KYAN Therapeutics Inc. (“KYAN”), a frontier biotech company with a novel drug-dose combination optimization platform, Optim.AI, has appointed Hugo Saavedra as Chief Executive Officer effective on January 1, 2022. Hugo also joins the Board of Directors effective immediately.
Hugo has extensive leadership experiences across industries from consumer goods to consulting to pharma and a strong track record of accelerating businesses. He is an energetic leader adept at creating clear vision and building successful teams to rally against a common goal. Hugo is originally from Brazil but has lived and worked across the United States, Latin America, and Asia over the last 20+ years.
“It is a huge privilege to join KYAN at this time. There has been lot of great work on laying the foundation to build our technology platforms, numerous publications, and our latest clinical developments for Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. There are still many unmet needs for physicians seeking the appropriate treatment for each of their cancer patients and we are working to close the gap left by precision medicine solutions that fail to cover 95% of those unmet needs.”
Most recently, Hugo was the Chief Commercial Officer at Hello Health Group, a digital healthcare start-up operating across 9 markets. Under his leadership, HHG established the regional office in Singapore and country teams across SEA/TW/IN, tripled the revenue, and developed strong processes and governance for the business and teams as it quickly expanded.
Previously, Hugo was the Regional General Manager for Mundipharma in Latin America. He led a profitable turnaround of the region by expanding its product portfolio through new launches and strategic partnerships in Oncology, Pain, and Ophthalmology. Notably, Hugo established partnerships with Caris Life Sciences to launch their precision medicine solution in Thailand, Mexico, and Brazil.
Hugo received his MBA from Thunderbird University and graduated from the TGM Executive Management program from INSEAD Business School.