Marco Passini

Marco is Senior Director of Pharmacology and leads our antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) therapy program. He has more than 17 years of experience developing AAV gene therapies and ASO therapies for muscle and central nervous system diseases.

Prior to joining Disarm Therapeutics, Marco spent five years at Sarepta Therapeutics as Senior Director of Biology, where he led the development of next generation ASOs for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, programs that are currently in clinical trials. Before Sarepta, he spent 12 years leading scientific projects at Sanofi Genzyme, including the preclinical development of the FDA-approved ASO therapy Spinraza®️ for spinal muscular atrophy, which was done in collaboration with Ionis Pharmaceuticals. At Sanofi Genzyme, he helped develop AAV gene therapies for a variety of neurodegenerative disorders, including spinal muscular atrophy, amyloid lateral sclerosis and Niemann-Pick and Batten disease. He has over 50 peer-reviewed publications and patents.

Marco earned his PhD in Molecular Biology at the State University of New York Stony Brook in 1998 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania prior to joining the biotech industry.