Les Miranda is the Chief Scientific Officer at Prellis Biologics. With more than 25 years of experience in discovering best or first-in-class molecules and driving their transformation into disease-modifying medicines. He brings expertise in the discovery and engineering of peptide, protein, antibody, oligonucleotide, and small molecule modalities as mono- or multi-specific hybrid therapeutic entities. Additional expertise covers analytical chemistry, structural biology, RNA-based screening, pharmacokinetics, laboratory automation, bioinformatic technologies, GMP release & stability testing of early-stage clinical assets, and CMC technical operations through first-in-human dosing.

Prior to Prellis Biologics, Les spent two decades as Executive Director of Research (Therapeutic Discovery) and Process Development at Amgen Inc. During that time, he played a key role as the leader and overarching scientific architect of Amgen’s hybrid modality department, fusing science and technology to build and nurture innovative teams and platforms to deliver impactful hybrid therapeutic candidates across metabolic disease, hematology/oncology, neurobiology, immunology and inflammation. He also worked on transforming molecules into medicines through leadership of Amgen’s Pre-Pivotal Attribute Sciences function, advancing >30 entities in Amgen’s polymodal portfolio from discovery stage technical-readiness assessment for candidate selection to >20 IND filings with the FDA. Discovery highlights include: inventorship of MariTide (AMG 133), an anti-obesity bispecific currently in Phase 2 development; development of Amgen’s proprietary oligonucleotide platform and portfolio strategy culminating in the identification of multiple siRNA candidates and the pre-clinical acquisition of olpasiran (AMG 890), lipoprotein(a) targeting siRNA currently in Phase 3 development; and supporting the identification & development of marketed products, Parsabiv® (etelcalcetide), Aimovig® (erenumab) and Lumakras® (sotorasib).

Earlier in his career, he served as Associate Director of technology development and portfolio advancement at Gryphon Therapeutics Inc., a start-up focused on the precision engineering of protein therapeutics. He obtained a doctorate in peptide & protein chemistry from the University of Queensland and is the recipient of the Australian Cornforth medal. Les was a postdoctoral fellow at the Carlsberg Laboratory with Professor Morten Meldal, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022.