Villa-Komaroff Named to TKT Board of Directors

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Lydia Villa-Komaroff, chief operating officer and vice president for research at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, has been named to the board of directors for Transkaryotic Therapies, Inc. (TKT), a Cambridge-based biopharmaceutical company.

Prior to joining Whitehead Institute in 2003, Villa-Komaroff was vice president for research at Northwestern University, where she was responsible for policy formation, strategy design and operational oversight of the research infrastructure. Villa-Komaroff was an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital, and associate director of the Division of Neuroscience at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Early in her career, she was a key member of the team that demonstrated that bacterial cells could produce insulin using genetic engineering techniques. She received her doctorate in cell biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree in biology from Goucher College.

Also named to the board was Dennis Langer, senior vice president of project and portfolio management at GlaxoSmithKline.

“I am confident that Drs. Villa-Komaroff and Langer will give TKT invaluable guidance and strategic vision for the future,” said Michael J. Astrue, president and chief executive officer of TKT.

TKT is a biopharmaceutical company developing therapeutics for the treatment of rare genetic diseases caused by protein deficiencies. 

Adapted from a TKT news release.