Asklepios BioPharmaceutical, Inc. (AskBio), a wholly owned and independently operated subsidiary of Bayer AG, has named Mansuo Shannon, PhD as the company’s next Chief Scientific Officer (CSO).
 
Shannon joins AskBio from Prevail Therapeutics, where she also served as CSO. Reporting to Gustavo Pesquin, Chief Executive Officer, Shannon will be a member of AskBio’s Executive Leadership Team and head its R&D organization.
 
She succeeds Co-Founder R. Jude Samulski, PhD, who served as CSO since the company was founded in 2001. Samulski will remain a member of the AskBio Board of Directors and in that capacity will continue to help guide the company’s scientific future during its next phase, after more than 20 years of building and growing AskBio.
 
As part of her role as CSO at AskBio, Shannon will develop and implement the company’s future R&D strategy. She will lead all aspects of the discovery and development of AskBio’s gene therapy platform and will oversee the global teams charged with advancing that platform. As an integral member of AskBio’s Executive Leadership Team, Shannon will provide scientific leadership to the CEO, the Board of Directors, and the company, in addition to being a key partner of the broader Bayer R&D leadership team and Bayer’s scientific community.
 
“We are delighted to welcome Mansuo to the AskBio team. As a seasoned pharmaceutical and biotech executive who has worked across an impressive range of therapeutic modalities, her experience will be invaluable as our company continues to advance as a leader in gene therapy,” said Pesquin. “I am confident that Mansuo’s extensive background in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases, in particular, will bring us closer to achieving our strategic vision of creating a new reality for people living with diseases that currently lack effective treatments.”

Experience

Shannon has over 16 years of industry experience covering work in small and large molecules, as well as gene therapy, including gene editing. While at Prevail Therapeutics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Company, she led the strategy for and executed work on an extensive product portfolio, managing a team of nearly 60 PhD scientists and research associates. In addition to her time as CSO at Prevail Therapeutics, Shannon spent close to 10 years working at Eli Lilly, where she led several programs that aimed to deliver novel disease-modifying therapies for Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
 
Prior to her time at Eli Lilly, Shannon held key scientific roles at Chugai Pharmaceuticals/Roche Group and Merck. Shannon holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from Princeton University, and she completed her post-doctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Susumu Tonegawa, PhD. 
 
“I am excited to take on the challenge of serving as AskBio’s next CSO,” said Shannon. “I look forward to working with the company’s leadership team and pioneering scientists, as well as colleagues across functions and at Bayer, to advance AskBio’s R&D organization and deliver transformative gene therapies that have the potential to change the course of some of the world’s most devastating diseases.”