First Wave BioPharma, Inc. announced to increase in the size of the Board from five directors to seven directors; and appointed Jack Syage, PhD. as the Company?s President and Chief Operating Officer and as a member of the Board and Chaitan Khosla as a member of the Board. James Sapirstein, the Company?s Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, had served as the Company?s President until the appointment of Dr. Syage.

Jack Syage, PhD, 69, served as the Chief Executive Officer of ImmunogenX from July 2013 until the Closing of the Merger and as a member of the board of directors of ImmunogenX from January 2021 until the Closing of the Merger. Dr. Syage has over 30 years of experience in creating and leading the development of innovative technologies in the analytical instrumentation field. He is regarded as a leading expert in mass spectrometry and trace chemical detection.

Dr. Syage served as CEO and Co-Founder of ImmunogenX, a global leader in the development of treatments for celiac disease, which developed latiglutenase before its combination with First Wave BioPharma. Previously he founded Syagen Technology, Inc. and led its growth culminating in its successful acquisition by French multinational Safran S.A. in 2011. Dr. Syage sits on the Board of Directors of Advanced Telesensors, PhageTech, Analytical Detection, and Appellation Ventures.

He has published over 130 papers, delivered about 100 invited talks, has over 30 U.S. patents issued or pending, and appears on the list of the Most Highly Cited Chemists. His honorary positions include Fellow of the American Physical Society, Visiting Professor at UC Irvine, Visiting Professor at the Université de Paris-Sud, Editorial Board member of the Journal of Physical Chemistry, and invitee to the Nobel Symposium in Chemistry. He has received a Tibbets Award (SBIR) and was recently inducted into the Orange County OC 500 Directory of Influence.

He received BA and PhD degrees from Hamilton College and Brown University, respectively, where he won several academic awards including Best Thesis. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech under Nobel Laureate Ahmed Zewail. Dr. Khosla, 59, has served as a Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Stanford University since 1992 and is founding director of the university?s Innovative Medicines Accelerator.

He served as a member of the board of directors of ImmunogenX from 2021 until the Closing of the Merger. He received his Ph.D. in 1990 at Caltech. After completing postdoctoral studies in 1992, he joined the faculty of Stanford University.

In 2002 he and his collaborators discovered that the immunotoxicity of dietary gluten in celiac disease is causatively correlated to its intestinal proteolytic resistance, a finding that led to the invention of latiglutenase by his laboratory. He has co-authored over 400 peer-reviewed publications and is an inventor on more than 80 issued U.S. patents. Dr. Khosla is an elected member of the American Academy for Arts and Science, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Over the past three decades, he has helped launch and build four biotechnology companies including Kosan Biosciences and Sitari Pharmaceuticals (acquired by GlaxoSmithKline in 2019).