– USA, MA – Voyager Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: VYGR), a gene therapy company today announced the appointment of Dr. Al Sandrock (M.D., Ph.D.) as CEO, succeeding Michael Higgins, who served as interim CEO since June 2021, and continues to serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors.
“I am excited to welcome Al Sandrock as CEO. Al is a global thought leader in neuroscience with an impressive track record bringing transformative new medicines to patients. His success pioneering the development of numerous innovative neurological treatments, and particularly, his skill in advancing promising candidates from early-stage research toward clinical proof of concept, is perfectly suited for Voyager. He is the ideal leader to amplify the impact of our proprietary TRACERTM AAV capsids that we believe can overcome many of the limitations of first-generation AAV gene therapy and create meaningful therapeutics for patients,” said Board Chairman, Michael Higgins.
About Dr. Alfred W. Sandrock, Jr.
Dr. Sandrock was appointed to the Voyager Board of Directors in February 2022, following 23 years at Biogen where he identified and developed novel therapies for a variety of serious diseases. He served an eight-year term as CMO at Biogen and was ultimately appointed head of research and development. Throughout his tenure, he led the discovery, development, and regulatory approval of numerous medicines including ADUHELM, AVONEX, PLEGRIDY, SPINRAZA, TECFIDERA, and TYSABRI. Dr. Sandrock also served on the Executive Committee and held several other senior executive positions at Biogen, including SVP of development sciences, SVP of neurology, and VP of clinical development, neurology.
“I’m honored to lead Voyager, a company with the promise to pioneer a new frontier in modern medicine and help make AAV gene therapy a new standard of patient care for many diseases. Years of dedicated research by the Voyager team has led to exciting progress in the field; the next generation of novel AAV capsids with enhanced tissue tropisms has the potential to widen the therapeutic window of gene therapy for a broad range of diseases. This important work has led to licensing agreements with Novartis and Pfizer and developments for Voyager’s internal pipeline. We intend to establish human proof of concept across a range of serious diseases, with an emphasis on neurological targets,” commented Dr. Al Sandrock.
Dr. Sandrock earned a B.A. in human biology from Stanford University, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Harvard University. He completed an internship in medicine, a residency and chief residency in neurology, and a clinical fellowship in Neuromuscular Disease and Clinical Neurophysiology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
About Voyager Therapeutics
Voyager Therapeutics is leading the next generation of AAV gene therapy to unlock the potential of the modality to treat devastating diseases. Proprietary capsids born from the Company’s TRACER discovery platform are powering a rich early-stage pipeline of new and second-generation programs and may elevate the field to overcome the narrow therapeutic window associated with conventional gene therapy vectors across neurologic disorders and other therapeutic areas.
For more information: https://www.voyagertherapeutics.com/
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