Mr French succeeds Steven Quay, who has been appointed chief scientific officer and chairman of MDRNA’s scientific advisory board and will remain chairman of the board of directors.
Mr French was senior vice president of corporate development at Sirna Therapeutics from 2005 until 2007 when the company was acquired by Merck.
MDRNA said that it will leverage its scientific and intellectual property (IP) position surrounding the research, development and delivery of Dicer substrates and ‘Meroduplex’ (mdRNA) RNA interference (RNAi) drug candidates to build an industry-leading position in the development and commercialization of RNAi-based therapeutics.
In addition to its license through the City of Hope to Dicer substrate IP, MDRNA will leverage its portfolio of delivery IP, including an issued patent on the ‘Trp Cage’ phage display library for generating tissue-homing peptides.