A man with short dark hair and light skin wearing a dark blue button-up shirt stands against a turquoise background. He is facing the camera with a neutral expression.

A man with short dark hair and a blue button-up shirt is standing against a teal-colored background. He is balancing a colorful soccer ball, adorned with star patterns, on his open right hand. He gazes directly at the camera with a subtle smile. — When not in the Acuitas workspace, Sean enjoys coaching the Delta Coastal Selects girl’s soccer team.

Sean Semple

Vice President, Preclinical Research

Sean Semple joined Acuitas in 2018 to lead Acuitas’ preclinical programs. He has 30 years of experience in the development of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) therapeutics, having held various positions of increasing responsibility at Arbutus Biopharma, Tekmira Pharmaceuticals and Inex Pharmaceuticals.

While at Inex, Sean invented and developed the practice of using ionizable lipids to formulate nucleic acids in lipid nanoparticles, which has since been widely adopted in the industry and is used in many clinical-stage and marketed LNP products. Later, at Tekmira and Arbutus, he led numerous oligonucleotide-LNP and siRNA-LNP nonclinical programs into clinical development in multiple therapeutic areas, including oncology, antiviral therapies and hypercholesterolemia, and gained significant insights into the clinical translation of LNP therapeutics.

At Acuitas, in collaboration with nonclinical colleagues at BioNTech and Pfizer, Sean was actively involved in the nonclinical development of COMIRNATY®, the mRNA-LNP vaccine for COVID-19.