Evonik creates Scientific Advisory Board to support its enablement of gene-based therapies and other complex parenteral drug products

Evonik today announced the establishment of a Scientific Advisory Board that will help the Company expand its position as a leading global partner to pharmaceutical companies in the development and production of complex parenteral drug products.

Evonik’s business line Health Care, which forms part of the Nutrition and Care segment of the Company, is a global CDMO leader for advanced drug delivery. For over four decades, its portfolio of excipients, formulation and process technologies and manufacturing services has helped pharmaceutical companies transform their APIs into high-performance medicines.

Evonik has a clear mandate to expand its presence within the growth engine, Health & Care. Accordingly, the Company is fully committed to supporting customers in the development and production of complex parenteral drug products for use within fast-growing markets including gene and cell-based therapies. Evonik will leverage the expertise of the new Scientific Advisory Board to help ensure its portfolio of technologies and related services continue to effectively deliver small molecules, peptides, proteins and mRNA across a range of fast-growing therapeutic areas such as rare and degenerative diseases, oncology, ophthalmology, and vaccines.

The three founding members of the Scientific Advisory Board are Professor Daan Crommelin, professor emeritus at the Department of Pharmaceutics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands; Professor Pieter Cullis, Scientific Director and CEO of the NanoMedicines Innovation Network (NMIN) at the University of British Columbia in Canada; and Dr. Mark Tracy, Founder and President of Tracy BioConsulting, LLC. Each advisor has more than 20 years of expertise in the development of polymeric and lipid nanoparticle (LNP)-based drug delivery technologies, and complex parenteral drug products.

Dr. Stefan Randl, Vice-President of Innovation Management at the Health Care business line of Evonik, said “Evonik is dedicated to building long-term collaborations with pharmaceutical industry partners that share our commitment to addressing emerging market needs in the formulation development and production of complex parenteral drug products. The appointment of these pre-eminent thought leaders to our new Scientific Advisory Board will help to ensure that Evonik continues to remain a preferred CDMO partner for advanced drug delivery.”

A profile of each advisor is available below:

Professor Daan Crommelin
Professor Daan Crommelin is Professor emeritus at the Department of Pharmaceutics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He was the editor, or on the editorial board, of more than 10 peer reviewed publications, and has published more than 350 articles. He was also Editor-in-Chief of the AAPS book series 'Advances in the Pharmaceutical Sciences'. In addition to being the co-founder of OctoPlus, he previously held leadership positions at the Dutch Top Institute Pharma, the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP), the European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences (EUFEPS) and the European Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI).

Professor Pieter Cullis
Professor Pieter Cullis is Scientific Director and CEO of the NanoMedicines Innovation Network (NMIN) at the University of British Columbia, which is Canada’s national centre of excellence for nanomedicines. Previously, he has played founding roles in more than five biotechnology companies employing lipid nanoparticle (LNP) drug delivery technology. Professor Cullis has published more than 300 scientific and peer-reviewed articles and is listed as inventor on more than 50 patents. He has played a key role in developing four nanomedicine products to treat cancer and hereditary diseases that have been approved by the U.S. FDA and European EMA regulatory authorities.

Dr. Mark Tracy
Dr. Mark Tracy is the founder and President of Tracy BioConsulting, LLC. He has played a key role in successfully bringing more than ten medicines to the clinic, including several complex parenteral and nucleic acid-based therapies that were commercialized. Previously, he held senior product development roles at pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including Alkermes, Inc. and Alnylam, Inc. Dr. Tracy is also a Past-President of the Controlled Release Society (CRS), and a Fellow of the CRS and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).