X4 Pharmaceuticals Appoints Renato Skerlj, Ph.D. as Senior Vice President of Research and Development
X4 Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: XFOR), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel therapeutics for the treatment of rare diseases, today announced the appointment of Renato Skerlj, Ph.D., as Senior Vice President, Research and Development. Dr. Skerlj has twenty-five years of experience leading the discovery and development of small molecule drugs to treat rare diseases, cancer, infection and neurodegenerative diseases. In addition, he was one of the original founders of X4 Pharmaceuticals.
“Renato’s deep scientific expertise in the research and development of innovative, genetically-targeted treatments, combined with his foundational knowledge of X4 and our novel CXCR4 platform, will be invaluable as we advance our pre-clinical product candidates and further expand our rare disease pipeline,” said Paula Ragan, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of X4 Pharmaceuticals. “We are thrilled to have Renato join our senior leadership team given his instrumental role in the founding of X4.”
“I am very pleased to become a part of X4’s dedicated team of experienced and thoughtful leaders, especially during this exciting period of X4’s R&D expansion and corporate growth. I look forward to leading our Vienna-based research team and applying my decades of strategic scientific experience to advance and deliver novel therapeutic options to patients with rare diseases,” commented Dr. Skerlj.
Most recently, Dr. Skerlj held drug discovery and development leadership roles at Cambridge-based Lysosomal Therapeutics, Inc. Prior to that, he was interim Head of Small Molecule Discovery at Genzyme, and was part of the executive team at AnorMED, a publicly-traded company that was acquired by Genzyme in 2006. Dr. Skerlj is an inventor of both plerixafor, a stem cell mobilizer approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2008, and ertapenem, an anti-bacterial approved by the FDA in 2001, and has been responsible for delivering multiple drug candidates into early clinical research. He has authored 65 publications and holds 50 patents. Dr. Skerlj received his Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University of British Columbia and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford and Ohio State University.
