Oligomerix Appoints Biopharmaceutical Industry Veteran Cara Cassino, M.D. as Interim President and Chief Executive Officer

BRONX, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oligomerix, Inc., a privately held, clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering the development of novel small molecule therapeutics to address Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and rare neurodegenerative diseases, today announced that Cara Cassino, M.D., has been appointed Interim President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Dr. Cassino has 25 years of clinical drug development and commercialization experience in both large pharma and biotech, with over 25 FDA/EMA drug approvals in a wide range of therapeutic areas. She has held senior leadership roles at Boehringer Ingelheim and Pfizer where she played an important role in the success of the blockbuster respiratory product Spiriva. She later joined Forest Laboratories (now part of Abbvie) as Senior Vice President of Clinical Development at a critical time in the company’s evolution. She subsequently held C-suite positions in biotech, serving as Chief Medical Officer, EVP of Research & Development and Interim Co-CEO at ContraFect Corp, a public biotech, where she led the company‘s successful effort to earn an $86M grant from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). As a highly experienced pharmaceutical industry leader, she brings strategic business experience, a proven track record of portfolio expansion via strategic partnerships and multi-million-dollar M&A deals, as well as a series of successful biotech equity financings totaling over $190M. Dr. Cassino has been a member of the Oligomerix Board of Directors since July 2025.

“We are very pleased to welcome a leader of this caliber, with a depth of clinical development experience. Dr. Cassino joins Oligomerix as Interim President and CEO at a critical time, as the company evolves from a discovery-focused biotech to a clinical-stage drug development organization. Having successfully completed a Phase 1a study of our lead compound (OLX-07010), Dr. Cassino brings tremendous insight, experience and know-how as the company advances OLX-07010 into the next stages of the clinical development,” said Bill Caple, Chairman of Oligomerix.

“I am excited to join Oligomerix as Interim President & CEO and look forward to working with the team to advance OLX-07010 as a novel oral therapeutic with the potential to improve the lives of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other progressive neurodegenerative diseases,” said Dr. Cassino.

About Oligomerix’s Lead Program

OLX-07010 is a highly differentiated oral, self-administered, once-daily investigational drug that has demonstrated an ability to prevent the accumulation of tau protein in multiple animal models and has completed Phase 1a clinical development, demonstrating a favorable safety profile in healthy volunteers. Given the high unmet medical needs for novel, well tolerated and easily administered new agents to treat AD and other neurodegenerative diseases, Oligomerix looks forward to potentially offering patients with AD a new and effective therapeutic option by advancing OLX-07010 through the next stages of clinical development.

About Oligomerix, Inc.

Oligomerix is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing novel, small-molecule inhibitors of protein self-association and accumulation which underpin AD and rare neurodegenerative diseases such as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The company’s headquarters and research laboratories are located at the Ullmann Research Center for Health Sciences within the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

For more information about Oligomerix, please visit our website at https://oligomerix.com/ and follow us on LinkedIn.