ElevateBio Appoints Kareem Reda as Chief Business Officer

Cambridge, Mass. – March 5, 2020 – ElevateBio, a Cambridge-based cell and gene therapy holding company, today announced that Kareem Reda has been appointed to the newly created position of Chief Business Officer. Mr. Reda has a strong track record of leading strategic acquisitions, business deals and financing efforts, and experience in company building from the ideation stage to operation. He will be responsible for business and corporate development as ElevateBio creates and operates a portfolio of cell and gene therapy companies to develop life-transforming medicines for patients.
‍
“Kareem is a proven leader with vision and experience in creating value through corporate development in the cell and gene therapy space. Throughout his career he has played a central role in building partnerships and executing a range of deals including transformative collaborations and acquisitions,” said David Hallal, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of ElevateBio. “His expertise and passion for moving ideas from concept to development and a commitment to measuring success based on serving patients will be invaluable to ElevateBio, our portfolio companies, and strategic long-term partnerships.”

Prior to joining ElevateBio, Mr. Reda was the Head of Business Development and Corporate Strategy at Evelo Biosciences. While there, he played an integral role in the company’s $85 million initial public offering (IPO) and private Series B and C fundraising rounds, helping to raise over $200 million. Mr. Reda previously worked at Celgene in business development where he executed over a dozen deals with a total value greater than $5 billion. He actively partnered with the science team to develop a cancer immunotherapy strategy which ultimately guided Celgene into the rapidly developing field of immuno-oncology (IO) leading the company to invest heavily in the space. Notably, Mr. Reda led the B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) collaboration with bluebird bio and the $1 billion, 10-year collaboration with Juno Therapeutics, focused on Chimeric Antigen Receptor Technology (CAR-T) and T-cell Receptor (TCR) technologies. He started his career at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in formulation development.

"ElevateBio is pioneering an entirely new business model in the cell and gene therapy space and I’m thrilled to have joined the organization at this time of accelerating growth across our businesses,” said Mr. Reda. “We offer a new approach for company building with the world’s leading scientific innovators who want to advance their highly innovative programs quickly and efficiently. ElevateBio has created a highly differentiated ecosystem that will enable us to bring an increasing number of cell and gene therapies to patients suffering from devastating diseases.”

Mr. Reda graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Chemical Engineering from Brown University and received his MBA from Harvard Business School.

About ElevateBio

ElevateBio, LLC, is a Cambridge-based biotechnology company, established to create and operate a broad portfolio of cell and gene therapy companies with leading academic researchers, medical centers and entrepreneurs. ElevateBio builds single- and multi-product companies by providing scientific founders with fully integrated bench-to-bedside capabilities including world-class scientists, manufacturing facilities, drug developers and commercial expertise. ElevateBio BaseCamp, a company-owned Cell and Gene Therapy Center of Innovation, will serve as the R&D, process development and manufacturing hub across the entire ElevateBio portfolio while also supporting selected strategic partners.

ElevateBio’s lead investors are MPM Capital and F2 Ventures. Investors also include EcoR1 Capital, Redmile Group, and Samsara BioCapital.

‍Media Contact:
Courtney Heath
ScientPR
[email protected]
‍617-872-2462‍