AbSci Appoints Biopharmaceutical Pioneer Dr. Fred Larimore to Executive Team

VANCOUVER, Wash., Aug. 21, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- AbSci, a revolutionary synthetic biology company with a best-in-class E. coli cell line for rapid and low-cost biomanufacturing of complex protein therapeutics, today announced the appointment of Fred Larimore, PhD, to Vice President, Process Development. Formerly a member of AbSci's Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Larimore brings more than 30 years of experience in biopharmaceutical manufacturing and process development at leading pharmaceutical companies including Cook Pharmica and Eli Lilly. As Head of Process Development, Dr. Larimore will ensure that AbSci technology will successfully scale from high-throughput research through industrial scale-up at CDMO and partner facilities.

In addition to announcing Dr. Larimore's appointment, the company also revealed plans to add an additional 14 positions by the end of 2019 to meet growing demand for its innovative platform. AbSci is expanding its corporate headquarters, located in downtown Vancouver, Washington, that will include increased business office space and a significantly larger lab facility, bringing the company's total square footage to more than 12,000.

"The SoluProtm technology thus far holds no limits on capability and that's why AbSci is truly the most exciting company in synthetic biology today," said Dr. Larimore. "AbSci's SoluProtm Platform gives us the ability to disrupt the status quo and make next-generation biotherapeutics better, cheaper, faster, and safer than ever before. The affordability and availability of life-saving and life-changing therapies is very important to me and to every one of us at AbSci."

Dr. Larimore worked for more than 25 years at Eli Lilly where he served as a Research Fellow and senior scientific leader. He has extensive experience in process design, development, scale-up, and manufacturing, and led manufacturing support of six major biotechnology products in the marketplace: Humulin®, Humalog®, Humatrope®, Forteo® and Recombinant Human Glucagon. He was influential in developing some of the original biologic manufacturing processes, including production of Human Insulin using the chain route (Humulin®), Human Insulin using the proinsulin process (Humulin®), Human Growth Hormone (Humatrope®), Recombinant Human Parathyroid Hormone (Forteo®), Factor IX and several other monoclonal antibodies.

Dr. Larimore is a founding member and Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Society for Bioprocessing Professionals (SBP) and currently serves as the Principal Consultant at Sierra Vista Biotech Consulting. He was also the Vice President of Scientific Affairs and Chief Scientific Officer of Cook Pharmica. Dr. Larimore holds a B.A. in Chemistry from St. Olaf College, a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota, and completed his post-doctoral training at the Harvard Medical School, Department of Physiology.

"We are honored to bring Dr. Larimore to our leadership team," said Sean McClain, founder and CEO of AbSci. "He has been an invaluable contributor on our Scientific Advisory Board and we look forward to his continuing contributions as we rapidly expand our capabilities to service our large pharma and biotech clients. We're also looking forward to making the Pacific Northwest, and more specifically the Portland/Vancouver area, a new center for biotechnology excellence as we build out our team and become the gold standard in biomanufacturing."

To learn more about the positions currently available at AbSci, please visit the company's Careers page.

About AbSci
AbSci is a global leader and innovator of revolutionary biomanufacturing technologies, designing and programming cells for next-generation biopharmaceuticals. AbSci's biomanufacturing technology is the new gold standard in protein production, as it increases discovery throughput, accelerates development, reduces manufacturing costs, and increases plant capacity for the biopharmaceutical industry. Its patented SoluProtm expression platform rapidly produces complex proteins, ranging from mAbs, Fabs, enzymes, hormones and peptides, to emerging novel classes of biotherapeutics. For more information, please visit http://www.absci.com.

SOURCE AbSci