Karen Kozarsky ’77 Recognized As Woman of Distinction by Philadelphia Business Journal

Karen Kozarsky ‘77 was recently named a 2021 Philadelphia Business Journal Woman of Distinction. She is Founder & Chief Scientific Officer at SwanBio Therapeutics, a four-year old gene therapy company focused on developing gene therapies for neurological disorders.

The company has grown quickly to over 50 employees with lab space in Philadelphia. Karen drives the firm’s scientific strategy. “We’ve built our company around using a gene therapy to treat an inherited neurological disorder called Adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN),” she said. “AMN is X-linked which means it primarily affects young men, but it does also affect women.”

People with AMN develop weakness and loss of balance in their lower limbs and most eventually end up in a wheelchair. They also experience many other life changing symptoms.

“What we are doing is delivering a normal copy of the gene to the important tissues of the body to treat this disorder so those cells can make the normal protein to halt or delay the course of this disease,” said Karen. “For this particular disease, the main  target is the spinal cord.”

SwanBio hopes that they will be able to apply learnings from this work to disorders in other parts of the body.

Karen, who grew up in Cinnaminson, enjoyed her time at MFS on the field hockey and tennis teams and, not surprisingly, fondly recalls biology courses, specifically her 11th grade Genetics class (taught by Donna Goodwin) – a course that spurred her interest in biology. She also expressed great appreciation for English class with the late Louise Morgan who “helped her understand and enjoy Shakespeare.”

Karen earned a B.S. in Biology from Amherst College and a Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After 10 years of postdoctoral research work at Penn and the University of Michigan, Karen served in senior roles with GlaxoSmithKline and then REGENXBIO Inc. before establishing Vector BioPartners, a consultancy that was a resource for gene therapy expertise, specializing in preclinical and translational development.

When recalling her MFS experience Karen points to the “moral center” provided by the school. “Respecting that people are different and honoring those differences is something that I’ve taken with me throughout my life,” she said. “Nothing was discouraged, ever. I was able to work on the assumption that males and females were on equal footing and that hasn’t always been true in later stages in life. It wasn’t until I left that I fully appreciated the experience I had at Moorestown Friends.”

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