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Dr. John Monahan served as Executive Vice President, Research & Development, at Synthetic Biologics from December 2011 until December 2015. Dr. Monahan is an experienced CEO-level executive of biotech companies focused on gene medicine and pharmaceutical companies with biotechnology research departments. He is currently also a board member of a number of private biotech companies. In 1992, he founded and built Avigen, Inc., a biotech company that pioneered and led the development of gene medicines based on AAV vectors, now an industry standard. Over a 12 year period as CEO of Avigen, Dr. Monahan took the company public through its IPO, raised over $235 million and led the company through a number of gene medicine Investigational New Drug (IND) applications.

Prior to founding Avigen, Dr. Monahan served as Vice President - Research and Development at Somatix, another pioneering gene medicine company, Prior to that he was Director of Molecular & Cell Biology at Triton Biosciences (since merged with Berlex Laboratories). Prior to that he was Research Group Chief, Department of Molecular Genetics at Hoffmann-LaRoche, Inc. and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Cell Biology at New York University. He earned a PhD in Biochemistry from McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada and a BS degree in Science from University College, Dublin, Ireland. Dr. Monahan has over 50 publications/reviews in the scientific literature and has made hundreds of presentations including public TV interviews, to scientific groups, investors and the public in general over the years.