CymaBay Therapeutics Announces Departure of Chief Medical Officer


NEWARK, Calif., Sept. 17, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CymaBay Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: CBAY), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and providing access to innovative therapies for patients with liver and other chronic diseases with high unmet medical need, announced that Pol Boudes, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, will be leaving the company on September 30, 2019 to explore other opportunities.  CymaBay has initiated a formal search for his replacement.

“Pol helped transition our focus to liver diseases and played a key role in advancing seladelpar to Phase 3 for patients with primary biliary cholangitis,” said Sujal Shah, President and Chief Executive Officer of CymaBay. “We thank Pol for his contributions over the past five years and wish him the best in his future endeavors.”

Dr. Gideon Hirschfield, M.D. has been a close advisor to the company and will continue to provide key medical and clinical support to CymaBay. Dr. Hirschfield is the inaugural Lily and Terry Horner Chair in Autoimmune Liver Disease Research at the Toronto Centre for Liver Disease (TCLD), Toronto General Hospital and Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Hirschfield is a world-renowned autoimmune liver disease clinician-scientist with extensive clinical expertise in the management of complex liver disease and is now co-leading the Autoimmune Liver Disease Program at TCLD.

About CymaBay
CymaBay Therapeutics, Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing therapies for liver and other chronic diseases with high unmet medical need. CymaBay’s lead development candidate, seladelpar, is a potent, selective and orally active PPARδ agonist currently in development for the treatment of patients with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), an autoimmune liver disease, and with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). CymaBay is currently enrolling patients in a global, Phase 3 registration study of seladelpar for PBC. This study is a 52-week, placEbo-coNtrolled, randomized, pHAse 3 study to evaluate the safety aNd effiCacy of sEladelpar (ENHANCE) in patients with PBC. For more information about ENHANCE, please visit: www.pbcstudies.com. Seladelpar received orphan designation for PBC from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicine Agency (EMA). Seladelpar also received Breakthrough Therapy Designation for early stage PBC from the FDA and PRIority MEdicine status from the EMA. CymaBay is also conducting a Phase 2b proof-of-concept study of seladelpar for patients with NASH, and plans to initiate a Phase 2 study of seladelpar for patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) in the third quarter of 2019.

For additional information about CymaBay visit www.cymabay.com.


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