Morphic Therapeutic announced two key leadership appointments. Dr. Brihad Abhyankar has joined Morphic as Vice President of Clinical Development and Aaron Pelta was promoted to Senior Vice President, Business and Corporate Development. Prior to his work at Theravance Biopharma, Dr. Abhyankar served as the head of clinical development at Akari Therapeutics, developing treatments for a range of rare and orphan autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

He previously served as the executive medical director of clinical science at Takeda where he directed strategy for global clinical development and played a key role in the development, approval and the life cycle management of ENTYVIO® or vedolizumab. Dr. Abhyankar has previously served in Shire Pharmaceuticals, Schering Plough Pharmaceuticals and Solvay pharmaceuticals in various roles of increasing responsibility in medical affairs and clinical development. Prior to working in the biopharmaceutical industry, he trained and worked as a surgeon for 10 years and has senior resident level experience in urology, surgical oncology and general surgery in the UK National Health Service and in Mumbai, India.

He is a fellow of the Royal College of the Surgeons of Glasgow & and a Fellow of the Faculty of the Pharmaceutical medicine of the Royal College of Physicians. Aaron Pelta has 20 years of leadership experience in biopharmaceutical industry business development, strategy, and commercialization. He has served as Morphic's Vice President of Business and Corporate Development since 2019.

Prior to joining Morphic, he served as Vice President of Business Development and Commercial Strategy at Arsanis, Head of Gastroenterology and Enterology Business Development at Shire, and Vice President, Business Development and Transactions at AMAG. Prior to that, Mr. Pelta held positions of increasing seniority in business development and marketing at Cubist Pharmaceuticals. He has also served in commercial analytics and engineering roles at companies including Biogen, Praxair and Gamera.