Will lead scale-up and production as Cerevance advances multiple clinical-stage programs
Boston, MA – February 1, 2021 – Cerevance, a private drug discovery and development company focused on brain diseases, today announced the appointment of Naidong Ye, Ph.D., a seasoned chemist with extensive pharmaceutical industry experience, as vice president and head of chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC).
Prior to joining Cerevance, Dr. Ye served as vice president of CMC for Millendo Therapeutics, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing novel treatments for endocrine diseases. While at Millendo, Dr. Ye was responsible for all CMC-related activities, including two late-stage programs. Before Millendo, Dr. Ye was senior director, head of CMC operations for AstraZeneca’s Neuroscience Innovative Medicines (NS iMed), where he led CMC operations for all small molecule development projects. In this role, Dr. Ye was responsible for projects ranging from candidate drug nomination to large scale, global pivotal trials. Earlier in his career, Dr. Ye served as chief technology officer for Dongguan Jinmeiji Pharmaceutical Co., and held leadership positions as both a scientist and CMC lead at several life sciences companies, including Pharmos Corporation, ViroPharma and Nycomed.
“It is with great pleasure that we welcome Naidong to Cerevance as we continue making significant progress in both our clinical development and drug discovery efforts,” said David H. Margolin, senior vice president of clinical and translational medicine at Cerevance. “His expertise in the production and formulation of small molecule pharmaceuticals for CNS indications will be invaluable as we prepare to conduct Phase 2 and first-in-human studies of several novel compounds this year.”
Dr. Ye commented, “Cerevance’s rapid progress in finding new druggable targets and compounds that modulate them has created a pipeline of potentially transformative treatments for patients with diverse brain disorders. I welcome the challenge of formulating and supplying each drug for use in preclinical and clinical studies.”
Dr. Ye earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Zhongshan University and a doctorate in chemistry from Ohio State University.
About Cerevance
Cerevance, a private, clinical-stage pharmaceutical company focused on brain diseases, is applying a new technology, called NETSseq, to reveal transcriptional and epigenetic differences between specific cell types in human brains spanning nine decades in age. NETSseq profiles neuronal and glial cell populations at depths not possible with other approaches, generating unprecedented data sets and insights. The company has thus far partnered with 20 brain banks around the world to assemble a growing collection of more than 8,000 clinically annotated, human brain tissue samples from healthy and diseased donors. By applying NETSseq to specific cell types critical to circuits disrupted by disease and comparing vulnerable and resilient cell populations, Cerevance’s scientists have begun identifying targets and advancing a pipeline of novel therapeutics that modulate them for CNS diseases.
Contacts
Cerevance:
Robert Middlebrook, +1-408-220-5722
Media
Andrew Mielach, amielach@lifescicomms.com, +1- 646-876-5868
