Axcella Health announced the addition of three new members to its senior leadership team: Thomas Leggett, MBA, Chief Financial Officer; Iman Barilero, Pharm.D., Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Chief Regulatory Science, Patient Advocacy and Pharmacovigilance Officer; and Veena Warikoo, Ph.D., Vice President, Product Development. During his 13 years as an investment banker, Mr. Leggett worked at J.P. Morgan Securities, Healthcare Group and later as a Vice President at Lazard Frères & Company and an Executive Director in the Healthcare Group at UBS Securities. Most recently, as the Treasurer and Head of Business Development Finance at Purdue Pharma L.P. Dr. Barilero comes to Axcella with 30 years of multidisciplinary, international drug development and regulatory experience across academia and industry, spanning a broad spectrum of therapeutic areas.

Before joining Axcella, she served as Vice President, Global Regulatory Development Strategy, Science, Intelligence and Policy at Lundbeck. Dr. Warikoo has 17 years of experience in process development, manufacturing and organizational management. Most recently, she worked for nearly a decade at Sanofi Genzyme, where she held roles of increasing responsibility in therapeutics development and manufacturing, including overseeing the development of an end-to-end, integrated biomanufacturing platform.

Axcella also announced that Peter Mueller, Ph.D., has resigned from his current role as President of R&D and Chief Scientific Officer, to focus on The Mueller Health Foundation.