Caldan Therapeutics, a spin-out company from the Universities of Glasgow and Southern Denmark, which specialises in developing novel therapeutics targeting free fatty acid receptors for the treatment of metabolic disease, including Type 2 Diabetes, is pleased to announce the following appointments:
Dr Frank M Armstrong as Non-Executive Chairman
Frank brings extensive experience of growing organisations across all aspects of the current collaborative pharma environment.
He has been non-executive chairman of AIM listed Summit plc (LSE: SUMM) since June 2013 and also for the last year at RedX Pharma, a company which listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2015. He has also previously held Chief Executive roles with five biotechnology companies (public and private) one of which was Fulcrum Pharma, an AIM-listed Professional Services Company that was sold to Private Equity Investors in 2009.
In the past Frank led Medical Science and Innovation (MSI) at Merck Serono and previously was Head of Worldwide Product Development at Bayer and Senior Vice President of Medical Research and Communications Group at Zeneca. He is also currently the Chairman of Xceleron and Faron Pharmaceuticals and is a Non-Executive Director of Actino Pharma, Juniper Pharmaceuticals Inc (formerly Columbia Laboratores Inc) and Mereo Biopharma. He is a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Healthcare Royalty Partners and is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.
Dr Philip Boyd as Chief Financial Officer
Phil has experience in both private and public SME life science companies. Phil was CFO of Syntaxin from its early stages following spin out from HPA, Porton Down through to the company’s acquisition by Ipsen in July 2013. Since then he has run his own CFO consultancy, PhiGi Associates Ltd, and acted as CFO for AIM-listed Tiziana Pharmaceuticals plc (2014-2015). Phil is currently CFO at private life science companies Oxford BioDynamics and Enterprise Therapeutics. Prior to Syntaxin he was UK Finance Director of Evotec AG (2001-2007) and CFO of Cambridge Discovery Chemistry (1999-2001). He also served as Chairman, Finance and Taxation Advisory Committee, of the BIA (2009-2014) and on the OBN Board since 2009. His financial skills as a qualified management account are underpinned by a BSc in Biotechnology and a PhD in Genetics.
Dr Gerry Thomas as Chief Operating Officer
Gerry is a PhD medicinal chemist that has worked in the Pharmaceutical and Biotech industries for the past 22 years. Formerly with Boots, BASF and OSI Prosidion, he has performed a number of scientific and general management roles across both Research and Development and has led successful project teams that have delivered candidate drugs that progressed to Phase 2 clinical trials in the therapeutic areas of Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity.
Dr Stephen Connolly as VP, Drug Discovery
Steve is a PhD medicinal chemist with extensive experience in leading cross-functional Drug Discovery projects. In his 25 years with AstraZeneca he has led project teams to deliver numerous
high quality candidate drugs from both internal projects, and with external CRO partner organisations. As well as working with AZ in the UK, Steve has led successful drug discovery programmes at both the AZ Lund and Mölndal sites while based in Sweden, and most recently was Scientific Leader with Almirall in Barcelona. He has published more than 65 papers and patents, and led teams that have delivered more than 10 clinical candidates within the last decade.
Commenting on these appointments Dr Liz Roper (Partner), Epidarex Capital, said:
“We are delighted to have Frank, Phil, Gerry and Steve as part of Caldan Therapeutics. Building the Board and management with experienced and talented executives is crucial to building on the science of Professors Milligan and Ulven to deliver new drugs for metabolic diseases”.
Caldan Therapeutics collaborates with Sygnature Discovery
In addition to these key appointments, Caldan Therapeutics also announces that it has entered into integrated drug discovery collaboration with Sygnature Discovery Limited (Nottingham, UK). Sygnature will provide medicinal chemistry, computational sciences and informatics, bioscience and DMPK resource and intellectual input to complement Caldan’s existing capabilities and Type 2 Diabetes expertise.
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