Antheia, a synthetic biology company enabling next-generation plant-inspired medicines, today announced the appointment of Zack McGahey as Chief Operating Officer. McGahey joins the company to operationally oversee its transition from pilot scale to commercial scale manufacturing.

 

"We are thrilled to welcome Zack to the Antheia team at this exciting time in our company's trajectory," said Christina Smolke, CEO at Antheia. "Zack's wealth of experience overseeing manufacturing at some of the most innovative companies worldwide will play an instrumental role in guiding Antheia as it embarks on this next phase of our journey."

 

At Antheia, McGahey will be responsible for all operations functions as the company scales and commercializes its first products. This includes overseeing product manufacturing and quality, both internally and at external manufacturing partners, as well as global supply chain and project management. His depth of experience in operational and leadership roles across  manufacturing, process engineering and tech transfer programs will help accelerate Antheia's growth towards product commercialization.

 

"I am excited to join the Antheia team at this pivotal moment as the company builds out its commercial manufacturing operations," said McGahey. "I've spent much of the last two decades managing critical ramp moments for companies, and I look forward to scaling Antheia's operations and helping the company transform the way essential medicines are made."

 

McGahey has built a career as a leading operations executive for advanced manufacturing companies across the pharmaceutical, synthetic biology, diagnostics and automotive industries. He has extensive leadership experience in the biomanufacturing industry, spanning from R&D and pilot phase to commercial scale operations, across mammalian and bacterial cell lines as well as yeast strains.

 

Prior to joining Antheia, McGahey served as vice president of manufacturing and capex engineering at Zymergen, where he led all manufacturing and capital project management for the company. He also gained experience managing commercial scale facilities operations for Tesla, where he was responsible for managing 10 million square feet of factory, lab and warehouse space to meet aggressive manufacturing milestones for the Model 3 under tight timelines.