Appointments of Fredrik and Peter complete build-out of senior team.
Purespring Therapeutics, a pioneering gene therapy company focused on transforming the treatment of kidney diseases, has appointed Fredrik Erlandson as Chief Medical Officer and Peter Mulcahy as Chief People Officer.
These two key additional appointments complete Purespring’s leadership team, filling critical medical and enabling functions, with Fredrik leading the clinical development of Purespring’s current and future pipeline and Peter championing culture, talent, purpose, and growth at the Company.
Purespring recently appointed Sachin Kelkar as Chief Financial Officer as it confirmed the appointment of Julian Hanak as Chief Executive Officer on a permanent basis.
Fredrik Erlandsson is an experienced developer of novel nephrology drugs and has worked in all phases of development, from target identification through to post product launch phase IV studies, and in medical affairs at both large pharma and biotech. Before joining Purespring, Fredrik served as Head Global Clinical Development at CSL Vifor. He has previously held positions within the clinical development teams at AstraZeneca, Bayer, and Antisoma. Fredrik has contributed to multiple drug approvals, including Filspari, Korsuva/Kapruvia, and Tavneos. He has a medical degree and a PhD from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
Peter Mulcahy brings significant leadership experience and expertise in human capital and people strategy, having spent the past 11 years of his career at GlaxoSmithKline, most recently as Vice President in Human Resources. He has extensive expertise across all aspects of HR including talent management, organisation development and designing and leading people strategies for business transformation and M&A.
Julian Hanak, Chief Executive Officer of Purespring, commented on the appointments:
“Purespring was created as a fully integrated company at the outset with all the building blocks in place to move rapidly through clinical validation and transform the treatment of kidney diseases as rapidly as possible. Fredrik and Peter both bring unique skills in, respectively, clinical development and talent and organisational design, critical to a Company at our stage of development. This means we now have the key functions in place to bring our potentially life-changing treatments through clinical development and support the organisation as it scales.”
Fredrik Erlandsson, Chief Medical Officer of Purespring, said
“Having worked in nephrology for much of my career, I’m very aware how poorly served people with kidney disease are and the huge unmet need. Purespring has an opportunity to redefine this field of medicine with its targeted approach to the podocyte, and I’m really excited to start working with Julian and the rest of this talented team.”
“It’s so important, as a business moves from launch through to a clinical phase, to provide the right organisational HR partnership and, importantly, to build a great culture and to get the best out of teams. The Company has seen considerable growth to date, with incredible talent coming on board, and this owes to the excellent culture and leadership already in place. I’m really looking forward to working with the team during this next phase of development.”
For further information, contact:
Purespring:
Julian Hanak, CEO
+44 (0)20 3855 6324
Consilium Strategic Communications:
Amber Fennell, Jessica Hodgson,
purespring@consilium-comms.com
Notes to Editors
About Purespring
Purespring is the first and leading company to treat kidney diseases by targeting the podocyte, a specialised cell implicated in many renal diseases, through AAV gene therapy administered directly to the kidney.
Purespring was founded on the work of Professor Moin Saleem, Professor of Paediatric Renal Medicine at the University of Bristol, where he heads a world leading multidisciplinary group researching glomerular diseases. Purespring seeks to advance gene therapies for the treatment of both monogenic and non-monogenic chronic renal diseases that are currently poorly addressed with existing treatments.
The company also has a proprietary in-vivo drug discovery functional selection platform, FunSel, a library of secreted biological factors combined with a screening method for the unbiased evaluation of drug candidates in disease models. FunSel allows Purespring to identify new gene therapy candidates and creates business development opportunities in other indications.
An initial £45 million commitment to Purespring from Syncona Ltd is enabling Purespring to progress its assets to the clinic. Syncona’s Chief Executive Officer, Chris Hollowood, serves as Chairman. For more information please visit: purespringtx.com and follow us on LinkedIn.