Bionure Farma, a biotech company specialised in neuroprotection, announced the appointment of Dr Laurent Nguyen as the new Chief Executive Officer of the company and named Dr Amit Bar-Or as member of its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) led by Dr Pablo Villoslada, the scientific founder of the company.
The Chairman of Bionure, Guy P. Nohra, said, “After a comprehensive executive search, the Board of Directors is very pleased to have attracted Dr Nguyen, an accomplished executive, to assume leadership of Bionure, and to welcome Dr Bar-Or to the SAB of the company as we are approaching the very exciting translational phase toward clinical proof-of-concept in patients with neurodegenerative diseases.”
Dr Laurent Nguyen, a French national, graduated as Doctor of Medicine and holds a Master’s Degree in Public Health. Following a four-year residency at the Paris Hospital Group (Assistance Publique – Hopitaux de Paris), he built solid experience in the pharmaceutical industry at Hoechst-Roussel, Merck KGaA, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd and Pierre Fabre. He then moved to the biotech sector where he became CEO of a French academic spin-off that he developed into a publicly traded clinical biotech company. He reached phase II clinical trials with a portfolio of neuro-otology (inner ear disorders) products. He also acted as advisor in corporate development for several biotech and medtech companies.
"I'm excited about the Bionure project, which is a potential game-changer for patients living with neurodegenerative diseases. I’m eager to join the great team that has taken the project forward into clinical development," said Dr Nguyen.
Bionure is also expanding its Scientific Advisory Board with the appointment of Dr Amit Bar-Or, Director of the Center for Neuroinflammation and Experimental Therapeutics, Chief of the Multiple Sclerosis Center at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine (Philadelphia, USA) and President of the International Society of Neuroimmunology. Dr Bar-Or trained at McGill Medical School in Montreal, the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Center for Neurological Diseases. He focuses his research on the roles of functionally distinct immune cell subsets in autoimmune disease and immune-CNS interactions. His clinical work is centered on multiple sclerosis and related conditions, in both children and adults.
Bionure’s lead compound, BN201, is a small molecule currently in clinical phase I study in the UK, with results expected at the beginning of 2019.
