Robert Johnson

Rob has more than 25 years of industry experience and joins Kesmalea after serving as Chief Executive Officer of Adrestia Therapeutics, a leader in the field of synthetic rescue that was acquired by global biopharma Insmed in 2023. Following the acquisition, Rob served as a Senior Vice President and Site Head (Cambridge) for Insmed, leading the discovery and development of new synthetic rescue drugs for genetically driven diseases.

Prior to Adrestia, Johnson was co-founder and Chief Business Officer of Affinia Therapeutics, a Boston-based gene therapy company engineering next-generation AAV capsids. Affinia’s Series A was backed by noted life sciences investors NEA, Atlas and F-Prime, and was followed by a $1.6 billion strategic alliance with Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

Prior to Affinia, in 2009 Johnson co-founded and was Managing Partner at Alacrita, a multinational biotech and pharmaceutical strategy consulting firm. While working at Alacrita, Rob also founded Foothold America, a fast-growing facilitator of market entry into the U.S. for the life sciences and other industries. He began his career at Onyvax, a 3i and SR One portfolio company developing allogeneic whole cell cancer vaccines.

Rob has a degree in Molecular Cell Biology from the University of Nottingham, UK.