Cidara Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company developing novel anti-infectives and immunotherapies to treat fungal and other infections, announced today the appointments of Paul Daruwala as chief commercial officer and James Balkovec, Ph.D. as senior vice president, Research. Paul Daruwala has more than 22 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry and joins Cidara to lead commercial and business development strategy and execution. Paul joins Cidara from Bristol Myers Squibb, where he served as vice president of the U.S. Viral…

Cidara has been named by FierceBiotech as one of 2014’s Fierce 15 biotechnology companies, designating it as one of the most promising private biotechnology companies in the industry. “Welcome back Jeff Stein and Kevin Judice, two biotech execs who are part of the new biotech redux generation,” says John Carroll, editor of FierceBiotech. “Both have had successful turns in previous startups (Trius and Achaogen), and the recent wave of acquisitions and IPOs has left them…

Results from nonclinical studies of Cidara’s lead candidate CD101 IV (formerly biafungin), a novel, long-acting echinocandin, will be presented this week at the 54th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) meeting in Washington D.C. Four posters and one abstract regarding CD101 IV have been accepted for presentation. Kieren Marr, M.D., professor of medicine and oncology, and director of the transplant and oncology infectious diseases program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine…

Veteran team to apply novel, small molecule immunotherapy platform to treat severe fungal infections in immune compromised patients. Cidara has completed a $32 million Series A financing that will enable it to advance candidates from the company’s Cloudbreak™ targeted immunotherapy platform and CD101 IV (formerly biafungin), a novel long acting echinocandin antifungal drug, into human clinical studies. The financing round was led by 5AM Ventures, Aisling Capital, Frazier Healthcare and InterWest Partners and also included…