Clavis Pharma announces the appointment of Athos Gianella-Borradori MD as Chief Medical Officer

Clavis Pharma ASA (OSE: CLAVIS) announces the appointment of Athos Gianella-Borradori MD as Chief Medical Officer (CMO). Dr Gianella-Borradori is an experienced onco-hematologist and drug developer, with 30 years experience in the field. He spent the past 20 years in industry, focused on translational research and on the clinical development of novel anti-cancer agents. During this career, he has held managerial and senior clinical research and development roles at Novartis (Switzerland), Crucell (The Netherlands), Bavarian Nordic (Germany), Cyclacel (United Kingdom) and, for the last five years, at Serono, later at Merck Serono (Switzerland).

Before joining the industry, Dr Gianella-Borradori received his medical degree from the University of Bern (Switzerland). He is board certified in Pediatric Hematology and Oncology and practised for several years at European and US universities.

Dr Gianella-Borradori’s primary role at Clavis will be to drive the clinical development of, elacytarabine, which is in a Phase III trial for patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), and of CP-4126 in partnership with Clovis Oncology, which is in Phase II for patients with pancreatic cancer. He will also contribute to shape the strategy of Clavis and will play a major role in the future developments of Clavis’ novel cancer drug candidates.

Olav Hellebø, CEO, said: “We are very pleased that Athos will be joining the Clavis team as CMO. We believe his extensive international experience in cancer drug development and clinical experience in oncology and haematology will prove extremely valuable as we progress our existing clinical programmes and expand our exciting pipeline of novel LVT-derived cancer candidates. We believe the improved clinical characteristics of these new drug candidates offer the potential to make a significant difference to the treatment of patients with a range a cancer types.”