Atrin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced the appointment of Gerhard J. Sperl, Ph.D., as Vice President, Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC). Dr. Sperl, with over 23 years industry experience, has been both an industry consultant and held multiple senior leadership roles within small molecule-focused drug companies, leading to 2 NDA, 7 IND, 3 IMPD, one 505(B)2 filings, and several business transactions.
"Gerhard Sperl has broad technical and regulatory CMC expertise in the development of small molecule drugs and natural product-derived pharmaceuticals, from the bench to the market. He is very excited about returning to the oncology field," said Oren Gilad, Ph.D., Atrin Pharmaceuticals President and Chief Executive Officer. "Atrin has benefitted from his guidance as a consultant for a number of years in the development of our novel ATR inhibitors. We are pleased to have him join the company now in this full time role, where he will manage all of our medicinal chemistry programs, as well as oversee the chemistry manufacturing and controls and CMC-related regulatory filings for our ATR series."
Dr. Gilad noted that Atrin planned to file an IND for its lead ATR-inhibitor during 2017, with the goal of initiating human testing of that potential cancer drug in 2018.
Dr. Sperl was most recently the Senior Director, Manufacturing, for MediVector, Inc. and was an independent industry consultant on CMC matters for a variety of companies. His corporate career has included CMC-related Vice Presidencies at Logical Therapeutics, Cetek, and Point Therapeutics. Prior to that he was Director of Preclinical Development at ArQule, Inc., and before that, held a series of increasingly responsible chemistry positions at Cell Pathways, Inc.
About Atrin Pharmaceuticals
Atrin Pharmaceuticals is a privately held biopharmaceutical company, based in Doylestown, PA, that aims to change the way cancer is being treated. The company is engaged in the discovery and development of innovative treatments for cancer. Atrin's most advanced program is focused on a new class of compounds that are highly specific inhibitors of ATR, a key mediator of DNA repair. Atrin is further assembling a pipeline of additional drug candidates, identified via the company's proprietary, human cell-based, high-throughput screening platform, Atrize™. Applicable to both drug discovery/development and the evaluation of patient-specific treatments, Atrize enables the rapid identification and evaluation of compounds that are effective in inhibiting cancer cell viability without adversely affecting healthy cells. For more information on the company, please visit our website at http://atrinpharma.com/.
