Alderley Park, Cheshire, U.K. Infex Therapeutics, a leading anti-infectives specialist, is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Colm Leonard as a Non-Executive Director (“NED”) of Infex with immediate effect. Colm will also be chairing Infex’s clinical development committee.
Colm has over 22 years’ consultant experience and has spent over 14 years as a national clinical advisor across a range of specialties and topics with The National Institute for Heath and Care Excellence (NICE) and The National Health Service England (NHSE). He is a leading global expert on antimicrobial resistance (“AMR”) and since 2016 has been the clinical lead for the UK Antimicrobial Novel Value Assessment and Reimbursement Project, a joint project between NICE, NHSE and the Department of Health and Social Care on novel evaluation & delinked reimbursement of antimicrobials. In this role he helped to deliver the world’s first ‘pull incentive’ in England for new antimicrobials, launching the pilot innovative subscription model, where drug companies are paid a fixed annual fee for new antibiotics, based on their importance to public health to “de-link” the value from drug sales and limit the over-use of new treatments.
Colm was also involved in developing the sections on antimicrobial ‘pull’ incentives and diagnostics in the UK Government’s five- and twenty- year strategic AMR plans. He has also been a key member of a number of national strategic committees and working groups on AMR, interstitial lung disease and transplant.
Colm joined Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust as a Consultant Thoracic Physician in 2000 and became an honorary professor of respiratory medicine at the Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre in 2019. Prior to this, he spent over three years at Stanford University Medical Centre as a pulmonary and critical care fellow and was the attending physician on the lung transplant programme prior to moving to the UK. He also has a strong academic profile as an investigator and has been investigator on research grants in excess of £19.3 million to date.
Commenting on the appointment, Jon Moulton, Non-Executive Chairman of Infex, said: “We are delighted to welcome Professor Colm Leonard to the Board of Infex. His extensive experience leading AMR strategies, coupled with his long career as a clinical physician, will be invaluable as we continue to progress our pipeline of innovative infectious disease programmes through and into clinical development.“
Professor Colm Leonard commented: “AMR is a critical global issue and we desperately need new innovative treatments to tackle this crisis. Infex has a very exciting pipeline of innovative programmes to help address this issue. I’m looking forward to working closely with the Company as it continues to progress the development of these vital new treatments.”