Gilde Healthcare company CatalYm, a world-leader in neutralizing GDF-15 in cancer and cachexia, today announced changes to its executive leadership team to support its next stage of growth. The appointments of Clinton Musil as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Business Officer; Sujata Rao, MD, as Chief Medical Officer; Heike Krupka, PhD, as Chief Development Officer and Andrea Goddard as Chief Technology Officer represent a significant addition to the company’s international development expertise.
These professionals bring decades of experience in leadership roles at global biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, encompassing the full life cycle of drug-development from clinical development to regulatory approval, financial management and strategic transactions.
“With compelling data for visugromab in hand, we are convinced it is critical to accelerate and broaden our clinical development programs. Bringing on board this gifted team of senior clinical drug development executives is an important component of our successfully advancing visugromab through late stage development,” said Scott Clarke, Chief Executive Officer at CatalYm.
CatalYm demonstrated visugromab’s therapeutic potential in an exploratory Phase 2a GDFATHER-2 trial (NCT04725474), where the combination of visugromab and an anti-PD-1 inhibitor led to deep and durable responses across multiple solid tumor types while maintaining a favorable safety profile. These results were presented at leading medical conferences and published in Nature in December 2024. The company expects further data updates from the Phase 2 studies and a cachexia analysis this year.
Clinton Musil brings decades of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry to CatalYm, with significant expertise in strategic planning, financial management, and a broad range of transactions. He joins CatalYm from Skyhawk Therapeutics, where he held several roles of increasing responsibility. Clinton has completed multiple IPOs as an executive and held several roles at public biotech companies including at ARMO Biosciences, which was acquired by Eli Lilly for $1.6 billion.
Sujata Rao, MD, joins CatalYm with over 20 years of extensive early- and late-stage global clinical development expertise in oncology and immunology with senior executive roles at companies including Onyx, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly/ARMO, and most recently as CMO at Insilico Medicine. She brings extensive experience in FDA and global regulatory engagement, IND and BLA preparation, and in building clinical organizations to advance novel therapies.
Heike Krupka, PhD, has more than 23 years of drug development experience in hematology, oncology, cell therapy and immunology across the full product life cycle—from discovery through clinical testing to market launch. Dr. Krupka held senior leadership roles at Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Genentech/Roche and other biotechnology companies, where she guided global cross-functional teams and programs through critical stages of development and approval.
Andrea Goddard brings three decades of global biotechnology experience operating from the manufacturing floor to the C-suite. Previously, Andi held various operational and executive roles in manufacturing, technology and quality across Roche and Genentech and led a global team to deliver end-to-end quality and compliance for the companies’ pharmaceutical commercial products and clinical pipeline. Full bios of the new executive leadership team can be accessed on CatalYm’s website at: https://www.catalym.com/about/
About CatalYm
CatalYm is developing visugromab, a first-in-class anti-GDF-15 antibody, in solid tumors and cachexia. In its first-in-human Phase 1/2a study, visugromab demonstrated durable anti- tumor efficacy with long-lasting objective responses in relapsed and refractory metastatic solid tumor patients in combination with anti-PD-1 treatment. In addition, data from the same study demonstrated that visugromab can significantly counteract the effects of cachexia in these patients. This data was published in Nature and presented at the International Conference on Sarcopenia, Cachexia & Wasting Disorders. CatalYm is now advancing visugromab into multiple Phase 2b studies including first-line metastatic NSCLC (NCT07098988) and cachexia (NCT07112196).
Founded in 2016 and based in Munich, Germany and San Francisco, USA, CatalYm is backed by leading international investors including Gilde Healthcare, Canaan Partners, Bioqube Ventures, Forbion, Omega Funds, Jeito Capital, Novartis Venture Fund, Vesalius, Brandon Capital, Bayern Kapital, BioGeneration Ventures, and Coparion.
About Gilde Healthcare
Gilde Healthcare is a specialized healthcare investor managing over €2.6 billion across two fund strategies: Private Equity and Venture&Growth. The Private Equity fund of Gilde Healthcare participates in profitable lower mid-market healthcare companies based in North-Western Europe. The Venture&Growth fund of Gilde Healthcare invests in fast growing companies active in digital health, medical technologies (MedTech) and therapeutics, based in Europe and North America. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.gildehealthcare.com
