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SYDNEY, Feb. 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Infor, the Industry Cloud Complete company, today announced the appointment of Geoff Thomas as Senior Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) to strengthen Infor's commitment to delivering exceptional value and tailored solutions to customers across the region. Based in Sydney, Thomas will focus on enhancing customer experiences and driving innovation in key markets including Japan, Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), Southeast & North Asia (SENA), and India. Under his leadership to accelerate growth, Infor will focus on deepening local expertise, expanding its trusted partner network, and providing customers with world-class support and industry-specific cloud technologies designed to help their businesses thrive.
Thomas has decades of experience building high-performance teams across Asia Pacific and helping customers drive breakthrough business outcomes. Prior to joining Infor, he spent six years growing Qlik's business in APJ. Thomas also held senior leadership positions at Microsoft, Juniper Networks, Polycom and OneLogin.
"The APJ market is instrumental to Infor's overall strategy and home to many dynamic businesses driving technological innovation and growth. We are dedicated to investing in our customers for long-term growth and will continue to invest in top talents, ecosystem and innovative cloud solutions that empower our customers to accelerate digital transformation and achieve long-term success in this fast-evolving region," said Wolfgang Kobek, Executive Vice President and General Manager, International Business, Infor. "Geoff is an exceptional leader with deep experience in the APJ market, and the ideal person to help our customers in the region thrive. His customer-first approach, coupled with his extensive grasp of the APJ business and ecosystem, will help Infor deliver superior value to organisations quickly, and improve customer outcomes."
Thomas is off to a fast start, and has made two new appointments in his leadership team -- naming Sydney-based Aidan Brecknell to lead the charge for ANZ as Vice President and Managing Director. Victor Ng takes on an expanded scope as Vice President and Managing Director for SENA, a region that includes ASEAN, Greater China and Korea. Victor is based in Singapore.
"Infor's dynamic and fast-growing customers rely on our solutions to make their business more resilient, efficient and innovative," Thomas said. "I am passionate about the APJ market as it represents a huge opportunity to help organisations in the region achieve their strategic goals and unlock real business value through industry-specific innovation. I am confident we have the right team and resources in place to help our customers succeed."
Infor has customers in 200 countries: these include 10 of the top 10 F&B manufacturers, 8 of the top 10 automotive manufacturers, 11 of the top 15 industrial manufacturers, and 15 of the top 23 supply chain leaders. APJ customers include Sealord, Riverina Water, NCC Limited, My Food Bag, CJD Equipment, Vallen Asia and Spykar Lifestyles, amongst others.
About Infor
Infor is a global leader in business cloud software, specialised by industry. We develop complete solutions for our focus industries. Infor's mission-critical enterprise applications and services are designed to deliver sustainable operational advantages with security and faster time to value. Over 60,000 organisations in more than 175 countries rely on Infor's 17,000 employees to help achieve their business goals. As a Koch company, our financial strength, ownership structure, and long-term view empower us to foster enduring, mutually beneficial relationships with our customers. Visit www.infor.com.
Media contact:
Phyllis Tan
Infor Asia Pacific & Japan
Phyllis.tan@infor.com
+65 9799 9133
SYDNEY, Feb. 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Infor, the Industry Cloud Complete company, today announced the appointment of Geoff Thomas as Senior Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) to strengthen Infor's commitment to delivering exceptional value and tailored solutions to customers across the region. Based in Sydney, Thomas will focus on enhancing customer experiences and driving innovation in key markets including Japan, Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), Southeast & North Asia (SENA), and India. Under his leadership to accelerate growth, Infor will focus on deepening local expertise, expanding its trusted partner network, and providing customers with world-class support and industry-specific cloud technologies designed to help their businesses thrive.
Thomas has decades of experience building high-performance teams across Asia Pacific and helping customers drive breakthrough business outcomes. Prior to joining Infor, he spent six years growing Qlik's business in APJ. Thomas also held senior leadership positions at Microsoft, Juniper Networks, Polycom and OneLogin.
"The APJ market is instrumental to Infor's overall strategy and home to many dynamic businesses driving technological innovation and growth. We are dedicated to investing in our customers for long-term growth and will continue to invest in top talents, ecosystem and innovative cloud solutions that empower our customers to accelerate digital transformation and achieve long-term success in this fast-evolving region," said Wolfgang Kobek, Executive Vice President and General Manager, International Business, Infor. "Geoff is an exceptional leader with deep experience in the APJ market, and the ideal person to help our customers in the region thrive. His customer-first approach, coupled with his extensive grasp of the APJ business and ecosystem, will help Infor deliver superior value to organisations quickly, and improve customer outcomes."
