Cerulean promotes Eliasof to senior VP & CSO
Cerulean Pharma (NSDQ:CERU) said today that it named Scott Eliasof as senior VP and CSO, promoting him from VP of research. He joined the Waltham, Mass.-based company in 2007.
Before coming on board to Cerulean, Eliasof was the director of the chemical biology platform at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass. He managed a multidisciplinary team of synthetic chemists, analytical chemists, computational scientists and software engineers. He also has held a management position at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, working on large-scale, genomics-based drug discovery.
“For the past 10 years, Scott has been one of the driving forces behind our [nanoparticle-drug conjugate] innovations, and we are pleased to expand his role at this critical time for our company,” president & CEO Christopher Guiffre said in prepared remarks. “Our versatile NDC platform created our proprietary pipeline, including CRLX101 and CRLX301, and enabled our recently-announced collaboration with Novartis, which includes potential milestone payments for up to 5 targets. We look forward to Scott’s leadership and continued contributions as we advance this pipeline and platform.”
Last week, Cerulean said it inked a deal with Novartis to develop nanoparticle-drug conjugates. Cerulean will receive $5 million plus funding for 5 full-time equivalents to develop NDC candidates, according to the agreement, as well as preclinical, clinical, regulatory, and sales milestones for each target.
The company may also earn single-digit to low double-digit tiered royalties on net sales for each NDC product, following regulatory approval. Swiss biotech giant Novartis is responsible for further development and commercialization of NDC products that result from the collaboration.
