CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced today that it has expanded and developed its management team with new appointments and promotions. The company has appointed Oved Amitay to the newly created position of Vice President, Head of Commercial. In addition, it announced several promotions from within the organization. Specifically, Akshay Vaishnaw, M.D., Ph.D. has been named Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer; he previously held the title of Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer. In addition, Jared Gollob, M.D., has been promoted to Vice President, Clinical Research, from Senior Director, and Lubomir (Lubo) Nechev, Ph.D. has been promoted to Vice President, Process Sciences, from Senior Director.
“Our people and their passion remain key to the success of Alnylam. Accordingly, I am pleased to announce these appointments and promotions, which expand and strengthen our management team as we advance our pipeline of RNAi therapeutics through clinic trials and toward the market,” said John Maraganore, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Alnylam. “We are excited to welcome Oved to the Alnylam team, as he brings deep experience in the commercialization of innovative medicines for the treatment of rare and orphan diseases. We are very pleased to promote Akshay based on his continued excellence in stewardship of Alnylam’s pipeline of RNAi therapeutic product opportunities. Further, we recognize the many excellent accomplishments of Jared and Lubo with their new promotions.”
Before joining Alnylam, Mr. Amitay was Vice President for Strategic Development for the Personalized Genetic Health business unit at Genzyme Corporation, now a Sanofi company. At Genzyme, he led the internal research and development activities for their rare diseases franchise. Prior to this position he was General Manager of the Gaucher Disease and MPS Portfolios at Genzyme, where he was responsible for Cerezyme®, leading it to peak sales of over $1.2 billion. Oved joined Genzyme in 1998 and held positions of increasing responsibility in regulatory affairs, medical marketing, market development, and business development in Europe and the Middle East. Prior to joining Genzyme, he was a staff pharmacologist at Peptor Ltd. and Cambridge NeuroScience, Inc. where he was involved in early stage drug development programs. Oved graduated from the School of Pharmacy in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and completed his graduate studies in Pharmacology at Northeastern University in Boston.
Dr. Vaishnaw joined Alnylam in 2006 and has been responsible for the company’s development organization, including clinical development, clinical operations, regulatory affairs, and pre-clinical development groups, and has been a member of the company’s Management Team since that time. As a result of his work at Alnylam, Akshay has become a world-recognized leader in the research and development of RNAi therapeutic medicines. Prior to Alnylam, he was at Biogen Idec, where he was involved in many aspects of clinical research and business development, including efforts on the approval of alefacept (Amevive™) for psoriasis and in-licensing of BG-12 as a new medicine for multiple sclerosis. Akshay received his M.D. from the University of Wales College of Medicine, UK, and his Ph.D. from the University of London, UK, in Molecular Immunology. He is a Member of the Royal College of Physicians, UK, and received an Executive M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Akshay has published papers in leading scientific journals and authored a number of textbook chapters relating to autoimmune disease.
Dr. Gollob joined Alnylam in 2007 and has been responsible for management of the clinical development organization, in addition to serving in a program leadership role for the company’s ALN-VSP program. Prior to Alnylam, he was at Duke University where he was Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Biologic Therapy Program, with a secondary appointment as Associate Professor of Immunology. He was also concurrently Head of Hematology/Oncology at the Duke VA Medical Center. Jared received his A.B. and M.D. from Columbia University, and then completed his clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Jared is a board certified Medical Oncologist with interests in the immunotherapy of cancer, specifically renal cell carcinoma and melanoma. Previously, he has advised Chiron, Schering-Plough, Bayer, and Novartis on their oncology programs.
