FOSTER CITY, Calif., May 4, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- SutroVax, a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of superior and novel vaccines designed to prevent or treat some of the most common and deadly infectious diseases worldwide, today announced the appointment of Andrew Guggenhime as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Business Officer. In this role, Mr. Guggenhime will lead the finance, business and corporate development, strategy and communications activities at SutroVax.

Mr. Guggenhime brings more than two decades of leadership experience at both private and public healthcare companies, including as the chief financial officer of biotechnology companies Dermira, Calistoga Pharmaceuticals and Facet Biotech, among others.

"Andrew is a veteran financial and strategic leader who has successfully directed and executed numerous financings and transactions, helped achieve significant corporate milestones and built and directed multiple functional teams and processes critical to the operational success of several organizations," said Grant Pickering, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of SutroVax. "We are thrilled to have him join the executive team at SutroVax as we advance our pneumococcal conjugate vaccine franchise, led by SVX-24, into the clinic." 

SutroVax's lead vaccine candidate, SVX-24, is a preclinical, 24-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) that includes 11 incremental strains over and above the 13 in today's standard of care, Prevnar 13^®, including strains responsible for high case-fatality rates, antibiotic resistance and/or meningitis. SutroVax expects to submit an investigational new drug application for SVX-24 to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the second half of 2021. The SutroVax pipeline also includes SVX-XP, a PCV with an expanded breadth of coverage of at least 30 strains, including newly emerging strains responsible for invasive pneumococcal disease and antibiotic resistance, as well as a prophylactic vaccine designed to prevent Group A Strep infections and a therapeutic vaccine designed to treat periodontal disease.

"I am delighted to be joining SutroVax at such an exciting time for the company as it advances its lead PCV into the clinic as well as its other pipeline programs that leverage the company's scalable platform," said Mr. Guggenhime. "There is a global health need both for new vaccines to provide broader protection than currently marketed vaccines and for novel vaccines that target pathogens for which no approved vaccines exist. I look forward to working with the team to pursue these important opportunities."

Mr. Guggenhime joins SutroVax from Dermira, Inc., where he served as Chief Financial Officer from April 2014 through the acquisition of the company by Eli Lilly and Company in February 2020. During his time at Dermira, Mr. Guggenhime executed on a wide range of financial and strategic transactions, including the company's initial public offering, follow-on offerings and the sale of the company; planned and executed the transition to a commercial-stage organization in connection the company's first product launch; and built and led business planning and process initiatives for multiple corporate functions. Prior to Dermira, Mr. Guggenhime served as Chief Financial Officer for CardioDx, Inc., a privately held commercial-stage cardiovascular molecular diagnostics company. He also served as Chief Financial Officer for Calistoga Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a privately held, development-stage company, which was acquired by Gilead Sciences, Inc. in 2011; and as Chief Financial Officer for Facet Biotech Corporation, a biotechnology company that was acquired by Abbott Laboratories in April 2010. He previously served as Chief Financial Officer of PDL BioPharma, Inc. until Facet Biotech was spun off from PDL BioPharma in December 2008. Prior to joining Facet Biotech, Mr. Guggenhime served as Chief Financial Officer for Neoforma, Inc. a provider of supply chain management solutions for the healthcare industry, which was acquired by Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC in March 2006. Mr. Guggenhime began his career in financial services at Merrill Lynch & Co. and Wells Fargo & Company. He currently serves on the board of directors of Metacrine, Inc., a privately held biotechnology company. Mr. Guggenhime holds an M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.A. in international politics and economics from Middlebury College.

About SutroVax

SutroVax is a next-generation vaccine company seeking to improve global health by developing superior and novel vaccines designed to prevent or treat some of the most common and deadly infectious diseases worldwide. The company's cell-free protein synthesis platform, comprising the XpressCF™ platform, exclusively licensed from Sutro BioPharma, Inc., together with SutroVax's proprietary know-how, enables the design and production of protein carriers and antigens, the critical building blocks of vaccines, in ways that the company believes conventional vaccine technologies currently cannot. SutroVax acquired an exclusive license to Sutro Biopharma's proprietary cell-free protein synthesis platform, XpressCF™, for the discovery, development, and sale of vaccines for the treatment or prevention of infectious diseases. In addition to its pneumococcal conjugate vaccines in development, SVX-24 and SVX-XP, SutroVax is leveraging its proprietary platform to advance other novel vaccines, including a prophylactic vaccine to prevent Group A Strep infections and a therapeutic vaccine to treat periodontal disease. For more information, visit www.sutrovax.com.

Contact: 
Julie Rathbun
Rathbun Communications
206-769-9219
[email protected]

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SOURCE SutroVax