Cerevance, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company advancing new medicines for brain diseases, today announced the appointment of Aoife Brennan, M.B., B.Ch., to its board of directors effective January 1, 2020.
Dr. Brennan is currently president and chief executive officer of Synlogic Inc. (Nasdaq:SYBX), a clinical stage biotechnology company applying synthetic biology to beneficial microbes to develop novel, living medicines. She joined Synlogic as chief medical officer in September 2016, served as interim CEO from April 2018 and was promoted to the permanent position in October 2018. Previously, Dr. Brennan was vice president and head of the Rare Disease Innovation Unit at Biogen where her work resulted in the approval of ALPROLIX™, ELOCTATE™ and SPINRAZA™, as well as the advancement of several early-phase programs and external collaborations.
Dr. Brennan holds a medical degree from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and completed residency and fellowship training in general internal medicine and endocrinology. She completed post-doctoral training in clinical research and metabolism at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, is a graduate of the Harvard Medical School Scholars in Clinical Science Program and has more than 40 academic publications. She serves as a director of Ra Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:RARX) and is a member of the advisory board of the Harvard Masters in Clinical Investigation Program.
“We are thrilled to have Dr. Brennan bring her strategic and clinical expertise, as well as her CEO-level leadership experience, to our board as we advance therapeutics acting on novel drug targets toward human trials,” said Brad Margus, chief executive officer of the company. “Her experience advancing compounds across multiple therapeutic areas will prove a strong complement to our board as we pursue treatments for a range of central nervous system disorders.”
“Cerevance’s NETSseq platform is discovering exciting new targets in the always-challenging field of central nervous system disorders,” said Dr. Brennan. “I am excited to be joining the company’s board at a time when there is such a dearth of effective treatments for CNS diseases. I look forward to helping prioritize and guide the company’s many opportunities that are emanating from its rapidly expanding, robust analysis of human brain transcriptome data.”
About Cerevance
Cerevance is a private pharmaceutical company focused on central nervous system diseases. The company’s strengths include its powerful NETSseq target discovery platform, a large collection of human brain tissue samples, a pipeline of novel discovery-stage and clinical-stage compounds and a team with a proven track record. Its scientists believe that they are well positioned to deliver life-changing therapeutics for patients who have brain-related disorders.
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