MORRISVILLE – Liquidia Technologies, a biopharmaceutical company focused on improving the performance of medicines by precisely engineering drug particles, has hired Kevin Gordon as president and chief financial officer.
Gordon was most recently executive vice president and chief operating officer of QuintilesIMS (now IQVIA), a global contract research organization based in Durham.
“Kevin is a valuable addition to our leadership team, bringing over 30 years of operational and financial accomplishments to Liquidia,” CEO Neal Fowler said in announcing the hire.
Gordon will oversee Liquidia’s finance operations and strategy, corporate development and legal functions.
“I am excited to join the Liquidia team at such a pivotal moment in the company’s history,” Gordon said. “I look forward to contributing to the efforts of the Liquidia team to advance our programs.”
Liquidia declined to name or comment on the previous president and CFO, prior to Gordon’s appointment. Several business and social media sites including LinkedIn say Bruce Boucher held the positions most recently.
While at QuintilesIMS, Gordon was responsible for global operations and contributed to the execution of the merger between IMS Health and Quintiles. The merged companies recently became known as IQVIA.
Gordon was previously executive vice president and CFO at Quintiles from 2010 to 2015, leading the financial strategy and corporate development activities. Before joining Quintiles, he was executive vice president and CFO at Teleflex, a medical technologies company.
TWO DRUGS IN DEVELOPMENT
In joining Liquidia, Gordon said he was impressed by the potential of the company’s technology and product pipeline.
Liquidia’s lead drug candidate, LIQ861, is in a Phase 3 clinical trial for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), chronically high blood pressure in the pulmonary arteries between the heart and lungs. LIQ861 is a new powder formulation of treprostinil, a vasodilator already approved by the FDA for treating the disorder.
Liquidia’s version of the drug is designed for “deep-lung delivery” using a disposable, dry powder inhaler, Fowler said. Topline data from the clinical trial, called INSPIRE, is expected in 2019, he said.
“The initiation of INSPIRE marked an important milestone for Liquidia and for those living with PAH and for the PAH community at large,” Fowler said.
Liquidia is developing a second drug, LIQ865, to deliver sustained-release particles of bupivacaine, a local analgesic that has been used for decades to treat post-operative pain. LIQ865 is in a Phase 1 clinical trial.
COMPANY LEVERAGING ITS ‘PRINT’ TECHNOLOGY
Both drug candidates were developed using Liquidia’s proprietary PRINT technology, an acronym for Particle Replication In Non-Wetting Templates. PRINT allows the precise engineering of uniform drug particles in a virtually unlimited number of compositions, shapes and sizes, all of which determine the therapeutic activity of the particles.
The PRINT technology, drawing on production methods used in the semiconductor and materials industries, uses specialized printing presses to squeeze materials into microscopic molds.
The technology “overcomes the constraints of conventional formulation and production methods to improve the efficacy, safety and convenience of a wide range of medicines, while reducing manufacturing complexity and cost,” according to Liquidia’s website. The technology gives Liquidia and its partners “a high level of control over the physical and chemical characteristics of a drug particle.”
Fowler said having two drug candidates developed with PRINT “speaks to the breadth” of the technology.
Liquidia also collaborates with pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), to apply the technology to their existing drugs, new chemical entities and biologics.
A Liquidia spin-off company, Envisia Therapeutics of Durham, is also using PRINT to develop new potential treatments for eye diseases including glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema.
Liquidia, a privately held company backed by venture capital, was spun out of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2004 by scientists and entrepreneurs Joe DeSimone and Ed Samulski. It has since gained equity investments from heavy-hitters including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GSK, PPD, Pappas Ventures, Morningside Group, Wakefield Group, Canaan Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Xeraya Capital.
The company has between 60 and 70 employees, Fowler said.
