Abingworth appoints Jayson Punwani as Partner

London, UK, 8 November 2021 – Abingworth, a leading international life sciences investor, today announced the further strengthening of its investment team with the appointment of Jayson Punwani, PhD, MBA as Partner. Jayson will be based at the firm’s Menlo Park, CA office. He will work with the transatlantic team across all locations, actively seeking new opportunities and supporting existing investments in innovative private and public companies, at all stages of development, as well as those focused on clinical co-development. 
Jayson has more than 10 years’ experience in venture capital, gained at Takeda Ventures Inc. (TVI) and Pappas Capital. Most recently, as Senior Partner at TVI, Jayson was an active member of the investment team, responsible for the identification, evaluation, execution, and management of strategic investments in private biopharma companies including Armagen, Coho Therapeutics, Palleon Pharmaceuticals, StrideBio, VelosBio and Xilio Therapeutics.  He served as a Board Director of these companies and was a co-founder of Coho. Jayson also has significant startup leadership experience, serving as interim CEO and Strategic Advisor to the Board for Coho and Vertuis. He started his career as a research scientist in the cardiovascular drug discovery group at Bristol Myers Squibb.
Jayson received his PhD in Biology from the University of Utah and an MBA from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. 
Kurt von Emster, Managing Partner, said: “I am delighted to welcome Jayson to the team. He brings leadership experience in start-ups, backed by solid experience in life sciences venture capital, deal-making, company creation and development, which will be extremely valuable to support the continued success of Abingworth’s transatlantic investment strategy. He has a very successful track record with two recent exits including VelosBio (acquired by Merck/MSD) and Xilio (listed on NASDAQ). We are seeing many exciting new opportunities following the recent closing of our ABV 8 venture fund and ACCD 2 clinical co-development fund earlier this year and are very pleased to have attracted high quality and experienced people, such as Jayson, into our investment team in the US and UK.”
“I am very much looking forward to joining the team at Abingworth and to being part of a firm with such an outstanding track record in the life sciences industry. I am eager to bring my experience to help continue the firm’s momentum in identifying, growing and realising new investment opportunities based on world-leading science and its potential to deliver new therapies for patients,” added Jayson Punwani.