Wheeler Bio Announces Roger Lias, Ph.D. as President and Chief Operating Officer

Wheeler Bio, a new contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) specializing in the cell line development, process development, and small batch clinical production of antibodies, has announced the appointment of Dr. Roger Lias as President and Chief Operating Officer. 

Roger most recently served as Chief Commercial Officer at Vibalogics, a viral vector CDMO that was acquired this year by Recipharm. In his capacity, Roger not only helped position Vibalogics for M&A success but was also integral in a major capital expansion project in the US. Roger brings a wealth of experience in the biologics CDMO arena, having held senior commercial roles at Lonza and Diosynth before becoming a member of the founding management teams at KBI Biopharma, Cytovance Biologics, and Eden Biodesign. More recently, Roger was the Chief Executive Officer at Avid Bioservices and Stelis Biopharma. At both companies he was responsible for the successful transition to dedicated CDMO models.

“Roger has been building, operating, and growing CDMOs for nearly 25 years. His depth of industry knowledge, relationships, and financing experience will help propel Wheeler’s transition into the GMP arena in 2023 and beyond,” stated Dr. Jesse McCool, Wheeler’s CEO. “I am thrilled that Roger has joined my team. He will be a tremendous asset to our customers and shareholders.”

Wheeler Bio brings biologics drug innovators, discovery CROs, and CDMOs together to solve an outdated industry bottleneck with a unique partnering model, built on shared success and lasting collaborations. The typical momentum drop between discovery and development poses significant challenges for emerging biopharma companies adding technical, financial, and regulatory risks. Wheeler believes these lifecycle challenges can be reduced with more democratization of manufacturing platforms.

“I’m delighted to be joining the co-founders Jesse McCool, Christian Kanady (Echo), and Errik Anderson (Alloy Therapeutics) along with the very talented team at Wheeler Bio to help implement a truly innovative model in the biologics CDMO space,” commented Lias. “The Wheeler Bio model ‘democratizes’ protein development and manufacture for companies with products at a translational stage needing to access robust, compliant, and economically viable processes and cGMP capacity in support of clinical development.”