Autifony Therapeutics, a UK-based pioneer in the development of novel pharmaceutical treatments for hearing disorders, has announced that Dr John Hutchison has joined the company as Chief Medical Officer, ahead of the planned retirement of Dr Peter Harris at the end of this month.
Dr Hutchison was previously Chief Medical Officer and VP of Clinical Research at Pfizer Neusentis in the UK.
He brings a wealth of experience of clinical drug development in both big pharma and the biotech sector to Autifony, and has a strong background in CNS indications, including epilepsy, rare neurological disorders, Huntington’s disease, paediatric autism, and cerebellar ataxia.
Dr Hutchison will head Autifony’s growing clinical development team that will oversee the evaluation of two different candidate drugs in multiple clinical trials by the end of the year. Autifony’s first candidate drug, AUT00063, is in two Phase II trials: one for age-related hearing loss and one for tinnitus. AUT00206, the second of Autifony's candidate drugs, is optimised for psychiatric indications and is initially being progressed for schizophrenia.
Dr Harris joined Autifony as a consultant in April 2012, before becoming the company’s first Chief Medical Officer in December of that year. He successfully steered AUT00063 through first-in-human Phase I trials before setting up two pioneering Phase IIa clinical studies for age-related hearing loss and tinnitus in the US and UK, respectively. He built the strong network of collaborations in the hearing space which has underpinned Autifony’s Phase II programme. The two Phase IIa trials are due to read out by mid-2016.
