VectorY Appoints Khurem Farooq to Board of Directors

CEO and Co-Founder of Aiolos Bio and previous CEO of Gyroscope, Khurem Farooq joins as independent board member

AMSTERDAM--(BUSINESS WIRE)--VectorY Therapeutics, a biotech company developing innovative vectorized antibody therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, today announced the appointment of industry veteran Khurem Farooq as independent board member, effective immediately.

Khurem Farooq is an accomplished industry leader who brings more than 20 years of operational and drug development experience. He currently serves as the CEO at Aiolos Bio which recently announced an agreement to be acquired by GSK. Previously Khurem served as the CEO of Gyroscope, which was acquired by Novartis in 2021. Prior to Gyroscope, Khurem was Senior Vice President of the Immunology and Ophthalmology business unit at Genentech, part of the Roche Group, where he led the commercialization and launch planning of a number of medicines and contributed to the development of several pipeline products. Khurem holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration as well as an Honours degree in Biological Sciences.

The appointment follows VectorY’s $138m series A announced in November 2023, co-led by EQT Life Sciences and the Forbion Growth Opportunities Fund II, to support clinical development of the company’s lead program in ALS, and preclinical development of pipeline programs based on VectorY’s broad technology platform.

Sander van Deventer, CEO of VectorY, commented: “We are delighted to welcome Khurem to VectorY as an independent board member. He brings a wealth of leadership experience across operations, strategy and drug development in the pharma and biotech industry, which will be invaluable as we move in the next stage of growth of our company and advance our lead program VTx-002 for the treatment of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) towards clinical development .”

Khurem Farooq, Independent board member at VectorY, said: “I am excited to join this talented team at such a pivotal time. I am very impressed with VectorY’s unique capabilities to combine gene and antibody therapy drug development as well as its pipeline progress. The company’s innovative approach has the potential to overcome limitations of current therapies and translate into disease-modifying treatments across multiple neurodegenerative diseases, including ALS.”

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Photograph available upon request

Notes to Editors

About VectorY
VectorY is on a mission to provide patients with neurodegenerative diseases a longer, better life by creating transformative vectorized antibody treatments. Our platform combines the promise of precise therapeutic antibodies with one-time AAV-based delivery to the CNS. Unique in-house expertise in antibodies, AAV vectors, protein degradation, manufacturing and neuroscience drives the rapid development of much needed disease-modifying therapies for neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and Huntington’s disease. For more information, see www.vectorytx.com.

About VTx-002
VTx-002 is being developed to delay disease progression and preserve the quality of life of ALS patients. VTx-002, currently in preclinical development, is a vectorized antibody that selectively clears misfolded and aggregated TDP-43 from the cytoplasm of neuronal cells. Thereby, it restores the essential function of TDP-43 in the nucleus leading to preservation of neuronal cell function and health. ALS is a devastating condition that in the Western world has an estimated lifetime risk of 1:250 in males and 1:400 in females. It is characterized by the progressive degeneration of motor neurons, which leads to an average life expectancy after diagnosis of only two to five years. Presently there is no cure available to stop or reverse ALS and currently available treatments only slow disease progression by months.