Tuyen Ong con­sid­ers him­self a bit of a no­mad.

Ear­ly in his life, he came to the UK as a refugee from Viet­nam, and ob­tained his MD at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Then he went to NYU for an MBA and be­gan his ca­reer in bio­phar­ma at Pfiz­er, mak­ing fur­ther stops across the coun­try at Bausch + Lomb, PTC Ther­a­peu­tics and most re­cent­ly Bio­gen.

Now, he’s ready for his next gig: CEO-part­ner at Flag­ship Pi­o­neer­ing and CEO of Ring Ther­a­peu­tics, a gene ther­a­py out­fit where he’ll be run­ning the show. When Ong looks back at his ca­reer, he says he can see how all the dots con­nect­ed to lead him to this point.

“Noubar [Afeyan] is our founder and he’s an im­mi­grant, and that im­mi­grant mind­set is some­what in our DNA at Flag­ship,” Ong told End­points News. “The abil­i­ty to be able to solve prob­lems, be able to be cre­ative, be able to have that pi­o­neer­ing spir­it to over­come is­sues and find op­por­tu­ni­ty, I think that is a com­mon thread that’s tied through my life, and that’s the phi­los­o­phy I’ve been able to in­ject in­to dif­fer­ent ar­eas of my ca­reer.”

Ring it­self was of­fi­cial­ly launched by Flag­ship in 2017 and fo­cus­es its re­search around a new class of vi­ral shells called anellovirus­es. The com­pa­ny hopes it can be an al­ter­na­tive to ade­n­ovirus-as­so­ci­at­ed virus­es, or AAV, and pro­vide safer gene ther­a­py treat­ments.

Ong said he was drawn to the po­si­tion not on­ly be­cause of his in­ter­est in the gene ther­a­py space — he pre­vi­ous­ly worked at Night­star, which, af­ter be­ing ac­quired by Bio­gen, was how he end­ed up there in the first place — but the abil­i­ty to cre­ate such a plat­form in a more “nat­ur­al” way. That’s be­cause the anellovirus fam­i­ly re­sides in var­i­ous tis­sues in the hu­man body with­out caus­ing any harm.

“These virus­es have ba­si­cal­ly co­hab­it­ed, co-evolved with­in the hu­man sys­tem,” Ong said. “They are be­nign and they’ve some­what evad­ed the im­mune sys­tem. The gene ther­a­py field is thriv­ing but it has hit a few road­blocks, and a lot of what’s dri­ving that is the im­muno­genic­i­ty piece.”

Avak Kahve­jian

Where­as AAV-re­lat­ed gene ther­a­pies can cause a range of ill­ness­es and some pa­tients may al­ready have de­vel­oped an­ti­bod­ies to the treat­ments, anellovirus­es don’t come with as many side ef­fects and can still be used to treat a wide range of dis­eases, found­ing Ring CEO Avak Kahve­jian said. The com­pa­ny orig­i­nal­ly start­ed out with just a hand­ful of anellovirus­es but over the last few years has un­cov­ered “thou­sands” that could po­ten­tial­ly prove use­ful.

Kahve­jian and Ong aren’t quite ready to say in which fields they’re first look­ing to ap­ply the plat­form, but not­ed that the spot­light will be across mul­ti­ple modal­i­ties as well as a swath of dis­eases. And be­cause the sci­ence is still so new, Ring is still work­ing on the best plan of at­tack go­ing for­ward.

“Ring is ex­plor­ing all as­pects of this vi­ral fam­i­ly. Dis­cov­er­ing them, en­gi­neer­ing them, mak­ing them and ap­ply­ing them,” Kahve­jian said. “The fo­cus has been on get­ting do­min­ion over this new, ex­cit­ing area from all as­pects.”

As Ring con­tin­ues ad­vanc­ing this re­search, Kahve­jian says Flag­ship has found some­one who can get pas­sion­ate about their vi­sion in Ong. In their search for the CEO-part­ner, Kahve­jian didn’t just look for some­one with a great track record, but al­so some­one with such “in­tan­gi­bles.”

The com­pa­ny al­ready banked $50 mil­lion back in late 2019, in­di­cat­ing Flag­ship has al­ready liked what they’ve seen. But Ong is con­fi­dent that the best is yet to come.

“I tru­ly see this as a trans­for­ma­tive ther­a­py that can hit up­on so many dif­fer­ent dis­eases,” Ong said. “It’s al­most an ode to Moth­er Na­ture: We owe it to re­al­ly take up the gift that we’ve been giv­en here, the pow­er of anellovirus­es to be able to be de­ployed to treat so many dif­fer­ent ge­net­ic dis­eases.”

In the insular world of biotech, a spectacular failure can sometimes stay on any executive’s record for a long time. But for David Meek, the man at the helm of FerGene’s recent implosion, two questionable exits made way for what could be an excellent rebound.

Meek, most recently FerGene’s CEO and a past head at Ipsen, has become CEO at Mirati Therapeutics, taking the reins from founding CEO Charles Baum, who will step over into the role of president and head of R&D, according to a release.

The biotech industry has faced repeated calls to diversify its workforce — and in the last year, those calls got a lot louder. Though women account for just under half of all biotech employees around the world, they occupy very few places in C-suites, and even fewer make it to the helm.

Some companies are listening, according to a recent BIO survey which showed that this year’s companies were 2.5 times more likely to have a diversity and inclusion program compared to last year’s sample. But we still have a long way to go. Women represent just 31% of biotech executives, BIO reported. And those numbers are even more stark for women of color.