Rivus Pharmaceuticals, Inc., announced the expansion of its leadership team and the opening of a South San Francisco office where Rivus will continue to expand and scale in California.

Leadership appointments include David Grainger, Ph.D., as Chairman of Development and Meg Fitzgerald, J.D., as Chief Legal Officer. 

The appointments of Grainger and Fitzgerald will accelerate Rivus’s growth as it builds on positive Phase 2a data reinforcing the potential of the new class of medicines the company has pioneered. 

Grainger will oversee the strategy, design, and implementation of the clinical development for Rivus’ pipeline of CMA drug candidates, including the company’s lead investigational candidate, HU6. 

Fitzgerald will provide strategic legal guidance aligned with the company’s goals and ensure compliance with regulatory bodies, overseeing intellectual property, and managing legal risks.

Grainger has served as an advisor to Rivus’s Board of Directors since 2019. He is a co-founder and partner at Medicxi, one of Europe’s largest life sciences venture capital groups, where he served as Chief Scientific Advisor and Venture Advisor and was a director of over a dozen biotech companies in the UK and the U.S. 

He previously served as Chief Innovation Officer at Centessa Pharmaceuticals, where he oversaw research across Centessa’s pipeline of 16 programs ranging from discovery to Phase 3 clinical trials. 

He has founded over 30 biotech companies, including Functional Therapeutics, (acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim), XO1 (acquired by Janssen Pharmaceuticals), and the out-sourced drug developers Total Scientific and RxCelerate. 

Before joining Rivus, Fitzgerald was Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at Codexis, Inc., Chief Compliance Officer and General Counsel at Allakos, Inc., and held the role of Privacy Officer and Associate General Counsel at Aimmune Therapeutics, Inc. 

She also served as Vice President of Corporate Law at ZS Pharma, Inc., where she played a key role in negotiations that resulted in the $2.7 billion sale of ZS Pharma to AstraZeneca. Earlier in her career, Fitzgerald held increasingly senior leadership roles at Genentech, Inc., ultimately serving as Associate General Counsel and Director of Transactional Law.