From Melinta Therapeutics to CARB-X
Erin Duffy, former CSO of US biotech company Melinta Therapeutics, replaces Karen Gallant as CARB-X‘s Chief of Research and Development.
Erin Duffy will be responsible for the delivery of CARB-X’s global portfolio objectives through her leadership of the R&D alliance teams and the management and governance of CARB-X’s portfolio and funding cycles. Dr. Duffy will also join CARB-X’s senior executive team and sit on CARB-X’s governing body, the Joint Oversight Committee (JOC).
“We are very pleased to welcome Erin to our senior executive team as we continue to build our portfolio of innovative early development antibacterial products. We are at a pivotal moment in the growth of our organization, strengthening our scientific depth while we increase the size and diversity of the world’s largest portfolio of early stage antibacterial products,” said Kevin Outterson, Executive Director of CARB-X and Professor of Law at Boston University. “Erin’s extensive antibiotic R&D experience, combined with her background in corporate leadership, will help CARB-X fulfill its mission to accelerate highly innovative antibacterial products to protect human health.”
“The world urgently needs new products to address the spread of drug-resistant bacteria, which kills an estimated 700,000 people around the world each year,” said Dr. Duffy. “I welcome this challenge to help CARB-X select and support the development of new products that have the potential to save lives and deliver solutions to this global health crisis.”
Strengthening CARB-X leadership
In this new position, Dr. Duffy will take over these responsibilities from Karen Gallant, PhD, who has led the design and growth of the portfolio and played a central role in shaping CARB-X’s operations since it was established in 2016. Dr. Gallant will assume a new leadership role, Deputy Executive Director of CARB-X, with broad responsibility for the design of the portfolio strategy, engagement with other stakeholders in the AMR field plus assuming more of the leadership of CARB-X internally and with funders. Dr. Gallant will retain her seat on the CARB-X Joint Oversight Committee.
Dr. Duffy is an accomplished life sciences executive with more than 17 years of drug-discovery and leadership experience in the antibiotic arena. She joined Rib-X Pharmaceuticals (now Melinta Therapeutics) as it was launching in New Haven, Connecticut. In increasingly senior roles, she helped build a team of researchers focused on next-generation and novel antibiotics that target the ribosome. Among her team’s recent achievements was the de novo design and optimization of a completely new class of antibiotics, the pyrrolocytosines, supported by CARB-X.
When Melinta ceased research operations in March 2019, she left the company as the EVP, Chief Scientific Officer and site head of the New Haven research site. Prior to Melinta, Dr. Duffy was the Associate Director of Innovative Discovery Technologies at Achillion Pharmaceuticals. She began her career at Pfizer Central Research, in Groton, Connecticut, where she was a computational and structural drug designer in multiple therapeutic areas. Dr. Duffy earned her PhD and was trained at Yale University.
More information:
https://carb-x.org/carb-x-news/carb-x-strengthens-leadership-team-with-appointment-of-erin-duffy-as-chief-of-research-and-development-rd/