19 December 2018 - - UK-based Virion Biotherapeutics has appointed Edwin Moses, PhD, former CEO of Ablynx, as chairman of its board of directors, the company said.

In addition, Guido Dietrich, PhD, has joined the company's management team as head of manufacturing.

Moses brings to Virion over 25 years of board level and executive leadership experience and 35 years overall in the biotech industry.

He will succeed Jeffrey Almond, PhD, who will continue to serve on the board as an independent director.

Dietrich joins Virion with over 20 years of expertise in the manufacturing and development of vaccines and biopharmaceuticals.

At Virion he will be responsible for chemistry, manufacturing and control of the company's novel therapeutic modality and growing pipeline. He will report to Vanessa King, PhD, president and CEO of Virion Biotherapeutics.

Moses joined Ablynx in 2004 as chairman of the board and in 2006 became the CEO, a position he held until Ablynx was acquired in 2018 by Sanofi for EUR 3.9bn.

As CEO, Dr. Moses led the company's Euronext Brussels and NASDAQ listings in 2007 and 2017, respectively, delivered several partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies and was responsible for multiple successful private and public financings.

Ablynx achieved EU market approval for the company's lead product earlier this year.

Moses has been the chairman of several European companies and contributed to a variety of strategies focused on value creation and the development of important medicines to meet unmet medical needs.

During his career, he has raised more than EUR 500m in equity and debt financing.

Dietrich joins Virion from Merck, Sharpe and Dohme where he was most recently vice president Quality Biologics and Steriles.

In this position he built and developed its Global Biologics and Steriles Quality team with responsibility for a range of products including leading immunotherapy Keytruda, as well as viral and bacterial vaccines and anti-infectives.

Dietrich is an expert in quality assessment, manufacturing and development of vaccines and biopharmaceuticals with extensive experience in the successful maintenance of compliance standards required by health authorities including the US Food and Drug Administration and European agencies.

Previously, he held senior management roles in manufacturing and quality of biopharmaceuticals, vaccines and steriles at Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Lonza. He holds a PhD in Microbiology from Julius-Maximilians-University in Würzburg, Germany.

Virion Biotherapeutics' purpose is to develop the first rapid-acting, broad-spectrum therapeutic to treat the full range of viral respiratory diseases irrespective of the viruses that cause them, from the most acute infections to the common cold.