Dr. Nechev joined Alnylam in 2004 and has held roles of increasing responsibility in the process development organization during that time, including the development of manufacturing processes for Alnylam pipeline programs. Prior to joining Alnylam, Lubo worked in the process development department at Transgenomic, Inc., now Agilent Technologies. Before that, he was a scientist at Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals Inc., which became Sirna Therapeutics and was acquired by Merck & Co., Inc. in 2006. Lubo received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia, Bulgaria. He conducted his postdoctoral training at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
About RNA Interference (RNAi)
RNAi (RNA interference) is a
revolution in biology, representing a breakthrough in understanding how
genes are turned on and off in cells, and a completely new approach to
drug discovery and development. Its discovery has been heralded as “a
major scientific breakthrough that happens once every decade or so,” and
represents one of the most promising and rapidly advancing frontiers in
biology and drug discovery today which was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize
for Physiology or Medicine. RNAi is a natural process of gene silencing
that occurs in organisms ranging from plants to mammals. By harnessing
the natural biological process of RNAi occurring in our cells, the
creation of a major new class of medicines, known as RNAi therapeutics,
is on the horizon. Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), the molecules that
mediate RNAi and comprise Alnylam’s RNAi therapeutic platform, target
the cause of diseases by potently silencing specific mRNAs, thereby
preventing disease-causing proteins from being made. RNAi therapeutics
have the potential to treat disease and help patients in a fundamentally
new way.
About Alnylam Pharmaceuticals
Alnylam is a biopharmaceutical
company developing novel therapeutics based on RNA interference, or
RNAi. The company is leading the translation of RNAi as a new class of
innovative medicines with a core focus on RNAi therapeutics for the
treatment of genetically defined diseases, including ALN-TTR for the
treatment of transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis (ATTR), ALN-PCS for the
treatment of severe hypercholesterolemia, ALN-HPN for the treatment of
refractory anemia, ALN-APC for the treatment of hemophilia, and ALN-TMP
for the treatment of hemoglobinopathies. As part of its “Alnylam 5x15TM”
strategy, the company expects to have five RNAi therapeutic products for
genetically defined diseases in clinical development, including programs
in advanced stages, on its own or with a partner by the end of 2015.
Alnylam has additional partner-based programs in clinical or development
stages, including ALN-RSV01 for the treatment of respiratory syncytial
virus (RSV) infection, ALN-VSP for the treatment of liver cancers, and
ALN-HTT for the treatment of Huntington’s disease. The company’s
leadership position on RNAi therapeutics and intellectual property have
enabled it to form major alliances with leading companies including
Merck, Medtronic, Novartis, Biogen Idec, Roche, Takeda, Kyowa Hakko
Kirin, and Cubist. In addition, Alnylam and Isis co-founded Regulus
Therapeutics Inc., a company focused on discovery, development, and
commercialization of microRNA therapeutics; Regulus has formed
partnerships with GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi. Alnylam has also formed
Alnylam Biotherapeutics, a division of the company focused on the
development of RNAi technologies for applications in biologics
manufacturing, including recombinant proteins and monoclonal antibodies.
Alnylam’s VaxiRNA™ platform applies RNAi technology to improve the
manufacturing processes for vaccines; GlaxoSmithKline is a collaborator
in this effort. Alnylam scientists and collaborators have published
their research on RNAi therapeutics in over 100 peer-reviewed papers,
including many in the world’s top scientific journals such as Nature,
Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, and Cell. Founded in 2002,
Alnylam maintains headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more
information, please visit www.alnylam.com.
Alnylam Forward-Looking Statements
Various statements in
this release concerning Alnylam’s future expectations, plans and
prospects, including without limitation, statements regarding Alnylam’s
views with respect to the potential for RNAi therapeutics and its
expectations regarding its “Alnylam 5x15” product strategy, constitute
forward-looking statements for the purposes of the safe harbor
provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these
forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors,
including, without limitation, Alnylam’s ability to discover and develop
novel drug candidates, the pre-clinical and clinical results for these
product candidates, which may not support further development of such
product candidates, actions of regulatory agencies, which may affect the
initiation, timing and progress of clinical trials for such product
candidates, obtaining, maintaining and protecting intellectual property,
obtaining regulatory approval for products, competition from others
using technology similar to Alnylam’s and others developing products for
similar uses, and Alnylam’s ability to establish and maintain strategic
business alliances and new business initiatives, as well as those risks
more fully discussed in the “Risk Factors” section of its most recent
quarterly report on Form 10-Q on file with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent
Alnylam’s views only as of today and should not be relied upon as
representing its views as of any subsequent date. Alnylam does not
assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.