X4 Pharmaceuticals Promotes Renato Skerlj, to Chief Scientific Officer
June 11, 2020 at 08:00 am EDT
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X4 Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced the promotion of Renato Skerlj, Ph.D., to the position of Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Skerlj is one of the scientific founders of X4 and co-inventor of X4’s lead drug candidate, mavorixafor. He joined the company in September 2019 as Senior Vice President, Research and Development. As Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Skerlj will lead all research and development functions and pre-clinical development activities. Dr. Skerlj has more than 25 years of experience leading the discovery and development of disease modifying small molecule drugs to treat genetically defined rare diseases. He has authored 67 publications, holds 52 patents and has advanced multiple drug candidates into clinical development. Prior to joining X4, Dr. Skerlj held drug discovery and development leadership roles at Lysosomal Therapeutics. Previous to that, he was interim Head of Small Molecule Discovery at Genzyme and part of the executive team at AnorMED, a publicly traded company that was acquired by Genzyme in 2006. Dr. Skerlj is an accomplished drug developer, having contributed to the approval of two drugs; plerixafor, a CXCR4-targeted stem cell mobilizer approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2008, and ertapenem, an anti-bacterial approved by the FDA in 2001. Dr. Skerlj received his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of British Columbia, and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford and Ohio State University.
X4 Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. The Company is focused on discovering and developing novel therapeutics for the treatment of rare diseases and those with limited treatment options, with a focus on conditions resulting from dysfunction of the immune system. Its lead clinical candidate is mavorixafor, a small-molecule selective antagonist of chemokine receptor CXCR4, that is being developed as an oral, once-daily therapy. It has developed a pipeline of small-molecule, oral antagonists of the chemokine receptor C-X-C receptor type 4 (CXCR4). It has two pre-clinical candidates: X4P-003, a second-generation CXCR4 antagonist designed to have enhanced properties relative to mavorixafor, potentially enabling opportunities in CXCR4-dependent disorders and primary immunodeficiencies, and X4P-002, a CXCR4 antagonist with a distribution profile and a demonstrated ability to cross the blood-brain barrier.
X4 PHARMACEUTICALS, INC. 
