CANbridge Pharmaceuticals Appoints Jason West Vice President, Head of Gene Therapy Research

CANbridge Pharmaceuticals, a global biopharmaceutical company, with a foundation in China, committed to the research, development and commercialization of transformative therapies to treat rare diseases and oncology, announced that it has appointed Jason West, Ph.D., to the position of Vice President, Head of Gene Therapy Research, effective immediately.

Dr. West is a stem cell biology research leader with a depth of industry experience in gene therapy development, platform innovation and clinical candidate development. Most recently, he was at Fractyl Health, Inc., as Senior Director and, previously, Gene Therapy Research Director, were he led in-vivo gene therapy research programs, helped to establish a gene therapy technology platform and pipeline and identify novel AAV capsid delivery procedures. Before then, Dr. West was Senior Scientist and group leader in the Hematology/Advanced Editing Research Department at CRISPR Therapeutics AG, where he applied CRISPR technologies for DNA repair. At CRISPR, Dr. West also identified and established academic and industry partnerships and supported pre-clinical gene editing studies. Prior to CRISPR, Dr. West held research positions at Biogen Inc. and Amgen Inc.

Dr. West was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and a Doctoral candidate at Children’s Hospital Boston. He has a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology from Harvard University, in Cambridge, MA and a Bachelor of Science from West Virginia University, in Morgantown, WV. Dr. West has been published in peer-reviewed publications 17 times and holds three patents.

“Dr. West joins us at a dynamic time for CANbridge, as we advance gene therapy programs in three indications, spinal muscular atrophy, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Fabry disease, develop our gene therapy targeting platform and ramp up process development at our Next-Generation Innovation and Process Development Facility in Burlington, MA.,” said James Xue, Ph.D., founder, chairman and CEO of CANbridge Pharmaceuticals Inc. “His considerable gene therapy research experience, particularly in AAV and candidate development, will be a timely addition as we build integrated AAV R&D capabilities and a pipeline of genetic rare disease treatments that have the potential to be curative.”