Alnylam Expands and Develops Management Team

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals has expanded its management team with new appointments and promotions. Oved Amitay has been appointed to the newly created position of vice president, head of commercial. Akshay Vaishnaw, M.D., Ph.D. has been named executive vice president and chief medical officer. Jared Gollob, M.D., has been promoted to vice president, Clinical Research, and Lubomir (Lubo) Nechev, Ph.D. has been promoted to vice president, Process Sciences.
 
Mr. Amitay previously served as vice president for Strategic Development for the Personalized Genetic Health business unit at Genzyme Corp., now a Sanofi company. At Genzyme, he led the internal R&D activities for the rare diseases franchise.
 
Dr. Vaishnaw joined Alnylam in 2006 and has been responsible for the company’s development organization, including clinical development, clinical operations, regulatory affairs, and preclinical development groups, and has been a member of the company’s management team since that time. Prior to Alnylam, he was at Biogen Idec, where he was involved in clinical research and business development, including efforts on the approval of Amevive for psoriasis and in-licensing of BG-12 as a new medicine for multiple sclerosis.
 
Dr. Gollob joined Alnylam in 2007 and has been responsible for management of the clinical development organization, in addition to serving in a program leadership role for the company’s ALN-VSP program. Prior to Alnylam, he was at Duke University where he was associate professor of Medicine and director of the Biologic Therapy Program, with a secondary appointment as associate professor of Immunology. He was also concurrently head of Hematology/Oncology at the Duke VA Medical Center. 
 
Dr. Nechev joined Alnylam in 2004 and has held roles of increasing responsibility in the process development organization, including the development of manufacturing processes for Alnylam pipeline programs. Prior to joining the company, Dr. Nechev worked in the process development department at Transgenomic, Inc., now Agilent Technologies. 
 
“Our people and their passion remain key to the success of Alnylam. Accordingly, I am pleased to announce these appointments and promotions, which expand and strengthen our management team as we advance our pipeline of RNAi therapeutics through clinic trials and toward the market,” said John Maraganore, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Alnylam.