N30 Pharma’s New President and CEO Jon Congleton To Lead CF Program

Clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company N30 Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has named Jon Congleton as the new President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), as well as a member of the company’s board of directors. Boulder, Colorado-based N30 Pharma is focused on the development of new treatment options for cystic fibrosis (CF), and was the first research company to discover small molecules targeting GSNOR.

Congleton has been selected to join the company’s board of directors and occupy the lead position in moving the company’s CF program forward, given his twenty-five years of experience as senior manager involved in product commercialization at N30, as well as 18 years spent at Teva Pharmaceuticals, Ltd., where he held general management and global strategic marketing positions, such as Senior Vice President of Teva’s Central Nervous System Global Franchise, Senior Vice President of the Global Medicines Group, and General Manager of Teva Neuroscience, Inc.

“It is an exciting time to be joining N30 Pharmaceuticals, with the Company’s lead compound, N91115 for cystic fibrosis, moving through Phase 1 clinical trials after encouraging early data,” stated Congleton, who has a graduate degree from Kansas State University and a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a specialization in microbiology. “N91115 is intended to address a significant unmet need in the treatment of cystic fibrosis, and I look forward to working with the N30 team to advance this novel compound through clinical development.”

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Congleton will now be responsible for the development of the company’s lead therapy for CF, N91115, which has recently been granted $30 million from a private placement of its preferred stock. The proceeds will primarily be invested in advancing the clinical trial program dedicated to N91115, a novel inhibitor of S-nitrosoglutathione reductase (GSNOR).

“Jon’s mix of business development, operations and commercialization experience make him well suited to drive N30 through its next phase of development,” said Howard Furst, M.D., chairman of the board of directors of N30 Pharma and partner at Deerfield Management Company, LP.  “Jon is an industry veteran with an excellent reputation for growing organizations, driving corporate development activities and building and commercializing pipelines, and we believe the Company will build upon its solid foundation under his leadership.”

The company has already completed its phase 1 dose-escalation trial of orally administered N91115 conducted in healthy participants, and the investigators concluded that there were no limiting toxicities reported by the data monitoring committee for the trial. The results of the preclinical studies revealed that N91115 is able to improve the functions of the protein mutation, F508del-CFTR, which is present in about 90% of CF cases. In addition, N30 currently has other trials being conducted on patients who suffer from the F508del-CFTR mutation.