therapeutic antibody programs from discovery through pre-clinical studies. Previously, she was the Head of the Antibody Program at Phylos/Adnexus and had established a novel human antibody discovery platform using mRNA display technology, leading to the platform and technology transfer to Abbott. In addition, she is the primary inventor of the first antibody mimetic therapeutic agent Adnectin CT-322 currently in phase II/III clinical trial.Dr. Chen received her Doctor of Medicine degree from Shandong University Medical School and her Ph.D in Immunology from the National University of Singapore.
Tod Woolf, Ph.D – Chief Business Officer
Dr. Woolf has twenty years of experience developing and commercializing innovative biomedical technologies, including fifteen years of biotechnology management experience. Dr. Woolf co-founded RXi Pharmaceuticals in 2006 and brought the company public as CEO in 2008. Previously, he founded and served as CEO of Sequitur, an RNAi company acquired by Invitrogen (Nasdaq: IVGN) in 2003. Prior to that, he helped to develop and partner the core therapeutic technology at RPI (now Sirna/Merck) and Ontogeny (now Curis). Dr. Woolf has served as a scientific and business advisor to a number of biotechnology companies including Praecis, Invitrogen, Advirna, Adarza and TriLink Biotechnologies. He holds a Masters and Ph.D. in Cellular and Development Biology from Harvard University and has authored 40 patent applications and scientific publications.
Gordon Binder, Co-Founder and Director
Mr. Gordon Binder is the former CEO and Chairman of Amgen and currently member of the boards of the American Enterprise Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology. He previously served as the Chairman of BIO and PhRMA.
Brant Binder, MBA, Co-Founder and Director
Brant Binder is Chief Financial Officer of SRU Biosystems. Previously, he served Vice-President responsible for both domestic and international private equity at Trust Company of the West, where he helped to raise $500 million in equity commitments. Mr. Binder previously held the position of Vice-President at Bankers Trust Company. Mr. Binder received an M.B.A. from the Sloan School at MIT and a B.S. from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.