CAMBRIDGE, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Dr. Goldman will focus his efforts on the growth of Abzena as the leading provider of outsourced and integrated services in the biologics early development space by establishing new partnerships with clients, building internal manufacturing capacity and pursuing strategic acquisitions. He joins the company after achieving significant success as the CEO of Aptuit LLC, a leading global Contract Research Organization that specialized in the provision of discovery, development and manufacturing of small molecules. Aptuit was sold to Evotec in 2017 after 12 years of growth as a WCAS portfolio company. John Burt will transition out of the CEO role to serve as a Senior Advisor to the company and member of the management team to guide customer relationships and growth, potentially by merger and acquisition.

Dr. Goldman stated, "I'm delighted to join Abzena, and look forward to working closely with the outstanding leadership team to leverage a unique end to end value proposition ranging from antibody discovery to clinical scale GMP biologic drug substance manufacture. We will serve an unmet need for scientific expertise delivered at high quality, low cost and compressed timelines. Abzena is the ideal partner to meet these needs across a comprehensive suite of services. I am very excited to grow the company as the partner of choice for drug developers, with the support of WCAS."

Before Aptuit, Dr. Goldman was Executive Vice President, Global Strategic and Business Development at ICON Plc a large global clinical CRO. Before joining ICON, Dr. Goldman served as the Chief Medical Officer of POINT Biomedical, a US-based biopharmaceutical company that discovered and developed microsphere technologies and drugs. In addition, he has held honorary academic positions of increasing responsibility at the University of California since 2000, most recently as Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology. He holds a medical degree from St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, University of London, and MBA degrees from Columbia University in New York, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Cunningham, Chairman of Abzena commented, "We're very pleased that Jonathan is joining us. He brings exceptional experience in the growth of contract services companies providing integrated solutions. We believe his background in executive leadership, science, sales and medicine are needed to progress the company to the next stage. This skillset makes him the perfect complement to our senior management team. We would like to express our profound thanks to John for his immense contribution and vision in growing the company to this point, and for successfully transitioning the company to new ownership."

About Welsh, Carson, and Anderson & Stowe

WCAS focuses its investment activity in two target industries: technology and healthcare. Since its founding in 1979, WCAS has organized 16 limited partnerships with total capital of over $22 billion. The Firm is currently investing an equity fund, Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe XII, L.P., which closed on over $3.3 billion in commitments. WCAS has a current portfolio of approximately twenty companies. WCAS's strategy is to partner with outstanding management teams and build value for its investors through a combination of operational improvements, internal growth initiatives and strategic acquisitions.

About Abzena:

Abzena provides proprietary technologies and complementary services to enable the development and manufacture of biopharmaceutical products.

Abzena offers the following services and technologies across its sites in Cambridge (UK), San Diego, California (USA) and Bristol, Pennsylvania (USA):

Biology research studies, including immunogenicity assessment of candidate biopharmaceutical products and bioassay development;

Protein engineering to create humanized antibodies and deimmunised therapeutic proteins;

Cell line development for the manufacture of recombinant proteins and antibodies;

Contract process development and GMP manufacture of biopharmaceuticals, including monoclonal antibodies and recombinant proteins for preclinical and clinical studies;

Contract synthetic chemistry and bioconjugation research services, focused on antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs);

Proprietary site-specific conjugation technologies and novel payloads for ADC development;

GMP manufacturing of ADC linkers, payloads & combined linker-payloads; and

GMP analytical services for biopharmaceutical manufacturing projects.

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