Mekonos Appoints Benjamin Borgo as Chief Operating Officer

ALAMEDA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mekonos, Inc., a biotech platform company building the future of cell therapies on a chip, today announced the appointment of Benjamin Borgo, MBA, PhD, as chief operating officer. In this newly created role, he will be responsible for developing and implementing operational strategies to support the growth and success of the business. Dr. Borgo reports to Anil Narasimha, PhD, co-founder, chief executive officer of Mekonos.

“We are delighted to welcome Ben to the Mekonos leadership team during this important phase of the company’s growth,” Dr. Narasimha said. “His forward-looking leadership style and operational experience – which includes building highly effective teams and brokering successful industry partnerships and alliances – will be invaluable as we continue to advance our integrated cell-engineering platform.”

Dr. Borgo brings to Mekonos more than 10 years’ experience in various biotech submarkets, driving product development and managing business portfolios. Most recently, as vice president of mammalian biology and head of product at Inscripta, Dr. Borgo developed and implemented the strategy for deploying their technology in the mammalian cell engineering market, evaluated early-stage M&A opportunities, and deployed a scalable business model to assure the company’s success.

“I am excited to join Mekonos as I strongly believe in its mission to ensure that more patients can benefit from cell and gene therapies,” Dr. Borgo said. “The single greatest challenge in the scalable deployment of these life-saving medicines remains the manufacturing and delivery hurdles. Mekonos’ game-changing solution is the most clearly differentiated and most universally deployable technology that I have seen to date. It will change the playing field substantially and be the core technology that accelerates cell and gene therapy development, versatility and adoption.”

Prior to Inscripta, Inc., Dr. Borgo has evaluated investment opportunities and managed strategic alliances within cell and gene engineering markets in roles at multinational biotechnology leaders including Merck KGaA/MilliporeSigma and Agilent Technologies. ​​Dr Borgo also oversaw the commercialization efforts of the flagship instrument developed at Berkeley Lights Inc., and was a co-founder of Nanopore Diagnostics, where he helped drive successful early instrument development and pre-series A funding.

Dr. Borgo earned his doctorate in biology and biomedical science and an MBA from Washington University. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from San Francisco State University.

About Mekonos, Inc.

Mekonos is an enabling technology company transforming synthetic biology and personalized medicine. The company's ex-vivo delivery platform merges innovations in semiconductor, microfluidics, and chemistry for controlled and individualized molecular delivery in cells at scale. The company is headquartered in Alameda, CA, is backed by leading investors in both healthcare and technology and was named a 2018 Fierce 15 Startup.

For more information, please visit https://mekonos.com/.