Assembly Biosciences Expands Senior Leadership Team
January 2016
INDIANAPOLIS, Jan. 11, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Assembly Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:ASMB), a biotechnology company developing curative treatments for infectious diseases including hepatitis B virus (HBV) andC. difficile (CDI) infections, today announced several new senior level hires across the organization. The added team members include Richard Colonno, PhD, as Chief Scientific Officer; Thomas Rollins as Chief Development Officer and Head of the Microbiome Program; Elizabeth Haber Lacy as General Counsel and Vice President of Legal Operations.
“The exceptional quality of these incoming senior managers adds significant depth and experience to the innovative science and technical approaches we are pursuing at Assembly to cure HBV and leverage the microbiome to treat infectious diseases,” said Assembly Chief Executive Officer Derek Small. “With our team largely complete and cash reserves on hand projected to fund our progress for two years, we anticipate initiating clinical trials in the second half of 2016 with our microbiome therapy for recurrent CDI and our lead CpAM antiviral compound for the treatment of HBV.”
Chief Development Officer and Head of the Microbiome Program Thomas Rollins joins Assembly from anti-infective drug developer Cubist Pharmaceuticals, where he was Senior Vice President and Global Head, Program and Portfolio Management, chairing the team overseeing global product development. During his tenure, Mr. Rollins oversaw the global development and commercialization of the anti-bacterial drugs Sivestro®and Zerbaxa®, and helped transform Cubist into a multi-program, multi-product company. Previously, Mr. Rollins was Senior Vice President, Program Management at Sunovion Pharmaceuticals. At Sepracor, as Senior Vice President of Development, Mr. Rollins established an efficient and productive semi-virtual drug development organization that advanced Lunesta® from IND through NDA submission in just 42 months. Earlier in his career, Mr. Rollins served as a researcher before moving to Project Management at Merck, where he was co-team leader for a number of major global products, including Crixivan®, the first HIV protease inhibitor, and the pioneering osteoporosis drug Fosamax®. Mr. Rollins received an MBA from Rutgers University and BS and MS degrees from Michigan State University.
About Assembly Biosciences
Assembly Biosciences, Inc. is a public biotechnology company developing novel oral therapies for the cure of intractable infectious diseases, currently focusing on hepatitis B virus (HBV) and C. difficile infections (CDI). Assembly’s HBV-Cure research team is discovering and developing multiple drug candidates that address both upstream and downstream targets in the HBV lifecycle for possible use in combination therapy. The goal is to eradicate, rather than just treat, HBV infection with an orally-administered regimen. Assembly has built a senior scientific team that has over 30 years of combined experience working on HBV. The company’s CDI program is focused on the targeted delivery of microbiome-based therapies in a novel oral formulation to treat recurrent CDI patients. Assembly has a proprietary delivery system, GemicelTM, which allows for targeted delivery of selected GMP-manufactured bacteria to the lower gastrointestinal tract, and it has built a team of world-class microbiome scientists from academia and industry to help advance this innovative program. For more information visit assemblybio.com