Alchemab appoints Co-Founder Jane Osbourn as Chief Executive Officer

CAMBRIDGE, England, Sept. 12, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Alchemab Therapeutics (Alchemab), a pharmaceutical company aiming to identify and develop naturally occurring therapeutic antibodies from resilient individuals, today announces that Jane Osbourn, OBE, FMEDSCI, PhD, Alchemab’s Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), has succeeded Young Kwon, PhD as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and member of the Board.

As Co-Founder and CSO, Jane has led all aspects of Alchemab's platform development and drug discovery activities to date and brings to the CEO role more than 30 years of biopharmaceutical industry experience. Prior to co-founding Alchemab in 2019, Jane served as Vice President of R&D at MedImmune, the biologics arm of AstraZeneca, where she contributed to the development of antibody phage display technology and the discovery and development of several marketed antibody therapies including HUMIRA® (adalimumab) and IMFINZI® (durvalumab).

Jane, was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) and Scrip's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 for services to drug discovery, development and biotechnology. She is a Venture Partner at SV Health Investors, has served as a Director of Babraham Bioscience Technologies, Cambridge Enterprise, the Crick Translational Advisory Group, and was Chair of the Board of Directors of the UK BioIndustry Association.

Alchemab Chair and Managing Partner at SV Health Investors, Kate Bingham, commented: "As the founding investors, we have been huge supporters of the highly innovative approach at Alchemab since its inception. We have been thrilled with Jane's leadership to date as CSO and look forward to backing her as CEO. It has been fantastic to support Alchemab's journey from a start-up occupying our incubator space, to a high growth company. Jane's knowledge of Alchemab and the wider industry is unparalleled, and her significant organisational and scientific expertise will play a critical role in driving the Company through its next stage of growth. We thank Young for his contribution to the success of Alchemab to date, and wish him all the best for his next role."

Jane Osbourn, incoming CEO of Alchemab, commented: "I have had the great pleasure of helping to lead the Company since the beginning. We have a fantastic team who have been integral to Alchemab's growth from a concept through to a robust and novel antibody identifying engine. With several novel targets and therapeutic antibodies in preclinical development, I am delighted to lead Alchemab as CEO through this next phase towards achieving our ultimate goal of discovering and developing ground-breaking treatments for patients."

Young Kwon, outgoing CEO of Alchemab, commented: "The time is right to hand over the reins to Jane to lead the Company as CEO. Jane has been my partner in growing Alchemab and has played a central role in establishing the Company's robust, well-tuned antibody discovery platform. I am very pleased to hand over to Jane whose scientific and organisational expertise will ensure the successful progress of Alchemab as it enters its next phase of growth."

About Alchemab
Alchemab studies the unique antibody response of resilient individuals to develop drugs based on naturally derived antibodies to prevalent, hard-to-treat diseases which do not have disease modifying therapies. Alchemab's platform integrates data mining of patient-derived immune responses with the latest multi-disciplinary drug discovery approaches to understand what keeps people well. The goal is to unlock nature's engineering and harness the incredible human immune system to find breakthrough drugs.

Alchemab's highly experienced team has broad expertise and capabilities across discovery and development. Through collaborations with world class institutions, Alchemab taps into large ecosystems and millions of patient samples which it analyses using advanced computational approaches.

Alchemab was founded in 2019 with seed funding from SV Health Investors and has raised in excess of $80 million to date from a blue chip syndicate of specialist investors. The company is headquartered in London, UK with labs in Cambridge, UK and Boston, US.

For more information, visit www.alchemab.com/.