Text Alfama, Inc. announced today the recruitment of Dr. Walter Blättler as the Company’s new Director of Pre-Clinical Development. Dr. Blättler is better known as the scientific founder of ImmunoGen, where he was Head of R&D and Clinical Development until 2007.He will be responsible for the development of Alfama’s entire portfolio of drug candidates towards the clinic, through internal efforts and external collaborations.
According to Nuno Arantes-Oliveira, Alfama’s President and Chief Executive Officer, “Walter brings to Alfama a wealth of practical and proven drug development experience at precisely the right time in our history. Our CORM technology has now shown very promising efficacy and safety signals in models of a diverse range of diseases. We expect Walter to quickly translate these results into clinical trials and eventual products.
Stan Kugell, the company’s Chairman of the Board, said, “Dr. Blättler has a well-deserved reputation for accurately recognizing potential in nascent therapeutics and for rapid and successful implementation of those ideas. We are delighted that among all of the projects competing for Dr. Blättler’s attention, he chose Alfama.”
“When I left ImmunoGen, I set a goal of finding a project that I could whole heartedly believe in, one with some of the same characteristics that made ImmunoGen’s technology so successful - a novel platform, strong therapeutic potential, with that elusive sense of something that is going to work”, Dr. Blättler said. “Drug development always has risks, but to me this smells like it’s going to be a success.”
About Alfama
Alfama is developing a new class of drugs based on a class of molecules known as CORMs, or Carbon Monoxide (CO) Releasing Molecules. Although popularly known as a toxin when inhaled in very large quantities, CO is also naturally produced in the human body and continuously exhaled through normal respiration. Over fifteen years of research have now demonstrated the enormous therapeutic potential and safety of CO when delivered to target tissues in appropriate doses. Alfama controls a unique collection of several hundred proprietary compounds to choose from, suitable for oral, intravenous or topical administration, each delivering carbon monoxide at different rates, quantities and with disease or tissue-specific release properties. Among the company’s current priorities are pre-clinical programs on acute liver failure and multiple sclerosis. In its gaseous form, CO is undergoing clinical trials for kidney transplant and for respiratory diseases. Alfama emerged on the frontline of a new wave of start-up biotechnology companies stemming out of Portugal that have achieved a global presence. The Company maintains labs and permanent collaborations in Portugal, the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Italy. It has attracted capital from investors in New York, Boston, San Francisco, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Porto and Lisbon, and the attention of potential Pharma partners worldwide. Alfama’s scientific founders include the biologists Roberto Motterlini, the pioneer who coined the term CORM to describe the new class of drugs, and Werner Haas, former research leader at Hoffmann-La Roche, as well as Brian Mann, of Sheffield University and Carlos Romão of the Institute for Chemical and Biological Technology of the New University of Lisbon (Portugal) – the chemists who made practical the theory behind CORMs. Nuno Arantes-Oliveira serves as President and Chief Executive Officer. American investor and entrepreneur Stan Kugell serves as Chairman of the Board.
