Pleno, Inc. Appoints Dr. Vik Vaz, M.D. as Chief Executive Officer & President to Drive Commercial Growth After Closing $25M Series B Funding

Series B Funding from Major Investors Deerfield Management, Foresite Capital and Medical Excellence Capital among others

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Pleno, a clinical and multi-omics diagnostics company that is revolutionizing biological target detection, today announced the appointment of Dr. Vik Vaz M.D. as its new chief executive officer and to serve on its Board of Directors, effective immediately. Dr. Vaz is a dynamic global leader with a combination of clinical expertise, strategic insight, and commercial experience in the life sciences and medical technology sectors. Dr. Vaz will lead Pleno’s next phase of growth as the company prepares to scale its commercial operations with the help of its new $25 million Series B funding. Key investors Deerfield Management, Foresite Capital and Medical Excellence Capital remain committed to supporting the next phase of the company’s growth strategy.

“I’m excited to welcome Vik to Pleno. He is a proven business leader with a strong track record,” said Gregory T. Lucier, chairman of the Board of Directors at Pleno. “Vik’s deep industry understanding and his ability to translate strategy into exceptional execution, will bring immense value to Pleno as it begins its commercialization journey.”

Dr. Vaz served most recently as head of strategy and market intelligence and a leader of the companion diagnostics business at Illumina. His responsibilities included leading enterprise-wide strategic planning and portfolio investment along with key strategic transactions & partnerships, new market development strategy and companion diagnostics revenue generation. Previously, Dr. Vaz also served as a partner at the Boston Consulting Group and at McKinsey and Company, where he partnered with top pharmaceutical, medical device and life sciences industry leaders to drive organic and inorganic growth as well as lead strategic transformations, drive organizational turnarounds and support transactions. He remains actively licensed as a physician, having previously trained and served as a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School/Beth Israel Deaconess hospital and the University of Miami.

"I am excited to be joining Pleno and look forward to leading this exceptional team," said Dr. Vaz. “We are poised to bring a transformational new technology to market that will improve patient care and drive advances in biological understanding. The data we have generated already will spur impact across oncology, infectious disease and many other clinical applications.”

About Pleno Inc.

Pleno Inc. is an early-stage San Diego startup company developing the RAPTOR™ multi-omic instrument platform to revolutionize biological target detection and enable a broad array of life science applications. The company makes complex multi-omic known-target detection accessible and affordable to everyone through the innovative use of its Hypercoding™ technology which simplifies the entire process and enables unprecedented improvements in performance, cost and scale.