Nightstar Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ:NITE), a clinical-stage gene therapy company developing treatments for rare inherited retinal diseases, today announced that the company has appointed strategic biotechnology executive Paula Cobb to its board of directors.
“We are very happy to welcome Paula to our board of directors and working alongside the very strong team we have built at Nightstar,” said David Fellows, chief executive officer of Nightstar. “Paula brings strategic, worldwide commercialization experience in rare diseases having led teams to three new drug approvals and playing key roles on four product launches, which will be invaluable as Nightstar evolves into a commercial-stage company.”
Ms. Cobb currently serves as the executive vice president of corporate development at Decibel Therapeutics, Inc. Prior to joining Decibel, she served as senior vice president of the rare disease group at Biogen, where she was responsible for the company’s marketed hemophilia assets and Phase 3 programs in spinal muscular atrophy and neuropathic pain. Prior to this role, she managed the multiple sclerosis franchise, led new product commercialization for early pipeline programs, served as chief of staff to the CEO and held various operational management roles with Biogen in Europe. Before Biogen, she worked for various consulting groups in the Boston area. Ms. Cobb graduated cum laude from Amherst College with a B.A. in political science and English. She also received an MBA from Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration.
About Nightstar
Nightstar is a leading clinical-stage gene therapy company focused on developing and commercializing novel one-time treatments for patients suffering from rare inherited retinal diseases that would otherwise progress to blindness. Nightstar’s lead product candidate, NSR-REP1, is currently in Phase 3 development for the treatment of patients with choroideremia, a rare, degenerative, genetic retinal disorder that has no treatments currently available and affects approximately one in every 50,000 people. Positive results from a Phase 1/2 trials of NSR-REP1 were published in The Lancet in 2014 and in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2016. Nightstar’s second product candidate, NSR-RPGR, is currently being evaluated in a clinical trial known as the XIRIUS trial for the treatment of patients with X-linked retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited X-linked recessive retinal disease that affects approximately one in every 40,000 people.
For more information about Nightstar or its clinical trials, please visit www.nightstartx.com.