Leadership

Amy leads research and development at Life Edit Therapeutics. She has more than 20 years of scientific leadership and expertise with an extensive background in genetic medicine, neuroscience, drug development, and scientific strategy.

Prior to joining Life Edit, Amy held various leadership roles at Sangamo Therapeutics. She most recently served as Vice President, Head of Research where she helped establish multiple global licensing and R&D collaborations. She also built the neuroscience team and established an internal neurology pipeline, in addition to supporting multiple programs partnered with pharma companies.

Amy received her Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her B.S. in Neuroscience from Brown University.

Ron leads technology development in gene editing at Life Edit Therapeutics. He has more than 25 years of experience in the biotech industry, focusing on developing and applying innovative protein platforms for enzyme and protein therapeutic applications.

Prior to joining Life Edit, Ron led engineering efforts as a Director of Platform Development at a CRISPR startup, Arbor Biotechnologies. Prior to this, Ron spent 20 years at New England Biolabs (NEB) leading a research group engineering enzymes and developing protein platforms that enable high throughput cell-free protein synthesis and assay.

Ron received his Ph.D. in Pharmacognosy (Medicinal Chemistry) from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and B.S. in Biochemistry and Plant Physiology from Peking University in Beijing, China.

Joel leads the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics group at Life Edit Therapeutics. He has more than 20 years of experience in design, operations, and analysis of large scale genetic and genomic experiments.

Prior to joining Life Edit, Joel led the Lineberger Bioinformatics Shared Resource at University of North Carolina and was an Associate Professor in the Department of Genetics, where he remains an Adjunct Associate Professor. Joel’s Ph.D. efforts under Chuck Perou and continuing work with Nanostring resulted in Prosigna, the first FDA-approved IVDMIA with indications in breast cancer. He also co-developed RNA-sequencing programs at Expression Analysis (now Q2 Solutions) for The Cancer Genome Atlas. He subsequently co-founded Select Immunogenomics, which was acquired by GeneCentric in 2019. His broad scientific collaborations encompass >250 peer-reviewed manuscripts with an h-index > 100.

Joel received his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology from the University of North Carolina and holds an M.S. in Biomedical Informatics from Vanderbilt University. He also received his B.S. in Biology and Computer Science from the University of Tennessee.

April provides operational support for manufacturing of gene editing drug products for clinical and commercial application of Life Edit Therapeutics and its partners’ portfolio of therapeutics, facilitating the seamless transfer of technology through process and analytical development, material for toxicology studies and GMP manufacture. She has more than 10 years of pharmaceutical industry experience, preceded by many years in academic research.

Prior to joining Life Edit, April held leadership roles in the influenza vaccine industry at Seqirus (CSL) and MedImmune (AstraZeneca), including positions in research, CMC development, manufacturing sciences and technology and quality, covering all phases of R&D and commercialization using product platforms ranging from embryonated chicken eggs to cell culture bioreactors to mRNA.

April completed post-docs at the Centers for Disease Control (CD) on highly pathogenic influenza viruses and MedImmune on gene editing in cell culture to enhance virus production. She received her Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics and Microbiology from Duke University, where her graduate work focused on poxvirus modulation of the immune response. She also holds a B.S. in Biology from Duke University.

As Senior Director, Lead Development at Life Edit Therapeutics, Michael specializes in using protein engineering and bioconjugation to create novel therapeutics and utilizes his interdisciplinary background to evaluate and optimize them.

He previously held several positions at early-stage life sciences companies, including Applied Molecular Transport and Amunix, and focused on advancing delivery technologies for protein-based therapeutics.

Michael received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, where he developed new methods to study cell signaling at membrane-membrane interfaces. Michael also holds a B.A. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Boston University.