Selexis SA, a JSR Life Sciences Company, has promoted Yemi Onakunle, Ph.D., to the position of chief business officer. In this new and expanded role, Dr. Onakunle will relocate to Selexis headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland and will lead all corporate and business development activities, reporting to chief executive officer Igor Fisch, PhD. 

 

Dr. Onakunle joined Selexis in 2012 as vice president of strategic and market development. In 2019, he was promoted to senior vice president, licensing and business development, leading a team of professionals in the Northeast and Western regions of the U.S. Under his leadership, Selexis has successfully partnered with many companies in the U.S. territory.

Dr. Onakunle previously served as director of commercial development at Diosynth RTP Inc. and associate director of business development at Lonza Custom Manufacturing – organizations that provide process development and cGMP manufacturing services in mammalian and microbial production platforms. More recently, he was head of sales and marketing at Bachem Americas Inc., a contract manufacturing organization that focuses on peptides and complex organic molecules.  

“Yemi has a great knowledge base in both the cell line development and contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) market segments. In his previous role at Selexis, he has been able to secure new business and continuously grow our current partner relationships,” said Dr. Fisch. “His strong industry experience, as both a scientist as well as a cell line development and CDMO expert, enables him to intimately understand our partners’ challenges in the development of biologics. Furthermore, Yemi understands what’s at stake from a business perspective and this makes him a standout professional in our industry. As part of JSR Life Sciences, we deliver a fully integrated biologics development package with KBI Biopharma and Yemi will thus add an incredible strength to the entire group. I am incredibly pleased to promote him to this expanded role.”