After three decades spent rising through the ranks of sales and marketing teams at major pharmas, Chris Boulton is taking the top spot at an obesity-focused biotech.
Boulton has been named CEO of Prolynx, the California startup announced Thursday. He’ll be heading up a company developing longer-acting drug candidates for obesity and related metabolic conditions.
Most recently, the freshly minted chief executive had served as head of global marketing for the obesity therapy area at Amgen since the spring of 2024.
Boulton started his career three decades ago in sales at Merck, followed by stints on the marketing and commercial teams at Ardana, Sanofi and AstraZeneca.
As at Amgen, he worked in metabolic diseases at both of the latter Big Pharmas. Throughout his tenure at AstraZeneca, he headed up diabetes marketing and the cardiovascular and metabolic business unit in the U.K., while his time at Sanofi culminated in several years as general manager of the company's U.S. diabetes portfolio.
Boulton’s new role at Prolynx may not require his sales and marketing expertise right away, as the biotech is still in the preclinical phase. In a statement in this week’s announcement, he expressed his eagerness to bring its meds to the clinic.
“Current GLP1-based therapies have revolutionized obesity treatment, yet they still require weekly administration, and patients often experience significant tolerability issues due to suboptimal pharmacokinetics,” he said. “By leveraging insights from our foundational platform, we are developing a portfolio of once-monthly and once-quarterly medicines designed to improve adherence, tolerability, and outcomes for patients.”
To aid those efforts, Prolynx has raised $70 million in series A funding, also announced in Thursday’s release. The company said the money will go toward advancing its pipeline of incretin and non-incretin therapies “towards IND enablement and clinical proof-of-concept.”