Dr. Jeff Porter Appointed Chair of Scientific Advisory Board at Laekna Therapeutics

SHANGHAI, China and Warren, New Jersey, U.S., March 29, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Laekna Therapeutics, a clinical-stage global biotech company, today announced the appointment of Dr. Jeff Porter as the Chairman of its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). Dr. Jeff Porter, former Senior Vice President of Novartis and Global Head of Chemical Biology and Novel Therapeutic Areas at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR), brings over 25 years of global leadership and strategic experience in new drug development. He will work alongside other industry and academic leaders within the company’s SAB to provide valuable scientific and strategic guidance for Laekna Therapeutics' innovative therapies in oncology and liver fibrosis.

"Dr. Jeff Porter is an outstanding scientist and an excellent leader in new drug development, with rich experience in the fields of drug discovery and target research," said Dr. Xiangyang Lü, CEO of Laekna Therapeutics. "We are honored to invite Dr. Jeff Porter to serve as the Chair of our Scientific Advisory Board. His visionary insights in both science and strategy will undoubtedly continue to strengthen and accelerate our new drug development pipeline."

"The product pipeline of Laekna Therapeutics is exciting, whether it's their potential clinical new drugs or the early-stage projects independently developed by the company, all of which possess considerable international competitiveness," said Dr. Jeff Porter. "Dr. Xiangyang Lü is a highly respected scientist and a former colleague I have worked with for many years. I am very much looking forward to collaborating with him and the Laekna team to jointly discover and develop innovative therapies for cancer and liver fibrosis."

As a senior founding member of the former Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) global leadership team, Dr. Porter established an innovative model for drug discovery and development, exploring new targets and lead compounds by studying biomolecular pathways and functional networks, laying the foundation for NIBR's success in the field of new drug research. The research team he led built a dynamic, multidisciplinary platform that integrates specialized knowledge in biological pathways and disease areas. Their efforts have led to a wide range of significant discoveries, including theoretical studies, novel targets, and clinical candidates validated in early-stage trials. Representative examples include the identification of multiple key targets and drug candidates within core biological pathways, as well as precursors to drugs capable of targeting RNA splicing.

Before joining Novartis, Dr. Porter served as the Vice President of Research and Development at Ontogeny (now Curis), a biotechnology company. Dr. Porter holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University and completed his postdoctoral research at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of the same university.