Richard Sachse M.D., Ph.D.
Senior VP, CSO & Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Richard Sachse, M.D., Ph.D. has been the Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Aeterna Zentaris Inc. since January 1, 2014 and its Chief Medical Officer since March 2014 and has been its Managing Director of Aeterna Zentaris GmbH since November 3, 2016. Prior to joining Aeterna Zentaris, Dr. Sachse served as Head of Global Translational Medicine and Vice President at Boehringer Ingelheim. In developing his industry career, Dr. Sachse has held increasingly responsible positions with several leading pharmaceutical companies, including Bayer, Schwarz Pharma, UCB and Boehringer Ingelheim, overseeing major drug development programs in a variety of different therapeutic areas, including oncology and endocrinology. With more than 20 years experience as a physician and scientist, he has extensive expertise in a variety of different therapeutic areas including endocrinology and oncology. In addition to registration studies, he is especially experienced in the design and implementation of translational programs to bridge research programs to the clinic, as well as in the design and implementation of clinical pharmacology programs, including all required profiling studies and activities, enabling successful registration of products at the international level. From 1996 to 2000, he was International Project Leader at the Bayer AG Institute for Clinical Pharmacology and Principal Investigator at the Bayer Clinical Pharmacology Unit, implementing innovative exploratory development tools, including biomarkers to demonstrate early Proof of Concept. From 2001 to 2006, Dr. Sachse held a variety of different management positions within early and late phase clinical development programs, including responsibilities for completed Phase 3 programs leading to successful NDA/MAA submissions. In 2007, after a merger, he became Senior Director, Head of Experimental Medicine, at UCB in Belgium, where he managed the implementation of novel biomarkers in clinical development to provide data supporting identification of appropriate target indication and target population. In 2010, Dr. Sachse became Vice President, Head of Global Translational Medicine at Boehringer Ingelheim. Dr. Sachse holds a degree in medicine from the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen, in Germany and a board certification in Clinical Pharmacology.