Locana, Inc., an RNA-targeting gene therapy company, has appointed James Burns, Ph.D., as chief executive officer. The company is expanding its leadership team as part of a planned transition of the company’s director and recent chief executive officer, Jeffrey M. Ostrove, Ph.D., who will continue to serve as director. 

Mr. Burns is an accomplished company builder and biopharmaceutical product developer. He joins Kathie Bishop, Ph.D., Locana’s chief scientific officer, in carrying out early product concepts through to approval and advancing product candidates in the gene therapy space.

Dr. Burns joins the company from Casebia where he served as the chief executive officer and led the team in discovering and developing new CRISPR/Cas9-based breakthrough therapeutics to treat blood disorders, blindness and heart disease. Prior to Casebia, he spent the bulk of his career at Sanofi-Genzyme, where he held several leadership roles with increasing responsibility, including North America Site head for R&D where he coordinated R&D operations across key therapeutic areas.  

“Jim’s long list of career leadership accomplishments is capped by his recent success in building Casebia Therapeutics, where his focus on delivering emerging gene editing science to patients led to advancing product candidates in multiple indications,” said Tom Daniel, M.D., chairman of the board. “We are inspired by Jim’s experience, leadership and patient focus. We are also exceedingly grateful for Jeff’s capable leadership in bringing the company to this stage.”
 
“Jeff’s work on building this company and its leadership team has accelerated the advancement of our foundational science into an impressive preclinical data set,” said Dr. Burns. “It is a privilege to be at the helm of a company with a platform of this caliber that presents the opportunity to realize its full potential in dozens of diseases with first- and best-in class therapeutics.”