Ailux, an AI-native biotech company discovering and engineering next-generation biologics across multiple indications, announced the appointment of Maria G. Belvisi, Ph.D. as Chief Scientific Officer. Professor Belvisi brings more than three decades of industry and academic leadership in drug research and development, including nearly a decade at AstraZeneca where she served as Senior Vice President, Research and Development, Respiratory & Immunology, BioPharmaceuticals R&D. She will report to Alex Li, Chief Executive Officer of Ailux.
Ailux is an AI-native biotech company headquartered in Shanghai, founded within and wholly-owned by XtalPi (2228.HK), a global leader in building the AI & robotics infrastructure for life sciences and beyond. Ailux combines proprietary AI biologics platforms with a 30,000 square foot wet lab and a global team of approximately 150 across China, the UK, and the US. Ailux has collaborated with Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and UCB, and is advancing its internal pipeline toward first clinical entry by 2027.
Professor Belvisi joined AstraZeneca in 2017 and was accountable for the global Respiratory & Immunology R&D organization spanning approximately 500 scientists across the UK, Sweden, the US, and Spain. During her tenure she built and advanced one of the industry’s most innovative and productive early R&I portfolios, with end-to-end responsibility from target identification through Phase 3 investment decisions. Most recently, tozorakimab a potential first-in-class IL-33 antibody that she championed from early preclinical development through the Phase 3 investment decision met its primary endpoints in both the OBERON and TITANIA trials in COPD. The results, announced last month, have been widely recognized as landmark for the field and potentially transformational for COPD patients.
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Alongside her industry career, Maria has held a professorship at the National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London a position she continues to hold today. During her time leading the Imperial research group, she trained more than thirty PhD students and published over 250 peer-reviewed papers. She also served as Research Director of the European Respiratory Society (2013–2016) and founded IR Pharma, a contract research organization serving major pharmaceutical companies in the respiratory space. In her new role at Ailux, Maria will also establish and lead a UK research site, further expanding the company’s presence in one of the world’s leading centers for biomedical research and innovation. She is a Fellow of the European Respiratory Society, the British Pharmacological Society, and the Academy of Medical Sciences, and was named one of Endpoints News’ “20 Outstanding Women in Biopharma” in 2021.
“Maria is exactly the kind of scientific leader Ailux needs at this stage of our journey,” said Alex Li, CEO of Ailux. “She has spent her career turning bold scientific hypotheses into medicines that reach patients building programs from scratch, taking them through the clinic, and doing so at a scale that few have matched. We are building Ailux to go the full distance, and Maria’s scientific leadership will be central to every step of that journey.”
“What drew me to Ailux is the genuine integration of AI and biology not AI as a tool applied to conventional drug discovery, but as a co-equal foundation for how programs are conceived and built,” said Professor Belvisi, CSO of Ailux. “I believe Ailux’s platform and team give us a real opportunity to originate first-in-class and best-in-class medicines, and I am excited to join the team and work together to build a global company that can deliver transformative therapies to patients.”
Source: PRNewswire
