CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Garuda Therapeutics (Garuda), a company creating off-the-shelf, durable blood stem cell therapies, today announced the appointment of Roger Sawhney, M.D., as Chief Financial Officer. Dr. Sawhney previously served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Business Officer at Omega Therapeutics, a pioneer in mRNA-based therapeutics for precision gene modulation.
“The Garuda team is so pleased to have Roger join in our efforts to democratize blood stem cell transplants and ensure this vital, and often curative, therapy is made accessible to eligible patients in need,” said Dhvanit Shah, Ph.D., Co-Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Garuda. “Roger’s experience in biopharma and health care investing coupled with his expertise in operational management and commercialization will be instrumental in helping to advance our efforts to create off-the-shelf, durable blood stem cell therapies.”
Most recently, Dr. Sawhney served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Business Officer at Omega Therapeutics, where he led finance, strategy, business development and data/analytics. During his tenure at Omega, Dr. Sawhney led capital raises of more than $300M, including Omega’s crossover round and initial public offering. Prior to Omega, Dr. Sawhney served in a variety of prestigious roles including Partner at Bain Capital and Boston Consulting Group. He was also a Director at KKR in health care private equity and growth equity investing and Senior Vice President and Global Head of Corporate Strategy at Novartis, Basel. Dr. Sawhney has held board appointments for Ebb Therapeutics, New York Institute of Technology and Arcellx, Inc. He received his M.D. at Harvard Medical School and an B.A. in Economics with Distinction at Stanford University.
Garuda’s platform for generating off-the-shelf, self-renewing blood stem cells is designed to provide patients with rapid and broad access to consistent, durable, HLA-matched, transgene-free blood stem cell therapies. Currently, patients seeking a blood stem cell transplant must find a suitable human donor as a source of blood stem cells. Racial minority patients face greater barriers than white patients in finding suitable blood stem cell matches. Like bone marrow transplants, Garuda’s technology has the potential to address, and possibly cure, more than 70 diseases.
“I am absolutely thrilled to join Garuda to help bring this potentially life changing therapy to patients,” Dr. Sawhney said. “Eliminating the need for donor or patient cells while gaining the ability to exploit stem cell engineering would democratize blood stem cell transplants and has potential to revolutionize cell therapy.”
About Garuda Therapeutics
Garuda Therapeutics seeks to create a world that eliminates the dependency on donor or patient cells for blood stem cell transplants. Our platform technology for generating off-the-shelf, self-renewing blood stem cells is poised to provide patients with rapid and broad access to consistent, durable, HLA-compatible and transgene-free blood stem cell therapies. Like bone marrow transplants, our technology could provide potentially curative therapies for more than 70 diseases. https://garudatx.com/
