20 May 2020 - - US-based biotechnology company Pandion Therapeutics, Inc has appointed John S. Sundy, M.D., Ph.D., as chief medical officer, the company said.

Sundy brings extensive expertise in the development of investigational therapies, having most recently served as senior vice president and inflammation therapeutic area head at Gilead Sciences.

There he led Gilead's entry into inflammation and immunology and oversaw the clinical development of over a dozen new drug programmes including filgotinib, which was filed for marketing authorization globally in rheumatoid arthritis in 2019.

Previously, Sundy was Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University and the Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School.

While at Duke he was instrumental in the clinical development of Krystexxa, which was approved in 2010 for patients with refractory gout.

He also served as Associate director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute and director of Duke's Global Proof of Concept Research Unit Network in the US, Singapore and India.

Sundy received his B.S. in biology from Bucknell University and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Drexel University School of Medicine.

Pandion Therapeutics is developing modular biologics for autoimmune regulation that are designed to achieve lasting therapeutic outcomes for patients with autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

The company is developing its lead drug candidate, PT101, an IL-2 mutein Fc fusion protein that preferentially expands regulatory T cells, as well as a robust pipeline of systemic immune modulators and tissue-targeted therapeutics focused on the gut, liver, skin, kidneys, and pancreas.

Pandion is backed by life sciences investors and is headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts.