Aaron Tward

Akouos, Inc. is a precision genetic medicine company, which engages in the development of precision genetic medicines to restore and preserve hearing in genetically-defined patient populations. The firm's lead product candidate, AK-OTOF, is a gene therapy for the treatment of hearing loss due to mutations in the OTOF gene. It develops targeted adeno-associated viral vector based gene therapies for sensorineural hearing loss, which results from dysfunction or damage to sensory cells and nerve fibers of the inner ear. The company was founded by Emmanuel J. Simons, William F. Sewell, Richard H. Smith, Luk H. Vandenberghe, and Michael J. McKenna on March 7, 2016 and is headquartered in Boston, MA.

Affinia Therapeutics, Inc. is a preclinical stage company, which engages in the research and development of gene therapy. It offers Affinia Rationally-designed Therapies (ART) platform, which develops novel therapies, focusing on the key components of a gene therapy: capsids, which are the outer shells of a virus used to package the genetic code to treat a disease; promoters, which control how the cells read the genetic code that is delivered; and manufacturing approaches, which determine the quality and cost of potential medicines. The company was founded by Luk Vandenberghe, Botond Roska, and Aaron Tward in 2019 and is headquartered in Waltham, MA.