Longeveron Inc. announced that Roger Hajjar, MD, Director of the Gene and Cell Therapy Institute at Mass General Brigham, has been elected to the Longeveron Board of Directors. Dr. Hajjar is an internationally recognized scientist whose cardiac gene therapy discoveries have spurred clinical trials for heart failure, whose methodologies for cardiac-directed gene transfer are currently utilized by investigators around the world, and who was appointed as the inaugural director of the Gene and Cell Therapy Institute. Dr. Hajjar was elected at the Company?s recent Annual Meeting of Stockholders.

Dr. Hajjar?s addition to the Board is part of the planned Board refreshment process at Longeveron, with a focus on bringing in new, relevant, experienced leaders over time to add to the knowledge base and experience provided by current and departing Board members. Dr. Hajjar is an internationally renowned scientific leader in the field of cardiac gene therapy. His laboratory had validated a number of cardiac targets that led to the initiation and completion under his guidance of First-in-Human gene therapy trials in patients with heart failure.

He has initiated multiple clinical trials in gene therapy for a variety of cardiovascular diseases. He has authored over 500 publications and has received numerous awards for his achievements in the field of cardiac gene therapy. Dr. Hajjar received his Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and his Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology.

He completed his training in internal medicine, cardiology, heart failure/cardiac transplantation, and research fellowships at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston where he then directed the Cardiology Laboratory of Integrative Physiology and Imaging. From 2007 to 2018, Dr. Hajjar was the Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center, and the Arthur & Janet C. Ross Professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. From 2019 to 2022, Dr. Hajjar was involved in the creation of a number of gene therapy companies at Flagship Pioneering, Cambridge, MA and he was the head of R&D at Ring Therapeutics.