Business
Ultragenyx Appoints Eric Olson as Chief Business Officer and Executive Vice President
NOVATO, Calif., Sept. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc. (NASDAQ: RARE) today announced the appointment of Eric Olson as chief
About this update from Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"NOVATO, Calif., Sept. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc. (NASDAQ: RARE) today announced the appointment of Eric Olson as chief business officer (CBO) and executive vice president effective September 22, 2025, following the planned retirement of Thomas Kassberg. Mr. Olson will be responsible for leading the company’s business development, corporate development and alliance management functions. “We thank Tom for his 14 years of impactful contributions to Ultragenyx, including transformative business deals that helped build the largest clinical pipeline in rare disease; expanded our reach to patients with fatty acid oxidation diseases, X-linked hypophosphatemia, osteogenesis imperfecta, and Angelman syndrome; and supported our entry into gene therapy,” said Emil D. Kakkis, M.D., Ph.D., chief executive officer and president of Ultragenyx. “As we look ahead, Eric’s expertise leading business development and strategic partnering is ideally suited to support our mission to bring forward new therapies to address rare diseases that have never before been treated.” Mr. Olson has nearly two decades of experience in the biopharma industry as a business development leader, where he has contributed to the advancement of multiple investigational therapies including extensive experience in rare diseases. He has led or supported more than $15 billion in both buy-side and sell-side aggregate transaction value. Before joining Ultragenyx, he served as CBO at Stoke Therapeutics, where he led all aspects of Stoke’s landmark ex-North America partnership with Biogen for zorevunersen. Prior to Stoke, Mr. Olson served as vice president, head of business development, at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, where his business development accomplishments included the $2.8 billion co-development and co-commercialization collaboration with Roche to develop zilebesiran, a novel siNRA for hypertension and the $2 billion strategic financing with Blackstone. Before that, he was vice president and head of Rare Disease and Immunology Global Business Development at Takeda as a result of Takeda’s acquisition of Shire plc. Earlier in his career, he held various business development, venture capital and strategy roles of increasing responsibility at Genzyme Corporation. Prior to joining industry, he was an investment banking analyst and associate, as well...