Thomas is off to a fast start, and has made two new appointments in his leadership team -- naming Sydney-based Aidan Brecknell to lead the charge for ANZ as Vice President and Managing Director. Victor Ng takes on an expanded scope as Vice President and Managing Director for SENA, a region that includes ASEAN, Greater China and Korea. Victor is based in Singapore.
"Infor's dynamic and fast-growing customers rely on our solutions to make their business more resilient, efficient and innovative," Thomas said. "I am passionate about the APJ market as it represents a huge opportunity to help organisations in the region achieve their strategic goals and unlock real business value through industry-specific innovation. I am confident we have the right team and resources in place to help our customers succeed."
Infor has customers in 200 countries: these include 10 of the top 10 F&B manufacturers, 8 of the top 10 automotive manufacturers, 11 of the top 15 industrial manufacturers, and 15 of the top 23 supply chain leaders. APJ customers include Sealord, Riverina Water, NCC Limited, My Food Bag, CJD Equipment, Vallen Asia and Spykar Lifestyles, amongst others.
About Infor
Infor is a global leader in business cloud software, specialised by industry. We develop complete solutions for our focus industries. Infor's mission-critical enterprise applications and services are designed to deliver sustainable operational advantages with security and faster time to value. Over 60,000 organisations in more than 175 countries rely on Infor's 17,000 employees to help achieve their business goals. As a Koch company, our financial strength, ownership structure, and long-term view empower us to foster enduring, mutually beneficial relationships with our customers. Visit www.infor.com.
Media contact:
Phyllis Tan
Infor Asia Pacific & Japan
Phyllis.tan@infor.com
+65 9799 9133
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Infor appoints Geoff Thomas to lead Asia Pacific and Japan
Infor appoints Geoff Thomas to lead Asia Pacific and Japan
Infor appoints Geoff Thomas to lead Asia Pacific and Japan
HANGZHOU, China, April 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A team led by principal investigators Bobo Dang and Ting Zhou at Westlake University/Westlake Laboratory reported in Science a high-throughput platform for engineering fast-acting covalent protein therapeutics. Their work, titled "A high-throughput selection system for fast-acting covalent protein drugs," opens new avenues for next-generation biologics.
Covalent small-molecule drugs have shown great success in cancer therapy by forming irreversible bonds with their targets. This has inspired efforts to extend covalent strategies to protein therapeutics, especially engineered miniproteins. However, their development is limited by a kinetic mismatch: Miniproteins are rapidly cleared in vivo, whereas covalent bond formation is typically slow. In addition, high-throughput platforms for systematically optimizing covalent protein reactivity have been lacking.
To address this challenge, the researchers proposed that precise spatial positioning of chemical warheads within protein scaffolds could enable molecular preorganization, thereby accelerating covalent bond formation without increasing intrinsic reactivity (Fig. 1).
Based on this concept, the team developed a high-throughput platform that combines yeast surface display with chemoselective protein modification to screen diverse crosslinkers and millions of protein variants. By optimizing warhead placement and the local chemical environment, the platform enables rapid and irreversible target engagement.
Using this platform, the researchers developed a covalent antagonist targeting PD-L1, termed IB101. Structural analysis revealed that IB101 forms a defined binding pocket that precisely positions the warhead in a reactive conformation, greatly accelerating covalent bond formation. Functionally, IB101 effectively blocks the PD-1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint pathway and demonstrates strong antitumor activity in mouse models. Notably, despite its short in vivo half-life, IB101 achieves durable target engagement and tumor suppression, outperforming conventional antibody-based therapies under comparable conditions.
The platform was further applied to cytokine engineering, leading to the development of a covalent IL-18 variant, IB201. This engineered cytokine rapidly forms a covalent interaction with its receptor, enhancing signaling strength and duration. In vivo studies showed that IB201 induces potent antitumor immune responses without detectable systemic toxicity. These results highlight the potential of covalent engineering to improve the efficacy and safety of cytokine-based therapies.
Beyond immunotherapy targets, the platform was also applied to develop a covalent inhibitor targeting the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2. This molecule achieves durable viral neutralization, demonstrating the versatility of the approach across different therapeutic modalities.
This study establishes a general strategy for engineering fast-acting covalent protein therapeutics. By enabling covalent bond formation on timescales compatible with rapid in vivo clearance, the platform overcomes a fundamental limitation in the field.
These findings provide a new framework for designing biologics with both rapid kinetics and sustained target engagement, with broad implications for cancer immunotherapy, antiviral therapy, and beyond.
Media Contact:
Chi Zhang
media@westlake.edu.cn
+86-15659837873
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Fast-Acting Covalent Protein Drugs From a New High-Throughput Platform
