Novelion appoints Murray Stewart as executive VP, head of R&D

Chief executive officer Mary Szela said, "We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Murray Stewart to Novelion, and believe his deep metabolic drug development and broad industry experience within both large pharma and biotech companies makes him uniquely suited to lead our clinical development activities, provide strategic regulatory guidance for our pipeline and commercial product activities, and provide oversight of our global medical affairs, publications and registry activities."

Szela continued, "Dr. Stewart's long history in successfully developing cardiovascular and metabolic therapies, global regulatory knowledge, and consumer experience will allow him to make immediate contributions in advancing our clinical development strategy for metreleptin. Leptin is a fundamentally important hormone in the regulation of energy homeostasis, fat metabolism, glucose metabolism, and body weight. Under the leadership of Dr. Stewart, our goal is to harness the therapeutic potential of metreleptin in certain diseases associated with hypoleptinemia. In addition, his deep cardiovascular knowledge will support our efforts to facilitate with physicians and other stakeholders a better understanding of homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, and to leverage the clinical and post-marketing data of lomitapide."

Dr. Stewart will join Novelion from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) where he is currently chief medical officer with global responsibility for patient well-being across the vaccines, pharmaceutical and consumer business units. He joined GSK in 2000 as associate director for clinical research & development in the UK and has since held a variety of positions within GSK, primarily in R&D. He was previously clinical head of the biopharm unit and also therapy area head for the cardiovascular and metabolic therapy areas.  Prior to joining the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Stewart worked as a diabetes consultant and senior lecturer and was consultant physician/honorary senior lecturer and head of clinical services at the Diabetes Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom (UK).  His research was in lipid metabolism in type 2 diabetes. Dr. Stewart completed his medical training at Southampton Medical School in the UK and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

Dr. Stewart added, "With metreleptin, I believe we have a significant opportunity to help patients with unmet need given the breadth of its potential effects across a number of indications associated with hypoleptinemic metabolic disorder. I look forward to progressing these development plans for the benefit of patients."

Novelion appoints, murray stewart, executive vp, head of r&d