Twist Bioscience hires general counsel

Nasdaq-listed Twist Bioscience Corporation has appointed Dennis Cho as senior vice president, general counsel and chief ethics and compliance officer.

Cho was most recently assistant general counsel at CytomX Therapeutics, where he was department head for all deals and contracts in addition to taking the day-to-day lead on compliance and other legal subject matters. Before working at CytomX, Cho was the lead transactional attorney on antibody-related licenses and collaborations, major commercial agreements and combination trials at Seattle Genetics.

Earlier in his career he spent nine years at Celgene as the company’s lead West Coast attorney, supervising business transactions including in and out licenses, options, collaborations and M&A agreements, as well as holding legal responsibility for Celgene’s alliances, equity investments and machine learning initiative. He also held general counsel roles at four other private and public companies.

Twist is a synthetic biology and genomics company that has developed a DNA synthesis platform to industrialize biological engineering.

‘Dennis is a giant of biopharma deals with a proven track record in, and commitment to, the biotech industry. He has provided counsel on all types of transactions and collaborations, which makes him ideal for the role at Twist,’ Emily Leproust, CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience, says in a statement. ‘We look forward to having his guidance as Twist continues to grow and expand.’