Macrolide Pharmaceuticals announced on 9/4/18 a leadership expansion that adds significant expertise in drug development, clinical strategy, finance and business development to the executive team. Thomas McCauley, Ph.D., who recently was the chief scientific officer at Translate Bio, joins Macrolide as chief scientific officer. Sumit Aggarwal, MBA, who recently was the chief financial officer at Progenity, Inc., will take on the role of chief business and financial officer.
“We are deepening our expertise and adding transformative leadership at an important moment for Macrolide Pharma,” said Mahesh Karande, the company’s president and CEO. “We are committed to developing pioneering antibiotic compounds that are effective against some of the world’s most dangerous bacterial threats. We are also eager to expand our reach as we seek to address other pressing critical medical needs across a spectrum of conditions and diseases. Tom and Sumit bring tremendous insights and experience to our team, and we’re delighted to have them on board.”
Dr. McCauley comes to Macrolide from Translate Bio (formerly RaNA Therapeutics), where as chief scientific officer he led scientific strategy and research and development. In that role, he also advanced Translate’s oligonucleotide and mRNA programs in multiple disease areas and advanced the lead program in cystic fibrosis into the clinic. Prior to Translate, Dr. McCauley served as vice president and head of global nonclinical development at Shire, where he led the nonclinical development, clinical bioanalysis and biomarker departments. He has also authored more than 40 scientific publications, book chapters and patents. Dr. McCauley holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Cornell University and received his doctorate from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Mr. Aggarwal brings to his new role more than 20 years of experience in business building, investment management and management consulting. He most recently served as acting president and CFO of Progenity, Inc., where he helped raise $125 million in capital, prepared the company for an IPO and built out profitable lab operations while substantially increasing investments in research and development. Earlier in his career, he was a health care portfolio manager and analyst at Adage Capital Management and an associate principal at McKinsey & Company. Mr. Aggarwal earned his MBA with distinction from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He received his undergraduate degree, with honors in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
The company is focused on creating antibiotics to multi-drug resistant gram-negative bacterial infections. It has developed a platform that it claims enables it to tweak macrolide class antibiotics to overcome and anticipate antibiotic resistance. In April of 2018, Macrolide, announced completion of a $20 million Series B funding round.