Cyclerion Announces the Appointment of Andreas Busch as Chief Innovation Officer
April 09, 2019 at 08:00 am
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Cyclerion Therapeutics, Inc. announced that Andreas (Andy) Busch, will join the company as chief innovation officer (CIO). Dr. Busch brings extensive R&D and portfolio leadership experience across a broad range of therapeutic categories, including significant expertise in rare and orphan diseases and in the discovery and development of sGC stimulators. Dr. Busch will lead Cyclerion’s Innovation Center, the company’s novel leadership model that gathers research, development, customer insights and external innovation together in one team to identify, advance and optimize value-creating medicines. In his role, Dr. Busch will primarily focus on delivering the greatest possible patient impact and shareholder value creation from Cyclerion’s current pipeline of five sGC stimulator programs. Dr. Busch will report to Peter Hecht, Ph.D., chief executive officer, and will work closely with Mark Currie, Ph.D., president and chief scientific officer, who has led the building of the sGC platform that enabled the creation of Cyclerion. Before joining Cyclerion, Dr. Busch served led R&D at Shire Plc as executive vice president, head of R&D, chief scientific officer and a member of the executive committee. Previously, Dr. Busch spent 13 years at Bayer, where he was most recently executive vice president, head of drug discovery and a member of the executive committee. During his time at Bayer, Dr. Busch led the development of many therapies, including the company’s sGC stimulators through clinical proof of concept. Prior to Bayer, Dr. Busch served as global head of cardiovascular research at Hoechst and Sanofi-Aventis.
Cyclerion Therapeutics, Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that focuses on developing treatments for serious diseases. The Companyâs portfolio includes novel soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) stimulators, namely praliciguat and olinciguat, as well as multiple research stage molecules. Praliciguat is a systemic sGC stimulator that is licensed to Akebia Therapeutics, Inc. for the treatment of rare kidney disease. Olinciguat is a vascular sGC stimulator that the Company intends to out-license for cardiovascular diseases. The Company operates through the human therapeutics segment. The Company is focused on identifying non-sGC stimulator assets within the central nervous system (CNS) therapeutic area to build a new portfolio. The Company is also evaluating other activities aimed at enhancing shareholder value, which potentially include collaborations, licenses, mergers, acquisitions and/or other targeted investments.