9 August 2019 - - US-based biopharmaceutical company Palladio Biosciences, Inc. has appointed Alex Martin as the company's chief executive officer, the company said.

Martin brings to Palladio over 25 years of experience in senior executive roles in the life sciences industry, with a focus on business development, operations, and raising capital.

He was previously CEO of Realm Therapeutics which was acquired by ESSA Pharma in July 2019, and prior to that held executive roles at several biopharmaceutical companies including Intercept Pharmaceuticals where he was COO and BioXell where he was CFO.

He began his career at SmithKline Beecham and later became vice president, Business Development and Licensing at Novartis. Martin received his BA from Cornell University and an MBA from Harvard.

Palladio Biosciences is a privately-owned, clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing medicines for orphan diseases of the kidney and is located near Philadelphia, PA. Palladio is initially developing its lead drug, lixivaptan, for Polycystic Kidney Disease, an orphan kidney disease for which there are limited treatment options.

Lixivaptan is a potent, selective vasopressin V2 receptor antagonist, a mechanism of action that has clinical proof of concept to slow kidney function decline in adults at risk of rapidly progressing Autosomal Dominant PKD (ADPKD).

Lixivaptan received orphan designation by FDA for the treatment of ADPKD and is currently being tested in the ELiSA study, a Phase 2 clinical trial in patients with ADPKD.

It was previously administered to more than 1,600 subjects across 36 clinical studies as part of a prior clinical development programme for the treatment of hyponatremia.

Palladio expects to leverage lixivaptan's large body of data generated in the hyponatremia clinical program to accelerate the development of lixivaptan for the treatment of ADPKD.

Polycystic Kidney Disease Key Facts and Figures is an inherited genetic disease that affects more than 140,000 people in the United States and millions globally. ADPKD is the most common type of PKD.

A person with ADPKD has a 50% chance of passing the disease on to each of his or her children. The disease is characterised by uncontrolled growth of fluid-filled cysts in the kidney, which can each grow to be as large as a football. Symptoms often include kidney infections and chronic pain.

The continued enlargement of cysts and replacement of normal kidney tissue causes irreversible loss of renal function.

In the United States, approximately 2,500 new people with PKD require dialysis or a kidney transplant every year, making PKD the 4th leading cause of kidney failure.