21 August 2018 - - US-based investigational ribonucleic acid interference therapeutics developer Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: DRNA) has appointed J. Kevin Buchi, former chief executive officer of Cephalon, Inc., and TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals Corp., and Cynthia Smith, former chief commercial officer of ZS Pharma, Inc., to its board of directors, the company said.

The appointments are effective immediately and increase the size of Dicerna's board to 10 members.

Most recently Buchi served as president and chief executive officer of TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals. Before TetraLogic, he served as corporate vice president of Global Branded Products at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. from 2011 to May 2012.

Buchi was chief executive officer of Cephalon, Inc., which was acquired by Teva in October 2011. Buchi joined Cephalon in 1991 and, during his tenure, held various leadership positions, including chief financial officer and chief operating officer, before becoming Cephalon's chief executive officer in December 2010.

In addition, Buchi currently serves as a director of Amneal Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Benitec Biopharma Ltd.

Buchi has previously served on the boards of several pharmaceutical companies, including Epirus Biopharmaceuticals, Inc., Alexza Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Forward Pharma A/S.

Smith has more than 20 years of broad leadership experience within the healthcare industry. Most recently she has served as chief commercial officer and a member of the executive team of ZS Pharma, acquired by AstraZeneca in 2015 for approximately USD 2.7bn, where she led efforts to transition the company from the development stage to a commercial enterprise.

Prior to joining ZS Pharma, Smith served as vice president, market access and commercial development at Affymax, Inc.

Earlier, she held various senior leadership positions in market access, corporate strategy, government relations, and external affairs at Merck and Co.

Before beginning her career in the biopharmaceutical industry, Smith served as a healthcare policy analyst in the White House Office of Management and Budget. She previously served on the board of Nivalis Therapeutics.

Dicerna Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of innovative, subcutaneously delivered RNAi-based therapeutics for the treatment of diseases involving the liver, including rare diseases, viral infectious diseases, chronic liver diseases, and cardiovascular diseases.

The company is leveraging its proprietary GalXC RNAi technology platform to build a broad pipeline in these core therapeutic areas, focusing on target genes where connections between target gene and diseases are well understood and documented.

Dicerna intends to discover, develop and commercialise novel therapeutics either on its own or in collaboration with pharmaceutical partners.