19 February 2019 - - US-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company Catabasis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: CATB) has appointed Joanne T. Beck, Ph.D., to its board of directors, the company said.

Beck has more than 25 years of pharmaceutical development and operations experience and is currently the executive vice president, Global Pharmaceutical Development and Operations at Celgene.

She has joined the board as Michael Ross, co-chairman, steps down from Catabasis' board of directors.

Beck currently serves on the board of directors of Orchard Therapeutics and the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine.

Prior to Celgene, Beck was at Shire and served as senior vice president, Pharmaceutical Development from 2014 to 2016 as well as vice president, Process Development and Manufacturing Sciences from 2012 to 2014.

Beck holds a Bachelor of Arts from Lewis and Clark College (Portland, OR), a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Oregon Health and Science University (Portland, OR) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco.

Catabasis Pharmaceuticals' lead program is edasalonexent, an NF-kB inhibitor in development for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Its global Phase 3 PolarisDMD trial is currently enrolling boys affected by Duchenne.