(Alliance News) - Silence Therapeutics PLC on Monday said it has appointed experienced biotech executive Mark Rothera as chief executive officer with immediate effect, as the drug discovery company reported a widened interim loss on increased research and development costs.
Rothera also will join the company's board.
Iain Ross, who has been executive chair since December, will now revert back to his previous position of non-executive chair, the company said.
Silence Therapeutics said Rothera brings more than 30 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, with a strong record of commercial and operational leadership, including driving the successful build up of multiple biotech companies, predominantly in the field of rare diseases.
Prior to joining Silence, Rothera had served as CEO of Orchard Therapeutics, where he oversaw its transformation from a small UK-based, privately held company with two clinical-stage programmes into a leading gene therapy company with seven clinical-stage programmes and fully integrated capabilities, according to Silence Therapeutics.
For the six months to June 30, Silence Therapeutics recorded a pretax loss of GBP13.3 million compared with a pretax loss of GBP9.6 million, driven by doubled research & development spending to GBP10.2 million from GBP5.1 million with the company's SLN360 and SLN124 product candidates both being prepared for clinical testing.
Revenue for the first half totalled GBP1.1 million versus none a year ago.
Silence Therapeutics ended the period with cash and cash equivalents and term deposits of GBP50.3 million versus GBP33.5 million at December 31, 2019. The increase was driven by the upfront cash payment under the company's collaboration with AstraZeneca PLC.
In March, Silence Therapeutics had announced a strategic collaboration with AstraZeneca to discover, develop and commercialise siRNA therapeutics for the treatment of cardiovascular, renal, metabolic and respiratory diseases. As part of the collaboration agreement, Silence had received an upfront cash payment of USD20.0 million and AstraZeneca made a USD20.0 million equity investment.
Shares in Silence Therapeutics were down 1.1% at 463.00 pence each in London on Monday afternoon.
By Tapan Panchal; tapanpanchal@alliancenews.com
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