Vor Biopharma Promotes Tirtha Chakraborty to Chief Scientific Officer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vor Biopharma, an oncology company pioneering engineered hematopoietic stem cells (eHSCs) combined with targeted therapies for the treatment of cancer, today announced the promotion of Tirtha Chakraborty, PhD, to Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Chakraborty brings significant expertise in hematology and genetic engineering to the company’s top science position.

“This year has been one of significant progress for Vor, as we have formed strategic collaborations intended to strengthen our genome editing capabilities, added veteran biotech leaders to our board of directors and expanded our executive team,” said Robert Ang, MBBS, MBA, Vor’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “The appointment of Tirtha as our first CSO is another important milestone for our company. Having led efforts to expand our technology platform and advance our science towards the clinic, Tirtha earned this promotion and is poised to continue to make transformative contributions as our CSO.”

Dr. Chakraborty joined Vor in October 2019 from Sana Biotechnology, where he served as the Vice President of Cell Therapy Research. Prior to Sana, Dr. Chakraborty was the Executive Director and Head of Hematology at CRISPR Therapeutics, where his team’s work on hemoglobin disorders paved the way for the first clinical trial for the CRISPR industry. Before CRISPR, Dr. Chakraborty led synthetic mRNA platform technology research at Moderna Therapeutics. He was trained as an RNA biologist and an immunologist during his postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Chakraborty received his PhD from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India.

“I believe that our work to engineer hematopoietic stem cell therapies may provide much needed benefits to patients with blood cancers, starting with acute myeloid leukemia and potentially addressing many other cancer types,” Dr. Chakraborty said. “I am honored to contribute to a promising cell therapy company that has the potential to develop transformative treatments for cancer patients in need.”

About Vor Biopharma

Vor Biopharma aims to transform the lives of cancer patients by pioneering engineered hematopoietic stem cell (eHSC) therapies and unlocking the potential of targeted therapies. By removing biologically redundant proteins from eHSCs, these cells and their progeny become treatment resistant to complementary targeted therapies, thereby enabling these therapies to selectively destroy cancerous cells while sparing healthy cells.

Vor’s platform could be used to potentially change the treatment paradigm of both hematopoietic stem cell transplants and targeted therapies, such as antibody drug conjugates, bispecific antibodies and CAR-T cell treatments, including Vor’s in-licensed CD33 CAR-T.

Vor is based in Cambridge, Mass. and has a broad intellectual property base, including in-licenses from Columbia University, where foundational work was conducted by inventor and Vor founder Siddhartha Mukherjee, MD, DPhil, and a recent license from the National Institutes of Health for intellectual property related to a CD33 CAR-T.

About VOR33

VOR33 consists of engineered hematopoietic stem cells (eHSCs) that lack the protein CD33 and is being developed to replace the standard of care in transplant settings. Once these cells are transplanted into a cancer patient, we believe that CD33 will become a far more cancer-specific target, potentially avoiding toxicity to the normal blood and bone marrow associated with CD33-targeted therapies. Vor aims to improve the therapeutic window and effectiveness of CD33-targeted therapies, such as Vor’s own CD33 CAR-T program, thereby potentially broadening the clinical benefit to patients suffering from acute myeloid leukemia.