19 November 2018 - - US-based biotechnology company Beam Therapeutics has appointed Carole Ho, M.D., chief medical officer and head of development at Denali Therapeutics, to the company's board of directors, the company said.

Ho brings to Beam more than 15 years of life sciences experience as a clinical neurologist, neuroscientist and leader in biopharmaceutical drug development.

Prior to her current role as founding chief medical officer and head of development at Denali Therapeutics, Dr. Ho served as vice president of Early Clinical Development at Genentech.

In that role, she was responsible for delivery of pivotal trial-ready drug candidates to the Roche / Genentech late-stage development groups in neurology, ophthalmology, immunology and infectious disease.

During her eight-year tenure at Genentech, she held positions of increasing responsibility across both the early and late stage clinical development groups with development oversight for multiple therapeutic areas and molecules including crenezumab for Alzheimer's disease, lampalizumab for dry age related macular degeneration, and development activities leading to the approvals of ocrelizumab for multiple sclerosis and Rituxan for Wegener's granulomatosis and microscopic polyangiitis.

Prior to Genentech, Ho was on faculty in the Department of Neurology at Stanford University and subsequently a Medical director at Johnson and Johnson.

Ho received her undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard College and her M.D. from Cornell University. She completed her medical internship and neurology residency at Harvard and served as Chief Resident of Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital / Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Beam Therapeutics is developing precision genetic medicines through base editing.

Founded by leading scientists in CRISPR gene editing, Beam is pursuing therapies for serious diseases using its proprietary base editing technology, which can make precise edits to single base pairs in DNA and RNA.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the company is backed by F-Prime Capital Partners and ARCH Venture Partners, two of the world's leading biotech venture capital firms.