New SynOx CEO builds out his team with ex-Cristal chief as CMO, ex-Sanofi Dupixent supply leader as CTO

A week after hiring CEO Ray Barlow, SynOx Therapeutics has two more C-suite members to introduce: Chief Medical Officer Axel Mescheder, M.D., and Chief Technology Officer Broes Naeye, Ph.D.

The new exec team joins as SynOx works toward advancing a registrational trial of emactuzumab in the U.S. and EU for rare, benign tumors in the joints.

Mescheder previously held the same role, and the CEO post, at Cristal Therapeutics, a clinical-stage Dutch nanomedicine biotech. 

CTO Broes Naeye, Ph.D.
(SynOx Therapeutics)

Naeye joins from Sanofi, where he was a global product supply lead, which included spearheading the global supply of Dupixent, the blockbuster eczema and asthma drug. Both Sanofi and its partner Regeneron recorded $4 billion in sales for the drug in 2020. 

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The new CTO also previously headed up commercial supply at Ablynx, which Sanofi acquired in 2018. 

For both new hires, job one will be testing emactuzumab in patients with tenosynovial giant cell tumors. Surgery is currently the main treatment option. Roche developed the drug, which it brought into the clinic in 2011 and then offloaded to Celleron in August 2020. SynOx was then spun out from Celleron.

The biotech raised $44 million in November 2020 to support the clinical development.