Farmingdale, New York, August 27, 2019– Codagenix, Inc. a synthetic biology-based vaccine and oncolytic company, today announced the appointment of Sybil Tasker, M.D., MPH, FACP, FIDSA as Chief Medical Officer. The goal of Codagenix is to bring rationally-designed, highly effective prophylactic vaccines and oncolytic virus therapies to the marketplace.

“Codagenix has grown tremendously since our founding in 2012. We have now completed two Phase I clinical trials of our multi-season influenza vaccine, and have plans for two additional trials for other products in 2020,” said J. Robert Coleman, Codagenix’s co-founder and CEO. “Dr. Tasker is the optimal choice to guide Codagenix in this very exciting new phase of clinical development of our vaccine and oncolytic programs.”

Dr. Tasker is an infectious disease clinician with deep expertise in vaccine design and clinical testing. Prior to joining Codagenix, Dr. Tasker served as CMO of Altimmune, where she led the development and clinical testing of influenza and anthrax vaccines. She also led development of a therapeutic herpes simplex vaccine at Genocea Biosciences and guided infectious disease product development strategy at two global CROs. Dr. Tasker is board certified in both internal medicine and infectious diseases, and earned an A.B. degree in Biochemistry from Princeton University, an M.D. degree from Columbia University, and an MPH from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Tasker’s vast clinical trial experience, combined with her insights in product development make her uniquely qualified to lead Codagenix’s growing portfolio.

Dr. Tasker commented, “Dr. Tasker commented, “I am pleased to join Codagenix at this key inflection point as multiple strong product candidates addressing important unmet medical needs such as RSV and triple negative breast cancer move into the clinic.  The company’s elegant codon-deoptimizing methodology holds great promise for the development of highly immunogenic vaccines and oncolytics with reduced risks to patient safety, and the preclinical and early clinical data are very exciting.”

Codagenix has leveraged their synthetic-biology based vaccine development platform to construct vaccine candidates against influenza H1N1, RSV and Dengue viruses, with RSV slated to be in the clinic by Q1-2020. Current investors in Codagenix include TopSpin Partners of Roslyn NY, NIH/NIAID, USDA, the Department of Defense and the Stony Brook University Center for Biotechnology.

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