Wheeler Bio Announces President & Chief Operating Officer 

Dr. Roger Lias

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,” said 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Wheeler Bio brings biologics drug innovators, discovery CROs, and CDMOs together to solve an outdated industry bottleneck with a unique partnering model, built on shared success and lasting collaborations.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.”

Wheeler Bio is a biomanufacturing pioneer, founded by a team of industry experts and strategic investors who believe a different CDMO model is needed to help innovators reach their clinical milestones faster. Wheeler’s novel hub-and-spoke operational model, centered in the biomanufacturing metro of Oklahoma City (OKC) and integrated with coastal biotechs and discovery CROs, will revolutionize the speed of drug development. Their technology platform, Portable CMC, simplifies the path between drug discovery and clinical manufacturing by standardizing and democratizing the innovation-to-impact process. A new bridge for translating discoveries to IND filing, innovators benefit from increased momentum during technology transfer, shorter timelines, and lower costs. For more information, visit www.wheelerbio.com.

Echo (echo.global) is an Oklahoma City-based investment firm with a multi-disciplinary team of strategic investors and operators funding innovation and cutting-edge companies across industries. Echo connects often-overlooked infrastructure with globally sourced ideas, talent, and capital to give Oklahoma access to the world, and the world access to Oklahoma. By bringing together forward-looking ideas and sophisticated capital, Echo aims to generate exceptional returns and differentiated value for investors and its portfolio.

Alloy Therapeutics is a biotechnology ecosystem company empowering the global scientific community to make better medicines together. Through a community of partners across academia, biotech, and the largest biopharma, Alloy democratizes access to tools, technologies, services, and company creation capabilities that are foundational for discovering and developing therapeutic biologics across six modalities, including antibodies, TCRs, genetic medicines, peptides, cell therapy, and drug delivery. Alloy’s first foundational platform, the ATX-Gx mice, is a suite of proprietary transgenic mice strains for human therapeutic antibody discovery. Alloy is a leader in bispecific antibody discovery and engineering services, utilizing its proprietary ATX-CLC common light chain platform integrating novel transgenic mice and phage display. Alloy’s DeepImmune Antibody Discovery service integrates Alloy’s full complement of proprietary in vivo, in vitro, and in silico discovery and optimization technologies into one comprehensive service offering for fully human monoclonal and bispecific antibody discovery. In 2022, Alloy launched Keyway TCR Discovery as its second fully integrated discovery platform and service offering for engineered TCR and TCR mimic discovery. Like all of Alloy’s technologies, DeepImmune and Keyway are also available for platform transfer and can be accessed as part of Alloy’s novel Innovation Subscription model. Alloy is headquartered in Boston, MA, with labs in Cambridge, UK; Basel, CH; San Francisco, CA; and Athens, GA. As a reflection of Alloy’s relentless commitment to the scientific community, Alloy reinvests 100% of its revenue in innovation and access to innovation.