Graeme Fielder

Chief Operating Officer

Graeme Fielder is Chief Operating Officer and was part of founding management team at AviadoBio. Graeme brings over 10 years of experience in the life science industry holding roles in strategy, business development, program and alliance management. He joins AviadoBio from Audentes Therapeutics Inc., (now Astellas Gene Therapies), a neuromuscular gene therapy company, where he oversaw the company’s corporate development activities including the acquisition to Astellas Pharma Inc., for $3 billion. Prior to Audentes, he held roles at BioMarin Pharmaceutical and Mesopharm Therapeutics.

Graeme holds a BSc. (Hons) degree in Biotechnology and a Ph.D. from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Graeme also has a M.B.A from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business, USA.

Alex Bloom is Chief Technology Officer at AviadoBio and heads up the technical operations and enabling functions (CMC, Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs). Alex brings over 15 years of operational excellence in biologics, with over 10 years spent dedicated to cell and gene therapy development. In this time, Alex has worked on over 25 clinical-stage gene therapy programs. Previously, Alex led quality and regulatory activities at Gyroscope Therapeutics, supporting the development of gene therapies and innovative delivery devices for retinal disease. Before Gyroscope, Alex held CMC technical leadership and regulatory roles of increasing responsibility at Kuur Therapeutics and Chiesi Farmaceutici, where he played a pivotal role in the development and approval of Holoclar®, the first tissue engineered product to be approved in Europe or the US. Earlier in his career, he spent time at Parexel, the Institute of Cancer Research and Meridian Life Sciences.

Alex holds a PhD and MSc from Sheffield University.

Professor Shaw had trained as a Neurologist in New Zealand before coming to Cambridge, UK on a Wellcome Trust Fellowship and moving to King’s College London in 1995. He is Director of the Maurice Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute, and Centre Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute at King’s. His research team have discovered more amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) genes than any other laboratory, enabling gene testing for patients and at-risk family members. They have generated a large number of stem cell and transgenic mouse models that recapitulate key features of the human disease and have revealed important mechanistic insights. Their focus for the future is to develop gene therapies for a wide range of neurodegenerative disorders using adeno-associated viral gene vectors. Award highlights include the “Forbes Norris Award” for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Care and Research (2009), “Sheila Essey Prize” for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Research (2012) and “Kea World Class New Zealander Award” (2019). He remains clinically active, running an ALS clinic at King’s College Hospital and leading clinical trials of antisense oligonucleotide therapies.

Professor Shaw had trained as a Neurologist in New Zealand before coming to Cambridge, UK on a Wellcome Trust Fellowship and moving to King’s College London in 1995. He is Director of the Maurice Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute, and Centre Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute at King’s. His research team have discovered more amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) genes than any other laboratory, enabling gene testing for patients and at-risk family members. They have generated a large number of stem cell and transgenic mouse models that recapitulate key features of the human disease and have revealed important mechanistic insights. Their focus for the future is to develop gene therapies for a wide range of neurodegenerative disorders using adeno-associated viral gene vectors. Award highlights include the “Forbes Norris Award” for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Care and Research (2009), “Sheila Essey Prize” for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Research (2012) and “Kea World Class New Zealander Award” (2019). He remains clinically active, running an ALS clinic at King’s College Hospital and leading clinical trials of antisense oligonucleotide therapies.

Dr. David Cooper is Chief Medical Officer of AviadoBio.

David is a neurosurgeon with broad clinical development experience and has been a senior pharmaceutical professional for 20 years with an excellent track record of driving successful cross-functional teams as the medical lead within the clinical development and medical affairs organizations.

Prior to joining, he was Vice President of Clinical Development at uniQure, where he led the clinical translation approach to bring pre-clinical assets to clinic and served as clinical program lead in executing on multiple Phase I – III clinical programs. This included the pioneering first human dose studies in US and EU for intraparenchymal gene therapy for early-stage Huntington’s Disease. He served as uniQure’s clinical lead on the hemophilia B gene therapy through the BLA/MAA submissions. Prior to uniQure, David spent the majority of his industry career at Novo Nordisk within the hemophilia and rare bleeding disorders space as a key contributor to strategic clinical development planning, trial execution and life cycle management. He supported four successful BLA submissions and product launches in the hemophilia therapeutic area at Novo Nordisk.

