Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced the appointment of Rob Ciappenelli as Chief Strategy Officer, the promotion of Marc Abrams, Ph.D., to Senior Vice President, Discovery Research and the addition of Kristen Sheppard, Esq., to Dicerna’s executive leadership team as Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. In his new role as Chief Strategy Officer, Mr. Ciappenelli will be responsible for overseeing Dicerna’s cross-functional product-creation efforts and pipeline expansion, as well as continued high-performance alliance management in support of Dicerna’s collaborative partnerships. Mr. Ciappenelli brings to the role more than 30 years of global experience across the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and healthcare consulting industries and most recently served as Dicerna’s Chief Commercial Officer. Prior to joining Dicerna, Mr. Ciappenelli led commercial and strategic operations for Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Shire plc and Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. In his new role as Senior Vice President, Discovery Research, Dr. Abrams will be responsible for ensuring continued high productivity from Dicerna’s discovery research engine and generating new pipeline candidates. Dr. Abrams joined Dicerna in 2014 as Senior Director, Preclinical Development and has held roles of increasing responsibility related to optimizing the pharmaceutical properties of Dicerna’s GalXC™ technology platform and identifying and advancing new RNAi targets for Dicerna and its collaborative partners. Prior to Dicerna, Dr. Abrams led RNAi discovery and early development programs in oncology, as well as liver, cardiovascular, viral and autoimmune diseases at Sirna Therapeutics and Merck. Ms. Sheppard joins Dicerna with more than 20 years of experience in building and leading investor relations, corporate communications and public affairs functions across the biotechnology, medical device and technology sectors. Ms. Sheppard joins Dicerna from Akebia Therapeutics, Inc. where she served as Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications.