CatalYm Appoints Peter Garcia as Chief Financial Officer

MUNICH & SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CatalYm today announced the appointment of Peter Garcia as Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Mr. Garcia brings more than three decades of biotechnology and oncology financial leadership experience, with a proven track record of leading transformative financings, strategic transactions, and scaling finance organizations to support global clinical development and commercialization.

“Pete joins CatalYm at an important stage of growth for our company, with multiple late-stage clinical studies of our lead anti-GDF-15 antibody, visugromab, underway and continued global expansion across the organization,” said Scott Clarke, Chief Executive Officer at CatalYm. “He is an accomplished biotechnology executive with deep expertise in capital formation, strategic planning, and operational execution. Pete has consistently helped innovative biotech companies navigate periods of growth and major value inflection points. His addition to our leadership team positions CatalYm well to execute on our robust clinical development and operational goals in 2026 and beyond.”

“The growing body of clinical data of visugromab continues to highlight the therapeutic potential of targeting GDF-15 to restore anti-tumor immune response while addressing the significant burden of cancer cachexia. CatalYm’s broad late-stage clinical development with four ongoing trials provides significant opportunity to improve patient outcomes and is entering an important phase of value creation. I am honored to join CatalYm and help ensure the company is strategically and financially positioned to maximize these opportunities for patients and stakeholders alike,” said Peter Garcia, CFO of CatalYm.

Most recently, Mr. Garcia served as CFO of Bluejay Therapeutics where he led financing initiatives and initial public offering (IPO) readiness prior to its acquisition by Mirum Pharmaceuticals. Prior to Bluejay, he served as CFO of ALX Oncology Holdings Inc. where he led the Company’s IPO. Before that, he was CFO at PDL BioPharma, Inc., a profitable royalty management and specialty pharma holding company. He has also held CFO roles at other life science companies and began his biopharma career at Amgen Inc. in senior finance and controller roles. During his career, Mr. Garcia has raised more than $2.5 billion in debt and equity capital, including two IPOs and numerous follow-on equity offerings, private placements, convertible debt financings, and structured credit facilities. He previously served as a member of the Board of Directors of DURECT Corporation (acquired by Bausch Health Companies Inc), Noden Pharma DAC and LENSAR, Inc. Mr. Garcia holds an MBA in Finance and Accounting from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and a B.A. in Economics and Sociology with honors from Stanford University.

About CatalYm

CatalYm is developing visugromab, a first-in-class anti-GDF-15 antibody, in solid tumors and cachexia. In its first-in-human Phase 1/2a study, visugromab demonstrated deep and durable anti-tumor efficacy with long-lasting objective responses in relapsed and checkpoint refractory metastatic solid tumor patients in combination with anti-PD-1 treatment. In addition, data from the same study demonstrated that visugromab can significantly counteract the effects of cachexia in these patients. This data was published in Nature and presented at the International Conference on Sarcopenia, Cachexia & Wasting Disorders. CatalYm is now advancing visugromab into multiple Phase 2b studies including first-line metastatic non-squamous NSCLC (NCT07098988), second-line metastatic non-squamous NSCLC (NCT07246863), second-line hepatocellular carcinoma (NCT07219459) and cachexia (NCT07112196).

Founded in 2016 and based in Munich, Germany and San Francisco, USA, CatalYm is backed by leading international investors including Canaan Partners, Omega Funds, Bioqube Ventures, Forbion, Jeito Capital, Brandon Capital, Gilde Healthcare, Novartis Venture Fund, Vesalius, Bayern Kapital, BioGeneration Ventures, and Coparion.