Alkermes Appoints Mark Namchuk
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Alkermes plc has announced that it has appointed Mark Namchuk, Ph.D., as Senior Vice President of Research, Pharmaceutical and Nonclinical Development. Dr. Namchuk will be responsible for advancing the company’s early-stage product pipeline.
He will serve on the executive management team of Alkermes and report to Elliot Ehrich, M.D., Senior Vice President of Research & Development and Chief Medical Officer.
“It is an exciting time to join the Alkermes team, with a number of promising programs underway across the company. I look forward to helping advance our current priority drug candidates for CNS diseases and guiding our pharmaceutical development strategy for the future.”
“Dr. Namchuk brings a wealth of valuable drug discovery and development expertise to our team, which will help to further strengthen our increasingly robust product pipeline,” said Richard Pops, Chief Executive Officer of Alkermes. “We look forward to his contributions and drug development insights as we create innovative new medicines and design studies to demonstrate their differentiated properties in addressing patient needs.”
Dr. Namchuk joins Alkermes with nearly 20 years of experience in integrated R&D and drug discovery. Most recently, Dr. Namchuk served as Senior Vice President and Interim Global Head of Research for Vertex Pharmaceuticals, leading a group of more than 450 researchers in the discovery of transformational medicines in the areas of infectious disease, oncology, inflammatory diseases, neurology and cystic fibrosis.
He has built and led departments supporting the critical components of early pharmaceutical R&D, including medicinal chemistry, protein biophysics, in vitro and in vivo pharmacology, drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, and clinical and preclinical biomarkers.
Earlier in his career, he served as the head of the biochemistry group at Cubist Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Namchuk obtained his doctorate in bioorganic chemistry from the University of British Columbia and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.
“It is an exciting time to join the Alkermes team, with a number of promising programs underway across the company. I look forward to helping advance our current priority drug candidates for CNS diseases and guiding our pharmaceutical development strategy for the future,” said Dr. Namchuk.
