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Built by cell-therapy operators

From multiplex design to patient dosing, every critical step is led by someone who has done it before.

KiraGen brings together cell therapy, multiplex gene editing, tumor biology, computation, manufacturing, and translation around one product strategy.

Our team

Aaron Edwards, MS, MBA

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Aaron leads KiraGen's strategy, financing, partnerships, and product vision. Before founding KiraGen, he led in vitro biology for BEAM-201 at Beam Therapeutics and spent more than a decade advancing engineered T-cell and gene-editing programs across bluebird bio, Beam, and other biotechnology companies. He holds Harvard's MS/MBA in Biotechnology and is a Termeer and Blavatnik Fellow.

Selected experience includes bluebird bio, Beam Therapeutics, Harvard Business School, the Termeer Foundation, and the Blavatnik Family Foundation

Ryan Murray, PhD

Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Ryan leads KiraGen's research strategy and development of KGEN-001. His work spans T-cell engineering, multiplex gene editing, synthetic biology, and the mechanisms tumors use to suppress immune function. Before KiraGen, he advanced engineered cell-therapy programs at bluebird bio and Beam Therapeutics. His doctoral research on overlapping, non-redundant tumor suppression pathways was published in Nature Communications.

Selected experience includes bluebird bio, Beam Therapeutics, and Northeastern University

Tessa Green, PhD

Head of Immunoinformatics

Tessa leads KiraLOGIC and KiraGen's computational strategy. She developed scPerturb, a statistical framework for perturbation analysis published in Nature Methods, and previously built single-cell and machine-learning tools at Harvard Medical School. At KiraGen, she connects human biology, exact-product multiplex data, and experimental design to prioritize which architectures the lab builds next.

Selected experience includes MIT and Harvard Medical School

Scientific & clinical advisors

Leaders who have helped advance GBM CAR-T and allogeneic cell therapy.

Donald M. O'Rourke, MD

John Templeton, Jr., MD Professor in Neurosurgery, University of Pennsylvania

Director, Glioblastoma Translational Center of Excellence · Director, Human Brain Tumor Tissue Bank

Donald M. O'Rourke, MD, is a neurosurgeon-scientist and a leader in translating cellular immunotherapy for glioblastoma. His laboratory created the dual-target EGFR/IL13Rα2 CAR-T used in Penn's recurrent GBM clinical program, where cells were delivered directly into the cerebrospinal fluid. His team has also helped establish patient-derived GBM organoids as a translational tool for connecting CAR-T activity with patient-level CSF and imaging readouts.

Advises KiraGen on recurrent GBM and CNS clinical translation.

Penn Medicine

Devon J. Shedlock, PhD

Former Chief Scientific Officer, Cell Therapy, Poseida Therapeutics

Former Associate Director, T-Cell Engineering Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania

Devon J. Shedlock, PhD, is a cell-therapy executive and scientist with deep experience developing gene-engineered, allogeneic CAR-T products. He joined Poseida Therapeutics as its first employee and later served as Chief Scientific Officer, Cell Therapy, helping build its non-viral, T stem cell memory-rich CAR-T platform and pipeline before Poseida's acquisition by Roche. Earlier, he served as Associate Director of the T-Cell Engineering Laboratory in Carl June's group at the University of Pennsylvania.

Advises KiraGen on healthy-donor, gene-edited CAR-T development.

Poseida Therapeutics, acquired by Roche

Built in Boston

Close to the science and the people moving it forward.

Tufts Launchpad | BioLabs

75 Kneeland Street

Boston, MA 02111

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