Alphina Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing a best-in-class NAMPT inhibitor for the treatment of a range of solid tumor indications, announced that it has appointed Nick Galli as chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors. Mr. Galli brings nearly twenty years of private and public pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry experience with a focus on strategy, company building, and business development. As an executive, he has helped biotech companies raise over $450 million in equity and upfront non-dilutive capital. In conjunction with Mr. Galli’s appointment, Barbara S. Fox, Ph.D., who had been serving as Alphina’s interim CEO, will become chair of the company’s board of directors.
“We are excited to welcome Nick to Alphina and thrilled that Barbara will continue to support the company in the role of board chair. Their combined experience and track records of success will help ensure the continued efficient advancement of the company’s best-in-class NAMPT inhibitor program, with the goal of entering the clinic in the next 18 months,” said Colleen Cuffaro, Ph.D., a member of Alphina’s board and a partner at Canaan Partners.
Alphina’s approach to NAMPT inhibition leverages several novel insights and a synthetic lethality strategy to significantly increase the therapeutic index of its small molecules. Unlike other programs previously in the clinic against this target, the company has developed a proprietary patient selection assay to identify the approximately 30% of patients with non-small cell lung, small cell lung, colorectal, ovarian, and other solid tumors with a signature that makes them much more likely to respond to its drug candidates. Alphina has also engineered and optimized its molecules to mitigate the toxicities associated with other NAMPT inhibitors.
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To support its work, in September 2021 the company raised $40 million in a Series A financing led by Canaan Partners, with participation from Osage University Partners, Connecticut Innovations, HighCape Partners and Alexandria Venture Investments.
“Alphina has elegantly addressed the liabilities that hindered the development of first generation NAMPT inhibitors. I am pleased to join this talented team of drug developers as we advance our novel approach. I believe we have an opportunity to meaningfully improve the lives of many patients across several difficult to treat solid tumor indications,” said Mr. Galli.
Most recently Mr. Galli was chief operating officer at Interline Therapeutics, which he joined as its second employee. In this role, he oversaw corporate development, strategy, operations, business development, finance, investor relations, legal, human resources, and IT. Previously, Mr. Galli served as chief business officer of CytomX Therapeutics and played a central role in securing the company’s multi-target strategic collaboration with Astellas. He has also served as vice president, business development at Denali Therapeutics, joining the company as one of its first employees within two months of its launch. At Denali he led the execution of more than twenty collaborations, including partnerships with Sanofi-Genzyme, Takeda, Genentech, and F-star. Earlier in his career Mr. Galli was senior director, transactions at Johnson & Johnson Innovation Center and held roles of increasing responsibility at Genentech within the business development and transactional law groups. He began his career as a corporate attorney at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and practiced in the technology transactions group at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
SOURCE: PRNewswire