Spark Therapeutics, a member of the Roche Group and a commercial gene therapy company, has appointed Cynthia Pussinen as chief technical officer (CTO). Cynthia has more than 25 years of experience in the biopharma industry, leading teams in manufacturing, quality, supply chain, formulation development and process sciences.  She will oversee Spark’s manufacturing and technical operations, including pipeline process development, preclinical and clinical manufacturing, and the commercial manufacturing and distribution of LUXTURNA (voretigene neparvovec-rzyl).
 
Cynthia previously served as global vice president and general manager, Life Sciences and Specialty Chemicals, for Honeywell International, Inc., where she developed and executed a comprehensive strategy designed for significant, sustained growth and innovation across multiple verticals including process automation and artificial intelligence (AI).
 
Prior to Honeywell, she was the executive vice president, Technical Development, Operations and Supply Chain for Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Cynthia also worked at Ipsen Biosciences, serving as president. She also spent more than 18 years at Pfizer in a variety of roles including portfolio and project management, logistics and supply chain, pharmaceutical sciences and as a scientist in medicinal chemistry.

“As Spark looks to the future of gene therapy and our growing research and development portfolio, bringing products through the clinical trial process and successfully to market requires both breadth and depth in scaling technical development and operations,” said Jeffrey D. Marrazzo, chief executive officer of Spark Therapeutics. “We are excited to welcome Cynthia to Spark, as she brings both the expertise and leadership needed to be successful in this role. We are confident she will be an excellent addition to our management team as we prepare to bring forward the next generation of gene therapies to patients.”