17 July 2019 - - Canadian biopharmaceutical company Parvus Therapeutics has appointed Hugh Young Rienhoff, Jr., M.D., as chairman of the board, Charles A. Johnson, M.D., to the board of directors, and Alain Delcayre, Ph.D., as senior vice president of Research, the company said.
Rienhoff is a San Francisco Bay area physician and entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Imago Biosciences, his fourth start-up.
Prior to Imago, he was the founder and CEO of FerroKin BioSciences, which was acquired by Shire Plc in 2012.
Earlier in his career, Rienhoff was involved in venture capital as a director at Abingworth Management in London and a partner at New Enterprise Associates.
Throughout his career, Rienhoff has held numerous board positions in life science companies, many of which lead to successful exits.
Johnson is an physician and pharmaceutical executive with more than 40 years of experience in clinical practice and biopharmaceutical clinical development.
Most recently, he was the chief medical officer of Neurotech, where he was responsible for all clinical programmes using encapsulated cell technology to treat retinal diseases.
Before Neurotech, he was the vice president of global medical affairs at Vertex and held leadership positions at Inspire Pharmaceuticals and APT Pharmaceuticals.
Johnson began his biotechnology career at Genentech where he was the vice president and head of the immunology and tissue repair clinical group.
At Genentech, he was the chair of the Development Review Committee where he led the team responsible for reviewing and assessing pipeline candidates.
Delcayre is a seasoned biotechnology professional with considerable experience translating early stage research into clinical drug candidates, primarily in the field of nanoparticle-based immunotherapy.
He has consulted on and co-founded several start-ups/entities focused on the commercialization of exosome-based therapeutics.
Notably, while VP of research and development at Anosys, Delcayre and his team co-discovered Exosome Display, a technique to manipulate exosome protein content that is now broadly implemented by many companies in exosome-based targeted drug delivery.
Parvus Therapeutics Inc. is a privately-held biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development and commercialisation of Navacim therapeutics targeting autoimmune and other inflammatory diseases.
Navacims were discovered by Pere Santamaria, M.D., Ph.D., chief scientific officer and founder of Parvus, Julia McFarlane/Diabetes Canada Professor of the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary.