Bryan Kim

Dr. Kim is a co-founder and CEO/President for Verismo Therapeutics. He has over 17 years of experience in building and operating biopharmaceutical companies from start-up to publicly traded biopharmaceutical and revenue generating CMO companies.

Dr. Kim was one of the starting members at VGX Pharmaceuticals, a spinout from University of Pennsylvania in 2005. He headed the corporate development and brought in Needham & Co. to complete a merger with Inovio Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: INO) in 2009. He led a series of funding that resulted in more than $20M and led to Phase I and II clinical trials for 4 DNA-vaccine pipelines in the U.S. In 2013, Inovio signed a global licensing deal with Roche for its DNA-vaccine-based pipelines. Dr. Kim was a co-founder/CEO for GeneOne Life Sciences (former VGX International), a KOSPI-listed biopharmaceutical company in Korea. He orchestrated the public company acquisition and initiated a new drug development division within the company in 2005. As a global leader in DNA vaccine, the company completed the first-ever preventive DNA vaccine Phase 1 clinical trials in Asia. He led a series of public fundings in a total of $38M and structured numerous transactions, including in- and out-licensing of pipelines with the U.S., E.U., and Asian companies. In 2008, GeneOne acquired a DNA vaccine CMO company in Houston, and as a new CEO, Dr. Kim led the company’s restructuring and expansions, successfully built new marketing teams, and implemented strategies. The company doubled its manufacturing capacity with a series of investments from the partners. In 2010, the revenues were quadrupled (4x) and achieved its first profit. Inovio and GeneOne were at $3.41B combined in market capitalization as of 12/01/2020. Dr. Kim was named Forbes Korea’s CEO of the year in 2010 and Fortunes Korea’s Best CEOs in 2011. He placed GeneOne in the KOSPI 200 index in 2008. Prior to joining Inovio, Dr. Kim was a clinical associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Dental Medicine. He received a DMD from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Irvine.