David  is a respected expert and valued collaborator in the area of clinical trials and observational research by key opinion leaders and professional organizations with 85 publications and 194 scientific posters and oral presentations.

Farah Speer is Senior Vice President, Communications and External Relations at AviadoBio.

Prior to this, Farah led communications for AveXis/Novartis Gene Therapies where she was responsible for establishing the company as a leader in gene therapy. While at Novartis, Farah led the launch of Zolgensma, a gene therapy approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for children with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), helping it to become the world’s most widely used gene therapy reaching over 2,000 patients and 43+ approvals globally.

Farah was also responsible for investor relations and internal communication to thousands of employees globally.

Farah’s experience prior to this was leading the North American healthcare practice at Golin, part of the Interpublic Group.  In that role, Farah led the development of communications programs for global pharmaceutical, biotech and consumer healthcare companies on critical initiatives including corporate reputation, brand communications, consumer engagement and internal communications.

Farah graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame with a Master’s in Business Administration and has a Bachelor of Science in mass communication from Boston University’s College of Communication.

John Isaac is Chief Scientific Officer at AviadoBio.

John brings more than 30 years of experience in academia, non-profit and industry. He’s an internationally recognized neuroscientist, originally with a focus on synaptic mechanisms in circuit function and how dysfunction causes psychiatric and neurological disease, and latterly on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration. Most recently at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, John served as Head of Neuroscience, External Innovation, EMEA where he oversaw neuroscience partnerships and assets in EMEA spanning Discovery through Phase 2 development, as well as related business development activities, including the spinout of AviadoBio. Prior to that, he held several roles in various organizations, including leading the neuroscience strategy and funding at the Wellcome Trust and at Eli Lilly & Co, UK where he led a team of labs dedicated to identifying new treatments for psychiatry and neurodegeneration, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

John received a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and pharmacology, and a PhD in neuroscience from University of Southampton, UK, and has held academic faculty positions in the UK and USA.

Do Young Lee is Co-Founder at AviadoBio. Do Young has over 15 years’ experience in the clinical translation of gene therapies. Her initial research interest at University College London was in the discovery and translation of gene therapy for the treatment of Haemophilia and lysosomal storage disorders. Earlier in her career, she specialised in vector design and AAV capsid development – two key components of potent and safe gene therapy vectors. In 2015, Do Young joined Freeline therapeutics where she successfully led the research vector core as well as early preclinical programme designs.

In 2018, Do Young moved to the Department of Basic and Clinical neuroscience (Wohl Institute – King’s College London), where she led the UK-DRI vector core facility. Together with Professor Chris Shaw and Dr Youn Bok Lee, she co-founded AviadoBio. 

Do Young holds a dual degree, a BSc in Biological engineering and Clinical pathology, MSc in Epidemiology from the Korea University and a PhD in Haematology from the Cancer institute in University College London.

Youn Bok Lee is Co-Founder at AviadoBio. Youn Bok has a career spanning over 25 years of research in molecular biology of neurodegenerative disease. In 2001, he Joined the molecular neuroscience research group at the University of Bristol, where he investigated the neuro specific regulatable system using virus technology. His study focused on the protective role of RNA binding proteins and microRNAs on neuronal cell death. In 2010, Youn Bok moved to King’s College London, where he continued pre-clinical research on the role of RNA binding protein TDP-43 and FUS in ALS and FTD. He discovered toxic gain of G4C2 RNA repeat expansion function and demonstrated the pathogenic mechanism of di-peptides in C9orf72 ALS/FTD. During this research career, he has conducted Lenti and AAV projects for pre-clinical research and translational science. In 2018, Youn Bok established his gene therapy group in King’s College London and conducted pre-clinical research for ALS/FTD. 

Youn Bok holds a BSc in Biology and MSc in Animal Physiology and Biochemistry from Dongguk University, South Korea and a MSc and PhD in Molecule Neuroscience from University of Bristol, UK.