Occam Places Ed Koval as CBO at Geron

Occam is pleased to announce the placement of Ed Koval as EVP & CBO of Geron, a late-stage public biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of treatments for hematologic malignancies.

In his role at Geron, Koval will be a member of the Company’s Executive Management Committee and report to Dr. Scarlett. Koval will be responsible for business development, including evaluation and execution of out-licensing, in-licensing and strategic transaction opportunities.

Koval brings more than 25 years of biotech and pharmaceutical experience in business development and both in-licensing and out-licensing of products and platform technologies. Prior to joining Geron, Koval was the Chief Business Officer of ZebiAI Therapeutics, a company spun out of X-Chem Pharmaceuticals in order to discover and develop advanced drug discovery programs based on novel machine learning technologies, and which was recently acquired by Relay Therapeutics.

Prior to the spin-out of ZebiAI, he was Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, at X-Chem Pharmaceuticals, a drug discovery company, where he closed multiple transactions with multinational pharmaceutical companies for programs in oncology, hematology/oncology, inflammation, infectious disease and rare diseases.

Koval’s prior pharmaceutical experience also includes serving roles in business and corporate development, strategic planning, alliance management and financial evaluation and analysis at Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Merck & Co., Inc. and Chiron Corporation, where he finalized negotiations and executed and managed multiple strategic corporate partnerships and alliances.

Koval holds an M.Sc. in Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.B.A. from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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