New Amsterdam Sciences Appoints Executive Vice President

New Amsterdam Sciences, a privately held bio- science company, has appointed Christopher van de Wetering, Ph.D. as executive vice president. 

Dr. van de Wetering is charged with general operations management, preclinical and clinical drug development including manufacturing and formulation as well as bringing the company’s anti-inflammatory therapeutic for treatment of COVID-19, NAS150, to market. Van de Wetering is also the company’s lead on the countermeasure development pipeline.

“Having Chris join the NAS team and help lead the advancement of NAS150 Phase 2 clinical interests for COVID-19 is a tremendous value for us,” said New Amsterdam Sciences’ CEO, Michael Wilhelm. “He has the experience and contacts to help us bring our life-saving COVID-19 therapeutic candidate to the frontlines and to the patients that need them before more lives are lost.”

Wilhelm continued, ”2022 will be a big year for NAS and our pursuit of multiple clinical indications that represent large market, unmet needs where patients continually suffer. Additionally, NAS countermeasure development will have a huge boost to the advancement of programs now that Chris has joined us.”

“I am really thrilled to be part of the New Amsterdam Sciences team, especially to have the opportunity to work on cross cutting therapeutics that have the potential to address multiple disease indications," said van de Wetering.  "Right now, our immediate focus is on addressing the urgency of COVID-19 as this remains an unmet medical need to date where therapeutics is concerned and it appears it could be here to stay very much like influenza. I am looking forward to working with the team to build out our portfolio with our additional therapeutic candidates that address other inflammation-mediated diseases such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis as well as building on to our countermeasures pipeline.”

Van de Wetering is currently working with the team at NAS to take the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent, the superoxide dismutase (SOD) mimetic NAS150, into Phase 2 clinical stage trials as part of the FDA’s coronavirus treatment acceleration program.

New Amsterdam Sciences proposes that their Phase 2 clinical stage antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent, the superoxide dismutase (SOD) mimetic NAS150, can be an effective treatment and co-therapeutic for SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Experience

Van de Wetering comes to New Amsterdam Sciences from Bowhead Total Enterprise Solutions where he led strategy and plan development for integrating full spectrum real-time CBRN detection technologies with response capabilities for the US Department of Defense (DoD) Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA). Before that, he worked with Noblis ESI on programs that developed technologies and capabilities for near real-time environmental biological and chemical threat agent detection for the US Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T).

Earlier in his career, he led the development of policies governing medical countermeasure (MCM) product development and use strategies to enhance domestic medical preparedness against threats to National health security for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at GAP Solutions Inc.

Van de Wetering holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology and a B.S. Biochemistry from the University of Iowa. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Frederick, MD where he carried out basic research on the pathogenesis of plague infection in aerosol models of infection. He also received a certificate from the  Johns Hopkins University Carey School of Business INNoVATE Entrepreneurship Training Program.