BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alivio Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing an inflammation-targeting disease immunomodulation platform for the potential treatment of chronic and acute inflammatory disorders, today announced the addition of Harry Leider, M.D., MBA, to its Board of Directors. Dr. Leider’s extensive medical background and leadership experience in developing products leveraging proprietary technology will be important assets as Alivio advances its pipeline to potentially treat a range of disruptive diseases with broad unmet need.

“We’re honored to have Harry join the Alivio board,” said Brian Leuthner, chief executive officer of Alivio. “His broad background in medicine and product development and his deep leadership experience will be particularly valuable as we progress our product candidates through development particularly in interstitial cystitis, also known as bladder pain syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We believe Alivio’s inflammation targeting platform can enable biologics, small molecules or combination products to be more attractive than other treatments for a range of inflammatory diseases and Harry’s expert insights will benefit us greatly as we continue to move our product candidates forward.”

Dr. Leider is the chief medical officer at Gelesis, where he is involved in the clinical testing of all Gelesis’ pipeline and in-line products. He played a role in the FDA submission and clearance leading to the commercialization of Plenity®, an orally-administered, non-stimulant, non-systemic aid for weight management in adults with a Body Mass Index, or BMI, of 25-40 kg/m2, when used in conjunction with diet and exercise. Prior to joining Gelesis, he served as global chief medical officer and group vice president at Walgreens, where he provided executive leadership for all clinical program development, quality assessment, health outcomes research, health analytics and clinical reporting activities across the enterprise. His previous leadership positions include serving as chief medical officer of Ameritox, XLHealth and HealthNet, in addition to serving as a physician executive at Harvard Pilgrim Health Plan. Dr. Leider is also on the editorial boards of the Journal of Population Health Management and the Physician Executive Journal. He is a founding board member of the Disease Management Association of America and served on the board of the Institute of Aging at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Leider worked for six years as an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. He was also a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business and has been a senior advisor to PureTech since 2015. Dr. Leider earned his M.D. from The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, an MBA from the University of Washington and his B.A. from Penn State University.

“My goal since I first entered medical school has been to make a difference for large populations of patients who are enduring the pain and burden of chronic diseases without adequate treatment options,” Dr. Leider said. “Alivio’s technology holds tremendous promise for inflammatory diseases because it is designed to be highly targeted and modulate immune pathways at the site of inflammation without disrupting the rest of the body. This has the potential to allow for more precise treatment, without causing systemic side effects. I’m delighted to join the board and look forward to working with the top-notch team to bring this potential new technology to patients.”

About Alivio Therapeutics

Alivio Therapeutics, Inc. is a biotechnology company pioneering inflammation-targeting disease immunomodulation as a novel strategy to treat a range of chronic and acute inflammatory disorders. This long sought-after approach involves selectively restoring immune homeostasis at inflamed sites in the body, while having minimal impact on the rest of the body’s immune system. Alivio’s approach has the potential to broadly enable new medicines to treat a range of chronic and acute inflammatory disorders, including enabling the use of drugs which were previously limited by issues of systemic toxicity or pharmacokinetics.

Alivio is developing a proprietary platform centered on a class of self-assembling therapies that selectively bind to inflamed tissue. Alivio’s platform has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including in Science Translational Medicine and Nature Communicationsand has been validated in multiple labs using a range of animal models and indications. The platform can enable a wide array of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), including small molecules, biologics and nucleic acids. Alivio’s pipeline includes candidates for IBD, Pouchitis, and interstitial cystitis or bladder pain syndrome, or IC/BPS.

Alivio was founded by PureTech (LSE: PRTC) and leading immunology experts Jeffrey Karp, Ph.D., Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Robert Langer, Sc.D., David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT.