Valo Therapeutics Appoints Hemanshu Shah as Chief Business Officer

HELSINKI, June 16, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Valo Therapeutics Oy (ValoTx), the developer of novel, adaptable immunotherapy platforms for cancer and infectious diseases, today announced the appointment of Dr Hemanshu Shah as Chief Business Officer (CBO), based in the US.

ValoTx's CEO, Paul Higham, said, "I am delighted to welcome Dr Hemanshu Shah as our CBO. Hemanshu brings a wealth of business development experience from an impressive career spanning corporate development, strategy, and marketing roles at Transgene, Astellas, Johnson & Johnson, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. He'll be making the most of the substantial business development opportunities represented by our unique cancer and infectious disease immunotherapy platforms. We see significant potential in working with oncolytic virus companies and Neo antigen-companies looking for an effective immune-stimulatory delivery to the tumour micro-environment."

ValoTx's CBO Hemanshu Shah, said, "I'm excited to join Valo's excellent team, and am looking forward to using my extensive oncology corporate development experience, including with oncolytic viruses, to help drive forward our innovative solutions to vaccines, immuno-oncology, and personalised cancer treatments."

Dr Hemanshu Shah has a deep heritage in business development and corporate development transactions, coupled with US and global marketing experience. He has launched new medicines across multiple therapeutic areas including oncology. Most recently, Hemanshu was VP Corporate Development at French biotech Transgene SA, which specialises in therapeutic vaccines and oncolytic viruses against solid tumors. Prior to Transgene SA, he was VP of Global Marketing and Global Therapeutic Head for Transplantation, Immunology & Infectious Diseases at Astellas Pharma. He has also served as CBO or COO at companies including MENTRIK Biotech, AROG Pharmaceuticals, Innate Pharma, & GPC Biotech. A major career foundation is oncology, with 15 years of senior business and marketing positions at Johnson and Johnson, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. He has a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Rutgers University, an MBA from the University at Buffalo, and a B. Pharm. from the University of Mumbai.

About ValoTx

Valo Therapeutics Oy (Helsinki) is an immunotherapy company that is developing antigen-coated oncolytic viruses and vaccine vectors as innovative immunotherapy approaches against cancer and infectious disease. The ValoTx lead platform, PeptiCRAd (Peptide-coated Conditionally Replicating Adenovirus), was developed out of the laboratory of Professor Vincenzo Cerullo at the University of Helsinki. It turns oncolytic adenoviruses into targeted tissue specific cancer vaccines without the need to generate and manufacture multiple genetically modified viruses. The company is also developing PeptiENV and PeptiVAX, among other neoantigen strategies, in collaboration with Professor Cerullo. PeptiENV is expected to improve the therapeutic response to oncolytic enveloped viruses in the treatment of multiple forms of cancer, while PeptiVAX is a program to develop a novel, adaptable anti-infectives vaccination platform. The lead PeptiVAX project is a T-cell pan-Coronavirus vaccine. The company's PeptiCHIP technology enables the rapid and accurate identification of tumor antigens. A film explaining the PeptiCRAd technology can be found here.