Anaveon appoints Dr. Richard Sachse as Chief Medical Officer
Basel, December 18, 2024 – Anaveon, a clinical stage, immuno-oncology company, today announced the appointment of Richard Sachse, M.D., Ph.D., as Chief Medical Officer effective February 1, 2025. Dr. Sachse brings more than 25 years of experience in the biopharma industry as a physician and scientist and was most recently the Chief Medical Officer of SOTIO Biotech. Dr. Sachse will succeed Eduard Gasal, M.D. who will be leaving Anaveon to explore a new opportunity.
“We are delighted to welcome Richard to our team as Chief Medical Officer. He brings a wealth of experience across all aspects of clinical development, clinical operations and medical affairs, and his experience will be invaluable as we advance our lead program ANV600, as well as develop our broader pipeline,” said Andreas Katopodis, Chief Executive Officer of Anaveon. “I would like to thank Ed for his exceptional contributions to Anaveon over the past two years, including the execution of Anaveon’s clinical development pipeline, and particularly for bringing ANV600 successfully to clinic with first patients being treated in June of this year. We wish him well in his future endeavours.”
“I am excited to be joining Anaveon at this pivotal time, with multiple programs in development that have the potential for wide utility in oncology, including in combination with other therapies,” added Dr. Richard Sachse. “I look forward to working with the experienced team at Anaveon as we advance the Company’s pipeline.”
Dr. Richard Sachse will be joining Anaveon from SOTIO Biotech where he serves as Chief Medical Officer. With more than 25 years of experience as a physician and scientist, he has extensive expertise in pharmaceutical development covering the entire value chain from preclinical to registration. In addition to registration studies, he is especially experienced in the design and implementation of translational programs to bridge research programs to the clinic. Prior to joining SOTIO, Richard led the medical, scientific, regulatory and pharmacovigilance activities as Chief Scientific Officer at Neovii. As Chief Scientific Officer/ Chief Medical Officer at Aeterna Zentaris, he was successful in achieving FDA approval of Macimorelin. This was preceded by steady growth through several managerial career steps at Bayer, Peptor, Schwarz Pharma, UCB and Boehringer Ingelheim. He began his medical and scientific career as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Cancer Center Research Institute, Tokyo, Japan and later as a Resident in Internal Medicine at the University Erlangen, Germany. He holds a degree in medicine from the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen, Germany and a board certification in Clinical Pharmacology.
Anaveon is developing selective cytokine receptor agonists with the potential to therapeutically enhance a patient’s immune system to respond to tumors. These novel types of therapeutics, if approved, could potentially have a wide utility in oncology, including in combination with checkpoint inhibitors, cell therapies, vaccines, and radiotherapy.
