Voyager Therapeutics Announces Appointment of Beth Shafer as Chief Business Officer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 07, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Voyager Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: VYGR), a biotechnology company dedicated to breaking through barriers in gene therapy and neurology, today announced the appointment of Beth Shafer, Ph.D., M.A., M.Phil., as Chief Business Officer (CBO). Shafer is a seasoned healthcare executive with more than 15 years of experience in corporate and business development at prominent biopharmaceutical companies, as well as deep knowledge in neurology. She most recently served as Vice President and Head of R&D Business Development, Gastrointestinal & Inflammation, Neuroscience, Drug Discovery Sciences, Externalizations at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd.

“Voyager’s TRACER capsid platform and neurology programs continue to attract significant interest from third parties,” said Alfred W. Sandrock, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Voyager. “Beth has extensive experience in business development and strategic planning, and we look forward to the valuable insights she will bring both in optimizing the opportunities in front of us today and in helping Voyager to maximize value creation for patients and for shareholders into the future.”

In her most recent role at Takeda, Shafer was responsible for leading business development groups and activities in several core areas, including neuroscience, gastroenterology, drug discovery sciences, and R&D pipeline externalizations. Notably, she secured licenses and collaborations that grew Takeda’s neuroscience pipeline from a small molecule psychiatry focus into a rare neurology diversified multi-modality portfolio. She previously held multiple corporate and business development roles of increasing responsibility during her tenures at Takeda, Novartis and Roche. Prior to joining Takeda, Shafer served as Head, Ophthalmology and Disease Area X Business Development & Licensing at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, where she helped drive and shape the organization’s portfolio and research strategies by creating and executing on external partnership solutions. Prior to that role, she served as Director, Business Development & Licensing at Roche, where she built the business development process for the External Development Group and led cross-functional pharmaceutical project and deal teams for several therapeutic areas, serving integral roles from strategy to deal execution. Shafer received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from University of California, San Diego, her M.Phil. and M.A from Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and her B.A. from Rutgers University.