PureTech Founded Entity Alivio Therapeutics Appoints Harry Leider, MD, to Board of Directors
Dr Leider, chief medical officer at Gelesis and formerly Walgreens, brings strong medical background and experience in clinical development to the board
PureTech Health plc (LSE: PRTC) (“PureTech” or the “Company”), a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company dedicated to discovering, developing and commercialising highly differentiated medicines for devastating diseases, is pleased to note that its Founded Entity, Alivio Therapeutics, today announced the addition of Harry Leider, MD, MBA, to its Board of Directors. Dr Leider’s extensive medical background and leadership experience in developing products leveraging proprietary technology will be important assets as Alivio advances its pipeline to potentially treat a range of disruptive diseases with broad unmet need.
As chief medical officer at Gelesis, Dr Leider is involved in the clinical testing of all Gelesis’ pipeline and in-line products. He played a role in the FDA submission and clearance leading to the commercialisation of Plenity®, an orally-administered, non-stimulant, non-systemic aid for weight management in adults with a Body Mass Index, or BMI, of 25-40 kg/m2, when used in conjunction with diet and exercise. Prior to joining Gelesis, he served as global chief medical officer and group vice president at Walgreens, where he provided executive leadership for all clinical programme development, quality assessment, health outcomes research, health analytics and clinical reporting activities across the enterprise.
The full text of the announcement from Alivio Therapeutics is as follows:
Alivio Therapeutics Appoints Harry Leider, MD, to Board of Directors
Dr Leider, chief medical officer at Gelesis and formerly Walgreens, brings strong medical background and experience in clinical development to the board
BOSTON, September 29, 2020 – Alivio Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing an inflammation-targeting disease immunomodulation platform for the potential treatment of chronic and acute inflammatory disorders, today announced the addition of Harry Leider, MD, MBA, to its Board of Directors. Dr Leider’s extensive medical background and leadership experience in developing products leveraging proprietary technology will be important assets as Alivio advances its pipeline to potentially treat a range of disruptive diseases with broad unmet need.
“We’re honoured to have Harry join the Alivio board,” said Brian Leuthner, chief executive officer of Alivio. “His broad background in medicine and product development and his deep leadership experience will be particularly valuable as we progress our product candidates through development particularly in interstitial cystitis, also known as bladder pain syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We believe Alivio’s inflammation targeting platform can enable biologics, small molecules or combination products to be more attractive than other treatments for a range of inflammatory diseases and Harry’s expert insights will benefit us greatly as we continue to move our product candidates forward.”
Dr Leider is the chief medical officer at Gelesis, where he is involved in the clinical testing of all Gelesis’ pipeline and in-line products. He played a role in the FDA submission and clearance leading to the commercialisation of Plenity®, an orally-administered, non-stimulant, non-systemic aid for weight management in adults with a Body Mass Index, or BMI, of 25-40 kg/m2, when used in conjunction with diet and exercise. Prior to joining Gelesis, he served as global chief medical officer and group vice president at Walgreens, where he provided executive leadership for all clinical programme development, quality assessment, health outcomes research, health analytics and clinical reporting activities across the enterprise. His previous leadership positions include serving as chief medical officer of Ameritox, XLHealth and HealthNet, in addition to serving as a physician executive at Harvard Pilgrim Health Plan. Dr Leider is also on the editorial boards of the Journal of Population Health Management and the Physician Executive Journal. He is a founding board member of the Disease Management Association of America and served on the board of the Institute of Aging at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr Leider worked for six years as an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. He was also a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business and has been a senior advisor to PureTech since 2015. Dr Leider earned his MD from The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, an MBA from the University of Washington and his BA from Penn State University.
“My goal since I first entered medical school has been to make a difference for large populations of patients who are enduring the pain and burden of chronic diseases without adequate treatment options,” Dr Leider said. “Alivio’s technology holds tremendous promise for inflammatory diseases because it is designed to be highly targeted and modulate immune pathways at the site of inflammation without disrupting the rest of the body. This has the potential to allow for more precise treatment, without causing systemic side effects. I’m delighted to join the board and look forward to working with the top-notch team to bring this potential new technology to patients.”
About Alivio Therapeutics
Alivio Therapeutics, Inc. is a biotechnology company pioneering inflammation-targeting disease immunomodulation as a novel strategy to treat a range of chronic and acute inflammatory disorders. This long sought-after approach involves selectively restoring immune homeostasis at inflamed sites in the body, while having minimal impact on the rest of the body’s immune system. Alivio’s approach has the potential to broadly enable new medicines to treat a range of chronic and acute inflammatory disorders, including enabling the use of drugs which were previously limited by issues of systemic toxicity or pharmacokinetics.
Alivio is developing a proprietary platform centred on a class of self-assembling therapies that selectively bind to inflamed tissue. Alivio’s platform has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including in Science Translational Medicine and Nature Communications and has been validated in multiple labs using a range of animal models and indications. The platform can enable a wide array of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), including small molecules, biologics and nucleic acids. Alivio’s pipeline includes candidates for IBD, Pouchitis, and interstitial cystitis or bladder pain syndrome, or IC/BPS.
Alivio was founded by PureTech (LSE: PRTC) and leading immunology experts Jeffrey Karp, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Robert Langer, ScD, David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT.
About PureTech Health
PureTech is a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company dedicated to discovering, developing and commercialising highly differentiated medicines for devastating diseases, including intractable cancers, lymphatic and gastrointestinal diseases, central nervous system disorders and inflammatory and immunological diseases, among others. The Company has created a broad and deep pipeline through the expertise of its experienced research and development team and its extensive network of scientists, clinicians and industry leaders. This pipeline, which is being advanced both internally and through PureTech’s Founded Entities, is comprised of 24 products and product candidates, including two that have received US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance and European marketing authorisation. All of the underlying programmes and platforms that resulted in this pipeline of product candidates were initially identified or discovered and then advanced by the PureTech team through key validation points based on the Company’s unique insights into the biology of the brain, immune and gut, or BIG, systems and the interface between those systems, referred to as the BIG Axis.
For more information, visit www.puretechhealth.com or connect with us on Twitter @puretechh.
Forward Looking Statement
This press release contains statements that are or may be forward-looking statements, including statements that relate to the company's future prospects, developments, and strategies. The forward looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from current expectations, including, but not limited to, our expectations regarding the addition of Dr Leider to our Board of Directors and those risks and uncertainties described in the risk factors included in the regulatory filings for PureTech Health plc. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions regarding the present and future business strategies of the company and the environment in which it will operate in the future. Each forward-looking statement speaks only as at the date of this press release. Except as required by law and regulatory requirements, neither the company nor any other party intends to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.