“The addition of these two established leaders to our Board will bring tremendous benefits to enGene as we continue to develop our novel technology,” said Dr. John C. Brown, co-founder and Chairman of the Board. “Their respective expertise, as well as extensive experience in helping companies achieve their potential, will bring immediate value to strategic planning at the Board level as we plan for enGene’s pending growth in the scientific, financial and commercial arenas.”
R. Hector MacKay-Dunn, QC, is a Senior Partner at the Vancouver-based law firm of Farris. Hector has over 25 years of experience advising both senior and emerging public and private companies in corporate and complex domestic and international mergers, acquisitions and international licensing and partnering transactions. He has served as director or corporate secretary for a number of public and private corporations and is Vice-Chair of the BC Innovation Council and a director of Genome British Columbia and B.C. Leading Edge Endowment Fund and a member of the Business in Vancouver Editorial Advisory Board and the Simon Fraser University Biotech Advisory Council.
L. Jack Wood has a distinguished career in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, most recently as President of CSL Bioplasma Limited, an Australian-based world leader in plasma products and vaccines. He has held senior executive positions with companies including Baxter Healthcare, Bayer Corporation, BioResponse and Exogene. Mr. Wood currently sits on the Board of Directors for QLT Inc., CSL (USA) Inc., and ZLB Behring (USA).
To accommodate these additions, co-founders Dr. Anthony Cheung and Dr. Tim Kieffer have agreed to resign from the Board of Directors. As substantial shareholders and employees of enGene, both will continue to contribute significantly to the development of the company and its technology.
About enGene
enGene Inc. is developing a proprietary genetic technology to induce specific cells in the upper small intestine to produce therapeutic proteins in a meal-dependent fashion, offering a unique therapeutic solution to treating metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Additionally, this technology is easily adaptable to treat other diseases, where stable delivery of therapeutic proteins is required, such as in the case of delivering clotting factors to treat hemophilia. Our initial product, Gut Endocrine-cell Modification System (GEMSTM) for diabetes (GEMSTM-insulin), is in the pre-clinical phase of development. GEMSTM for hemophilia (Factor IX) obesity and a proprietary gene therapy (MetabolytixTM) for cancer are in the discovery phase..