Hesperos Appoints Gilberto (Ybet) Villacorta as Executive Vice President for Business Development

— Hesperos participating in panel session and presenting company overview at the BIO International Convention (BIO Digital) —

ORLANDO, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Hesperos Inc., pioneers of the Human-on-a-Chip® in vitro system, today announced the appointment of Gilberto M. (Ybet) Villacorta, Ph.D., J.D., as Executive Vice President for Business Development. He was previously Hesperos’ Corporate Secretary. Bringing decades of corporate governance experience, Dr. Villacorta has worked with both biotech startups and large pharmaceutical corporations in developing and enforcing intellectual property rights to medical products, systems and services.

“With such a decorated career in the healthcare industry, we are excited to have Ybet head our business development endeavors as we continue to grow our business. With his strong network in the pharmaceutical industry and experience with product partnering, licensing and commercialization, I am confident Ybet will help expand our customer base,” said Michael L. Shuler, Ph.D., CEO of Hesperos.

Previously, Dr. Villacorta counseled multiple biopharmaceutical companies, including Fortress Biotech, Mustang Bio and Checkpoint Therapeutics. He co-founded Tomopath Inc., a Boston-based contract research and consulting company that develops proprietary in vivo imaging biomarkers to help biopharmaceutical companies de-risk drug development. He also co-founded business accelerator TrustedElement LLC and healthcare company PL&Y LLC. Dr. Villacorta received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his J.D. from Fordham University.

“Hesperos has brought together a world-class team of biologists, surface chemists and engineers who are transforming the drug discovery and development process with the goal of reducing the need for extensive preclinical animal studies and the lengthy time and expense associated with drug development,” said Dr. Villacorta. “I look forward to bringing my experience in corporate strategy and business development to help Hesperos push the boundaries in modeling human organ systems in vitro,” Dr. Villacorta added.

Hesperos also announced today that James “J” Hickman, Ph.D., Chief Scientist of Hesperos, will be participating in a panel discussion and presenting a company overview at the BIO International Conference (BIO Digital), which will run from June 8-12. Both will be available on-demand.

Dr. Hickman will be part of the panel “Disruptive Thinking: New Tools To Transform Addiction Treatment.” The session will cover how organ-on-a-chip systems could accelerate R&D and enable better preclinical testing procedures without the use of animal studies for opioid misuse and addiction. For more information, please visit: https://www.bio.org/events/bio-digital/sessions/620919.

Additionally, Dr. Hickman will be providing a company overview describing its Human-on-a-Chip® system, a multiorgan microchip platform technology in a serum-free recirculating medium which enables drug development to be more effective while reducing costs. For more information, please visit: https://www.bio.org/events/bio-digital/sessions/693689.

About Hesperos

Hesperos, Inc. is a leading provider of Human-on-a-Chip® microfluidic systems to characterize an individual’s biology. Founders Michael L. Shuler and James J. Hickman have been at the forefront of every major scientific discovery in this realm, from individual organ-on-a-chip constructs to fully functional, interconnected multi-organ systems. With a mission to revolutionize toxicology testing as well as efficacy evaluation for drug discovery, the company has created pumpless platforms with serum-free cellular mediums that allow multi-organ system communication and integrated computational PKPD modeling of live physiological responses utilizing functional readouts from neurons, cardiac, muscle, barrier tissues and neuromuscular junctions as well as responses from liver, pancreas and barrier tissues. Created from human stem cells, the fully human systems are the first in vitro solutions to accurately predict in vivo functions without the use of animal models. More information is available at www.hesperosinc.com.

Hesperos and Human-on-a-Chip are trademarks of Hesperos Inc. All other brands may be trademarks of their respective holders.

Contacts

Michelle Linn

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774-696-3803