Biotech vet Connelly whips up a recipe for 'delicious' packaging upstart

Robert Connelly has stepped aside from his job at the helm of Lexington, MA-based Pulmatrix, trading in his role leading the development of new respiratory drugs in favor of a new trans-Atlantic upstart which plans to create a wide range of "delicious" packages for food designed to replace today's trash with a tasty snack. And his departure has triggered a big promotion for the biotech's chief scientific officer just as the developer turns in some positive early-stage data.

"This approach has the potential to fundamentally change the way food is packaged and consumed," says WikiCell Designs co-founder David Edwards, a Harvard professor and founder of ArtScience Labs, which works on new product development. 

The new company has facilities in Paris and Cambridge, MA. And a pair of classic, early-stage biotech funds has moved in to offer $10 million in financial support, with Noubar Afeyan of Flagship Ventures and Terry McGuire of Polaris Venture Partners joining the startup's board of directors.

Connelly, who ran Domantis up until GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK) bought it, is being replaced at Pulmatrix by CSO Robert Clarke--who started as the biotech's first Ph.D. staffer--just as the company offers up some positive biomarker data from a Phase Ib of its lead drug for COPD. While primarily designed to demonstrate safety and tolerability, the early-stage program also offered indications that PUR118 was having an anti-inflammatory effect for patients.

"We anticipate getting into Phase II next year," Clarke tells FierceBiotech. And while Pulmatrix is funded for the year ahead, Clarke says the biotech plans to pull together a new round of funding as the developer pursues active partnership discussions.

"There are lots of LAMA/LABA products," Clarke says, "But the novel anti-inflammatory space is still wide open." And the lead program also has a promising indication as an anti-infective, which would further boost its potential in the market.

- here's the release from WikiCell
- read the release on Clarke's promotion
- get the release on Pulmatrix's Ib data