Silence Therapeutics plc, a leader in the discovery, delivery, and development of novel RNA therapeutics for the treatment of serious diseases with unmet medical need, announces the hiring of Torsten Hoffmann as Chief Operating Officer, reporting directly to Ali Mortazavi, Chief Executive Officer.
Torsten is joining Silence from Proteros biostructures where he served as Chief Scientific Officer and Managing Director from July 2015, and before then as Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President at Zealand Pharma from July 2013.
Prior to that, he spent 16 years at Roche in roles of increasing responsibility up to Site Head of Medicinal Chemistry, and Head of the Global Roche Postdoc fellowship programme. Torsten is the lead inventor of netupitant, discovered at Roche and approved by the FDA as Akynzeo in 2014.
Torsten has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the ETH Zürich, Switzerland, which was followed by a role as research associate with Professor Richard A. Lerner at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.
He has authored more than 85 publications, patent applications and published conference reports, has served on advisory boards, and his awards include the Feodor Lynen award and fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany.
Ali Mortazavi, Chief Executive Officer of Silence Therapeutics, commented: “I am delighted that Torsten has joined Silence at this pivotal time for the company. As we continue to make progress with our new GalNAc-based platform, Torsten brings an experienced rigour to our operations with his knowledge from target selection through to clinical trials. I have been impressed with his energy and the way that he has quickly formed a close working relationship with our Chief Scientific Officer, Dmitry Samarsky. As a consultant, he has already enabled us to drive efficiency through outsourcing certain activities and he will add further immediate benefits in the field of gene target selection and novel RNA therapeutics, helping to further differentiate Silence in delivering high quality medicines for better patients’ lives.”
