RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Envisia Therapeutics today announced that it has named Eric Linsley as the Company’s Chief Financial Officer. Prior to Envisia, Mr. Linsley was a managing partner at Pappas Ventures in Durham, NC where he was directly responsible for investments that led to several very successful acquisitions and public offerings. He brings with him more than 20 years of experience and a proven track record of finance and life science investment expertise.
“Eric’s rich background of operational, financial and investor knowledge will play an important role in helping us to continue building Envisia’s value proposition while we advance our clinical programs toward several important milestones,” said Benjamin Yerxa, Ph.D., President and Co-Founder of Envisia. “We could not be more pleased to have Eric join the Envisia executive team.”
While at Pappas Ventures, Mr. Linsley served on the Board of Panacos Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Nasdaq: PANC) and played a key role in its successful reverse merger with a publicly traded company. He was also directly responsible for investments in Peninsula Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which Johnson & Johnson acquired in 2005 at a substantial premium, and later Cerexa, Inc., which was acquired by Forest Laboratories, Inc. in 2007. Other representative investments include Balance Therapeutics, Inc., FlowCardia, Inc. (acquired by Bard Pharmaceuticals), LipoScience, Inc. (acquired by LabCorp), Liquidia Technologies, Milestone Pharmaceuticals Inc., Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc. (Nasdaq: RARE), and Envisia Therapeutics.
Prior to joining Pappas Ventures in 2000, Mr. Linsley served as Chief Financial Officer of TriPath Imaging, Inc. (Nasdaq: TPTH), a medical device company acquired by Becton, Dickinson and Company in 2006. He also played a key role in facilitating the three-way merger between AutoCyte, Inc., NeoPath (Nasdaq: NPTH) and Neuromedical Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: NSIX) to form TriPath Imaging, Inc. in 1999. Prior to the formation of TriPath, he led AutoCyte, the predecessor company, in a successful public stock offering in 1997.
Mr. Linsley also worked as an investment professional with Ampersand Capital, a leading life sciences investor based in Boston. While at Ampersand, he held several management positions in operating and financial roles for various industrial products and life sciences companies. Early in his career, he served as a management consultant with Bain & Co. and McKinsey & Co., and was a Certified Public Accountant with Arthur Andersen LLP.
ABOUT ENVISIA THERAPEUTICS™
Envisia Therapeutics, formed by Liquidia Technologies in 2013, is a privately held biotechnology company focused on the development of novel ocular therapies. Envisia is leveraging the unique and powerful properties of the PRINT® technology to develop therapies for a variety of ocular conditions, beginning with ENV515 for glaucoma. ENV515 is a novel, extended-release formulation of a marketed prostaglandin analogue with the potential to significantly limit disease progression and vision loss through improved product performance and patient compliance. In January 2015, the company initiated a phase 2a clinical trial to investigate the safety and tolerability of ENV515 in patients with glaucoma. Envisia is located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. For more information, please go to www.envisiatherapeutics.com.