Innorna appointed Dr. Zhu Zhiqing as the Chief Technology Officer

Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Nanjing, February 1^st, 2024 - Innorna officially announced the appointment of Dr. Zhiqing Zhu as the company's Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Dr. Zhu will oversee the company's CMC business.

Zhiqing (Zach) received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Notre Dame and has dedicated his career to biological development for nearly 20 years. Zach is a well-regarded leader in R&D, process development, technology transfer, manufacturing, and quality management. In this newly created position, Zach will oversee the CMC development of the company’s pipeline, lead continuous innovation on the mRNA and LNP technology platforms, and build a world-class CMC team for Innorna.

Dr. Lin-Xian Li, founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Innorna, said: “We are very excited to have Zach joining us.  As an innovative biotech company, we firmly believe that our core values reside in patient-centric and technology innovation. With his extensive global industry experience, Zach will drive our product development and technology platforms to a brand-new level."

Prior to joining Innorna, Zach worked at many globally renowned biopharmaceutical/ biotech companies, including Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), Biogen, Moderna, Iveric Bio, and Astellas. He has led the R&D, technology transfer, and manufacturing for many clinical and commercial products and has strong management experience.

“I am thrilled to join the Innorna family. In addition to its unique LNP delivery platform, Innorna has a diverse product pipeline targeting many disease areas. Remarkably, with the help of its strong R&D team, Innorna has obtained three FDA IND approvals in less than four years of its establishment. I look forward to working with this amazing team so we can deliver more innovative medicines to help millions of patients worldwide,” said Zach.

About Innorna

Founded in 2019, Innorna focuses on developing best-in-class LNP delivery technology and advancing innovative RNA therapies to address unmet medical needs globally. Innorna has built a diversity-oriented lipid library (DOLL) of over 5,000 ionizable lipids, which can be applied in various modalities or scenarios, including mRNA vaccines and therapeutics, cell therapies (CAR-T, CAR-NK, etc.), and genome editing therapies. Innorna’s comprehensive R&D capability fully supports the end-to-end process development of innovative therapies for internal development and external collaboration partners, from discovery to clinical development.  Innorna has developed an extensive global patent portfolio and filed over 40 patent applications regarding the innovation of LNP and mRNA technology.

Based on its proprietary mRNA and LNP technology platforms, Innorna has built extensive internal R&D pipelines in infectious diseases, vaccines, and rare diseases. In addition, the company has established partnerships with pharma and biotech companies, such as BeiGene, to jointly explore the potential of the mRNA/LNP technology in broader therapeutic areas to address unmet medical needs worldwide. Since its establishment four years ago, Innorna has been widely recognized by the investment community and industry. It has won many awards, including MIT Technology Review's Global 50 Smartest Companies and Fortune China's Most Socially Influential Startups.

At Innorna, we value INNOVATION, INTEGRITY, EFFICIENCY, and OPENNESS. Innorna is committed to exploring the frontier of mRNA application based on platform technologies and leading the revolutionary step toward expanding the clinical application of mRNA in various therapeutic approaches to fulfill the unmet medical needs of patients worldwide!

Please visit the Innorna website at www.innorna.com for more information.