CRO

Altasciences continues to beef up its exec suite with newly promoted CMO

The Canadian biopharma services company Altasciences has promoted Dr. Gaetano Morelli as its new chief medical officer.

Dr. Morelli has been at Altasciences in various guises for seven years, first as a a GI consultant and then signing on as medical advisor back in in 2017, climbing up the ladder until hitting the CMO role.

In his new role, he “will continue to provide key insight to our teams in North America and to sponsors worldwide as we navigate the complexities of early-phase drug development,” said Chris Perkin, Altascience’s CEO.

Before Altasciences, Dr. Morelli was the global medical director at MDS Pharma for 10 years, and is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at McGill University in Montreal.

It comes amid a few changes at the top of its medical side of the business over the past year or so, with CRO veteran Beatrice Setnik, Ph.D., becoming its new chief scientific officer last August, followed by its hiring of Lynne LeSauteur, Ph.D., as its VP of immunochemistry and immunology a month later.

Back in 2018, the company penned a new deal that saw it snap up the preclinical testing business of SNBL USA.