Passage Bio Appoints Deerfield Management’s Bruce Goldsmith as CEO

Passage Bio on Tuesday announced it appointed Bruce Goldsmith, a venture partner at Deerfield Management, as its new CEO.

At Deerfield, Goldsmith also served as interim chief executive officer of Civetta Therapeutics. His experience also includes positions at Lycera, Allos Therapeutics, GPC Biotech, and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: [[ticker:JNJ]]). Goldsmith succeeds Passage co-founder Stephen Squinto, who has been interim CEO since 2018. Squinto continues as acting head of research and development and remains on the board of directors.

About a year ago, Philadelphia-based Passage raised an $115.5 million Series A financing round to advance its pipeline. The company, which is developing therapies for rare, mongenic central nervous system diseases, plans to ask the FDA this year for the OK to move its three lead programs into human testing.

Author: Sarah de Crescenzo

Sarah is Xconomy's San Diego-based editor. Prior to joining the team in 2018, she wrote about startups, tech and finance at the San Diego Business Journal. Her decade of full-time news experience includes coverage of subjects including campaign finance, crime and courts as a reporter and editor at outlets throughout California, including the Orange County Register. She earned a bachelor's degree in English Literature at UC San Diego, where she wrote for the student newspaper and played collegiate lacrosse. In 2019, she earned an MBA at UC Irvine.