CAMBRIDGE, Mass.– Korro Bio, Inc., a leading RNA editing company focused on the discovery and development of novel genetic medicines, today announced the appointment of Venkat Krishnamurthy, Ph.D., as Senior Vice President, Head of Platform and Stephanie Engels as Senior Vice President, Head of People and Culture. Venkat and Stephanie are accomplished industry leaders who bring vast expertise and experience to support the continued growth of the Company.
“We are thrilled to welcome Venkat and Stephanie at an exciting time for the company, as we continue to chart the course towards the clinic and expand our novel RNA editing platform,” said Ram Aiyar, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer and President of Korro Bio. “Venkat’s expertise in all aspects of RNA therapeutics development including delivery and chemistry, combined with Stephanie’s experience in building and scaling learning organizations, are important additions as we continue to build our editing toolkit and deliver on our vision to develop genetic medicines for diseases with high prevalence.”
Dr. Krishnamurthy has over a decade of experience in a range of RNA modalities including siRNA, mRNA and therapeutic genome editing technologies where he successfully built and led cross functional teams to support various aspects of drug development. Dr. Krishnamurthy arrives at Korro after serving in an Executive Director role at Eli Lilly & Company, where he was responsible for strategic direction for Lilly’s genetic medicine portfolio. Prior to this, Dr. Krishnamurthy was a Team Lead at AstraZeneca, where he built a new modalities group at the Boston site to support the company’s mRNA and genome editing projects from discovery to clinic. He began his industry career at Dicerna Pharmaceuticals and was one of the early chemists to advance the company’s siRNA platform. He also made critical contributions to the advancement of Nedosiran, Dicerna’s first GalNAc-siRNA program currently in Phase 3. Ahead of his experience in industry, Dr. Krishnamurthy was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, where he led a lab focused on non-viral delivery for cell therapy and tissue engineering. He has contributed to over 30 publications and patents, and some of his work laid the foundation for projects funded by the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Krishnamurthy earned his doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and completed postdoctoral training at Princeton University. He also holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from Loyola College and the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, respectively.
