Robert Alexander Wesselhoeft (Alex), PhD

Founder ＆ Principal Advisor

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An inventor, scientist, and serial entrepreneur. Alex earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts institute of Technology (MIT). He created the first effective circular RNAs technology that would become Orna's foundation. Alex co-founded Orna and led the RNA platform team for several years to develop circular RNA into the next generation of long RNA therapeutics.

Alex is the founder and scientific leader of both MOTE Therapeutics and Halobio Therapeutics. He is currently also a principal investigator ＆ the director of RNA Therapeutics of the Gene and Cell Therapy institute at Mass General Brigham.

Vincent Huo

Director of board

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Vincent brings nearly 15 years of extensive industry experience to his role as the leader of Fapon Group's innovative drug business line. He has been instrumental in founding and steering the R＆D strategy of several subsidiaries, including Fapon Biopharma and MOTE.

Under his leadership, multiple projects have successfully advanced to the candidate drug molecule stage. Notably, he has driven two programs to achieve IND approvals in both China and the United States, progressing into clinical trials.

Amit Singh, PhD

Director, Delivery Sciences

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Amit joined MOTE as the Head of Delivery Discovery with nearly 20 years of academic and industry experience in nanoparticles-based platform and drug product development. He has broad experience in different delivery platforms R＆D to support preclinical and early-stage clinical asset development for biological therapeutics, external vendor/alliance management, regulatory support, technology evaluation and KOL interactions.

Prior to joining MOTE, Amit was the Head of Nonviral Delivery within Global Gene Therapy group, Rare Disease Drug Discovery Unit at Takeda. Over his career, he has worked on various delivery platforms including polymeric, polymer-lipid conjugates, lipid, protein and peptide-based drug carriers for delivery of nucleic acid and small molecule therapeutics. Amit received his Ph.D. in Biotechnology from National Chemical Laboratory/University of Pune, India, completed a postdoc at National Institute of Nanotechnology/University of Alberta, Canada and worked as Research Associate at Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Northeastern University.

Anthony Cura, PhD

Director, RNA Sciences

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Anthony came to MOTE as the Head of RNA Sciences with over 26 years of academic and biotech industry experience in protein and oligonucleotide purification, cell biology, and biochemistry. His experience touches all aspects of drug substance process development for monoclonal antibodies and RNA modalities, including process documentation, technology transfer of clinical-stage assets to support IND and BLA-enabling studies, regulatory support, CMC document authoring, and intellectual property assessments.

Before joining MOTE, Anthony was the head of Downstream Process Development at Greenlight Biosciences. There, he worked closely with the CMC team and Samsung Biologics in South Korea to produce Samsung's first batch of mRNA at their newly created oligonucleotide facility. Prior to that, Anthony worked at Laronde (now Sail Biomedicines), and Bristol Myers Squbb, where he helped lead downstream process development of the commercial asset Opdualag. Anthony obtained his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from the Biochemistry department at UMass Medical School in Worcester, MA. He also completed a postdoc at the Diabetes Center of Excellence at UMass Medical School. Prior to graduate school, Anthony worked at Biosource International performing organic peptide synthesis and polyclonal antibody purification.

Leo Luo, PhD

Director, Preclinical ＆ Protein

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Leo came to MOTE as the Head of preclinical and protein sciences with over 15 years of academic and biotech industry experience in stem cell technology and innovative platform development. He earned his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Leo has extensive expertise in cell and gene therapy innovation, with a strong track record in platform development and product discovery. He previously led the creation of gene-edited iPSC-derived CAR-NK (iCAR-NK) platform and contributed to advancing ex vivo CAR-T pipelines across multiple in vitro and in vivo models. At MOTE, Leo established and led the early-stage research team in China site, driving the development of targeted delivery binders and building preclinical study capabilities.