BOSTON, Feb. 01, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cerevance, a private drug discovery and development company focused on brain diseases, today announced the appointment of Carrie Ann Cook, a global business development executive with more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, as chief business officer effective February 1, 2021.
Ms. Cook most recently served as senior vice president/global head of business development at CANbridge Pharmaceuticals Inc., in Cambridge, MA. Prior to this position, she served as senior director, center for external innovation, rare disease, at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, where she led and executed research and development transactions. Ms. Cook previously served as head of global business development & licensing, MS, medical devices and global health at EMD Serono, Inc., and as global business development director, neurology and rheumatology at Merck Serono SA, in Geneva, Switzerland. Prior to that, she held various leadership positions in business development and marketing at Novartis Pharma AG in Basel, Switzerland and Baxter Healthcare SA in Wallisellen, Switzerland. Ms. Cook holds an M.B.A. from INSEAD, in France and Singapore and a B.A. in biotechnology from Duke University in Durham, NC.
“We are pleased to welcome Carrie to Cerevance’s leadership team as we leverage our target discovery platform to identify new targets for the treatment of CNS disorders,” said Brad Margus, chief executive officer of Cerevance. “Her extensive global business development experience will be invaluable as we pursue select partnering opportunities to advance novel compounds and ultimately improve the lives of patients.”
Ms. Cook stated, “Cerevance’s novel approach has the potential to transform the CNS space at a crucial time when innovation is so desperately needed. I look forward to contributing my skills and experience to the team as we develop innovative therapies for brain diseases.”
About Cerevance
Cerevance, a private, clinical-stage pharmaceutical company focused on brain diseases, is applying a new technology, called NETSseq, to reveal transcriptional and epigenetic differences between specific cell types in mature human brains. NETSseq profiles neuronal and glial cell populations at depths not possible with other approaches, generating unprecedented data sets and insights. The company has thus far partnered with 19 brain banks around the world to assemble a growing collection of more than 8,000 clinically annotated, human brain tissue samples from healthy and diseased donors spanning nine decades in age. By applying NETSseq to specific cell types critical to circuits disrupted by disease and comparing vulnerable and resilient cell populations, Cerevance’s scientists have begun identifying targets and advancing a pipeline of novel therapeutics that modulate them for CNS diseases.
