Axcella, a biotechnology company developing medicines for severe conditions caused by disrupted amino acid biology, has added three new members to its senior leadership team: Thomas Leggett, MBA, chief financial officer; Iman Barilero, Pharm.D., Ph.D., senior vice president, chief regulatory science, patient advocacy and pharmacovigilance officer; and Veena Warikoo, Ph.D., vice president, product development.
 
Mr. Leggett previously spent 13 years as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan Securities, Healthcare Group and later served as vice president at Lazard Frères & Co. and an executive director in the Healthcare Group at UBS Securities. He raised over $6 billion in equity and $26 billion in debt while advising on over $32 billion in mergers and acquisitions transactions for healthcare clients. Most recently, as the treasurer and head of business development finance at Purdue Pharma L.P., Mr. Leggett executed five strategic transactions, including the recently announced alliance for the joint U.S. commercialization of Symproicwith Shionogi & Co., Ltd.
 
Dr. Barilero brings 30 years of international drug development and regulatory experience across academia and industry, spanning a broad spectrum of therapeutic areas. Previously, she served as vice president, Global Regulatory Development Strategy, Science, Intelligence and Policy at Lundbeck, where she played an instrumental role in the global approval of several products including Selincro, Brintellix, Rexulti and Abilify Maintena. Dr. Barilero previously worked in regulatory affairs at Johnson & Johnson and held roles of increasing responsibility at Hoffman-La Roche in regulatory affairs, pharmacovigilance and medical information.
 
Dr. Warikoo has 17 years of experience in process development, manufacturing and organizational management. She joins the company from Sanofi, where she worked for nearly ten years at Sanofi Genzyme in roles of increasing responsibility in therapeutics development and manufacturing, including overseeing the development of an end-to-end, integrated biomanufacturing platform. During her career, Dr. Warikoo has worked on the commercialization teams for several drugs, including Alprolix, Plegridy, Atryn, Lumizyme and Thymoglobulin, as well as on the post-commercialization teams for the drugs, Avonex, Cerezyme, Myozyme, Fabrazyme and Thyrogen.
 
Additionally, Peter Mueller, Ph.D., has resigned from his current role as President of R&D and chief scientific officer, to focus on The Mueller Health Foundation, which he created to eradicate global, lethal infectious diseases, with a main focus on tuberculosis.

“We welcome Thomas, Iman and Veena to the Axcella team and look forward to the contributions they will make as we advance our pipeline of novel therapeutics across multiple disease areas, including our clinical-stage metabolic and neurological disease programs,” said Robert Connelly, president and chief executive officer of Axcella. “Tom’s unique background of substantial investment banking and biopharmaceutical industry experience will help propel Axcella forward in 2017, as we seek new partnerships and expand our platform into new disease areas. Iman’s extensive global experience in regulatory science and policy, and drug development will help the company deliver novel, unprecedented medicines to patients of unmet medical needs. With her deep product development and manufacturing experience, Veena will augment the Axcella management team as we transition from research to product development.”