Kirk Peacock has been appointed chief financial officer of CytRx, the RNAi therapeutics company said this week.
Peacock comes to CytRx after most recently serving as CFO and vice president of operations at DigitalMed, a provider of online-based training services for healthcare providers.
Having come aboard CytRx halfway through the third quarter, Peacock is still getting acclimated to his new environment, but having known CEO Steve Kriegsman for about three or four years (the two met when Peacock was CFO of enterprise software firm Ants.com and Kreigsman was running a venture capital fund), he appears ready to dive in and help Kriegsman reshape the company.
“Steve can’t do it alone,” Peacock said. “The exciting part is to be there from the beginning to build this new management team that going to execute on Steve’s vision.”
According to Peacock, that vision includes a sharp focus on RNAi. CytRx’s strategy involves the identification of key collaborators and well-defined therapeutic areas. Through its deal with UMass, CytRx is screening candidate RNAi targets for obesity and type 2 diabetes, and is sponsoring research at the school investigating the use of the technology to treat these diseases, as well as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
CombiMatrix said this week that it has appointed David Danley, a recently retired US Army Colonel, as the director of homeland security and defense programs.
According to Newport Beach, Calif.-based Acacia Research, CombiMatrix’s parent firm, Danley will handle all of the company’s defense-related activities.