7 January 2019 - - US-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company UroGen Pharma Ltd. (NASDAQ: URGN) has appointed Elizabeth Barrett as president and chief executive officer effective immediately, the company said.

She will also serve on the company's board of directors.

Barrett, who will be based in New York, replaces Ron Bentsur. Bentsur will step down from his position at the company but will continue to serve in an advisory capacity as needed to ensure a smooth transition.

Barrett was CEO of Novartis Oncology and a member of the Executive Committee of Novartis. 

She previously served as Global president of Oncology at Pfizer Inc. At Pfizer, she held numerous leadership positions, including president of Global Innovative Pharma for Europe, president of the Specialty Care Business Unit for North America, and president of United States Oncology.

Prior to Pfizer, she was vice president and general manager of the Oncology Business Unit at Cephalon Inc. Barrett also worked at Johnson and Johnson. She started her career at Kraft Foods Group Inc.

UroGen recently announced its initiation of the UGN-101 Rolling NDA Submission to the US Food and Drug Administration.

The completed submission is expected in mid-2019, with potential approval anticipated in 2019. The company plans to present the topline data in January 2019.

UroGen Pharma is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing advanced non-surgical treatments to address unmet needs in the field of urology, with a focus on uro-oncology.

The company has developed RTGel, a proprietary sustained release, hydrogel-based platform technology that has the potential to improve therapeutic profiles of existing drugs.

UroGen's sustained release technology is designed to enable longer exposure of the urinary tract tissue to medications, making local therapy a potentially more effective treatment option.

The company's lead product candidates, UGN-101 and UGN-102, are designed to potentially remove tumors by non-surgical means and to treat several forms of non-muscle invasive urothelial cancer, including low-grade upper tract urothelial carcinoma and bladder cancer, respectively.

UroGen is headquartered in New York, NY with operations in Los Angeles, CA and Israel.