Industry Veteran Tony Coles Tapped to Helm Pfizer Spinout Cerevel Therapeutics
Nearly one year after it was launched by Pfizer and Bain Capital, Cerevel Therapeutics has tapped industry veteran Tony Coles as its chief executive officer.
Coles, who has had a distinguished career with multiple companies, including Onyx and Vertex, has been serving as executive chairperson of Cerevel’s board of directors since December 2018. He will retain that role in addition to his duties as CEO.
Cerevel launched in October 2018 with a focus on developing therapies to treat central nervous system disorders. For Pfizer, the launch of Cerevel came nearly a full year after the company announced it was abandoning research and development of new neuroscience programs that included potential therapies for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. When Cerevel launched, Pfizer contributed a portfolio of pre-commercial neuroscience assets, including three clinical-stage compounds and several pre-clinical compounds designed to target a broad range of CNS disorders including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, schizophrenia and addiction. With the tapping of Coles, Cerevel has continued to round out its leadership team as the company prepares for key milestones in the advancement of its pipeline and broader external engagement.
“At Cerevel Therapeutics, we have an opportunity to bring an unprecedented number of new medicines forward in the clinic to help address a number of unmet needs in treating neuroscience diseases. If successful, Cerevel Therapeutics has the potential to profoundly impact more than 50 million under-served patients around the world,” Coles said in a brief statement.
In order to achieve the goals Coles has set out, he said the company has “hand-selected a team of experienced leaders” who will provide their expertise in guiding the company toward its goal of tackling the difficult-to-treat diseases. Last month, the company brought on Orly Mishan as its chief business officer. In May, the company added three members to its leadership team, including John Renger as chief scientific officer. Raymond Sanchez was named chief medical officer in February.
“I’m incredibly proud of how much the company has accomplished since its inception. I look forward to accelerating our pipeline with the initiation of six clinical trials by the end of 2020 and building the foundation to become a premier neuroscience company,” Coles said.
Adam Koppel, managing director of Bain Capital Life Sciences and a Cerevel board member, said Coles was the right person to lead the company as it moves forward with its drug development programs.
In April, the company announced shared positive results from a Phase IIa study demonstrating the anticonvulsant activity of CVL-865 (formerly known as PF-06372865), a novel α2/3/5-subtype-selective GABAA positive allosteric modulator, in patients with photosensitive epilepsy. The study had been begun by Pfizer ahead of the spinout of Cerevel. The company now intends to launch a Phase II trial by the end of this year to further evaluate the potential of CVL-865 in epilepsy. The company also has a Parkinson’s disease asset that will move into Phase III in early 2020.
Before Cerevel, Coles was co-founder and CEO of Yumanity Therapeutics where he was instrumental in establishing and advancing a drug discovery platform based on live-cell modeling that has resulted in three novel drug candidates for the potential treatment of Parkinson’s disease. Before Yumanity, he helmed Onyx Pharmaceuticals where he oversaw its acquisition by Amgen and also served as head of commercial operations at Vertex. Earlier in his career, he held several executive positions at Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and positions of increasing responsibility at Merck. Coles currently serves on the Board of Directors of McKesson Corporation and Regeneron and is a member of the Board of Trustees for Johns Hopkins University.