Mohamed A. Genead, MD, MBA | Acting Chief Medical Officer
A serial life-sciences entrepreneur, senior innovative biopharma executive, inventor, and consultant to many ophthalmic biotechnology companies and healthcare venture firms. A global executive and senior leader with 20-plus years’ experience in biopharmaceutical drug, business development, and corporate strategies execution from discovery to late development and commercial phases. Played key roles at executing launches and drove sales growth in country, regional, and global development positions together with teams of direct reports. Critical team member to negotiate and manage the partnership between biopharma and strategics to expand ophthalmology developments.
Co-founder of several start-ups and being instrumental in the raising of over $500M in venture and institutional capital for numerous life sciences biotech companies. A board member of several ophthalmic organizations and scientific advisory board. Excellent academic background, including extensive research and clinical experience at top-tier academic and medical institutions.
Most recently, Dr. Genead co-founded Aviceda, a late-stage pre-clinical biotechnology company leveraging disruptive nanoparticles-based therapy and technology platform to cure ocular inflammatory, neurodegenerative, and fibrovascular system diseases. Under his leadership as Chief Executive Officer, Aviceda attained a best-in-class valuation percentile. Prior to that, Dr. Genead served as Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice-President for GenSight Biologics, a publicly traded company, where he led the clinical development and medical affairs organization in launching multiple phase I-III trials leveraging a disruptive ocular gene therapy and optogenetics platforms for patients with ocular degenerative diseases. Prior to GenSight, Dr. Genead led Biogen’s Ophthalmology and Ocular gene therapy franchise in collaborations with Dr. Jean Bennett, MD, PhD at University of Pennsylvania (Inventor of Gene therapy [Luxturna] for LCA scientific foundation of Spark Therapeutics) and AGTC partnerships in the execution of multiple retina gene therapy programs intended for regulatory approvals of ophthalmic gene therapy products.
Prior to joining the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Genead spent years in academic medicine serving as physician-scientist, co-director of center of Retina Degenerative Diseases and as an Investigator in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, at the University of Illinois in Chicago. His area of academic interest focused on novel retinal therapeutics ranging from ocular gene therapy to retina regenerative stem-cell therapies for orphan retina diseases such as Stargardt disease and retinitis pigmentosa. His team pioneered the use of topical eye drops for treatment of macular edema associated with retinal dystrophies. He discovered a new gene mutation in patients afflicted with Leber’s congenital amaurosis in collaboration with researchers at McGill University. He was the primary and key author for numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts in highly impact factor scientific journals (more than 150 manuscripts and presentations) focusing on clinical research and novel therapeutics.
Dr. Genead completed his vitreoretinal fellowship and residency at the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences of the University of Illinois in Chicago and Medical College of Wisconsin.
