BOSTON — Strand Therapeutics, a company developing next-generation programmable mRNA therapeutics, announced the promotion of Prashant Nambiar, DVM, PhD, MBA, to Chief Scientific Officer and the appointment of Ethan Cash as Senior Vice President, Head of Portfolio Management and Program Development. The leadership additions support the expansion of Strand’s scientific and pipeline development capabilities as the company advances multiple clinical programs.
“Strand is building the infrastructure of programmable medicine, and these appointments reflect the operational maturity that vision requires,” said Jake Becraft, PhD, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Strand Therapeutics. “Prashant leads our research engine and has proven he can drive programs from discovery to the clinic. Ethan brings the portfolio management discipline to run multiple programs in parallel and manage partnerships at scale. We’re well-positioned to advance several clinical programs simultaneously and establish programmable mRNA as a validated new class of therapeutics.”
Dr. Nambiar previously served as Senior Vice President, overseeing Discovery, Preclinical, Translational, and Computational Biology functions. He leads a multidisciplinary team of more than 50 scientists working across mRNA design and delivery, synthetic and computational biology, pharmacology, automation, and preclinical safety. He is responsible for progressing Strand’s pipeline from early research into clinical development, including advancing the company’s first self-replicating mRNA therapeutic candidate.
Dr. Nambiar has more than 20 years of biotech and pharmaceutical experience, having led development efforts across small molecules, biologics, AAV, and cell and gene therapies. Prior to joining Strand, he held leadership positions at 2seventybio and bluebird bio and earlier scientific roles at Pfizer, Genzyme, and MIT. He earned his PhD in Cancer Biology from UConn Health and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and is board-certified in Toxicology and Veterinary Pathology.
Ethan Cash joins Strand as Senior Vice President, Head of Portfolio Management and Program Development, where he will oversee advancement of the company’s therapeutic programs, including lead candidate STX-001. Cash brings two decades of experience leading clinical development programs for small molecules and biologics. Most recently, he served as Vice President and Head of Program Leadership at Mural Oncology, where he directed pivotal-stage immunotherapy programs and partnered with regulatory teams on biologics license strategies.
Previously, Cash spent 13 years at Alkermes, serving as Executive Director of R&D Integration and Program Management and leading the ARISTADA program for schizophrenia from IND to NDA approval. He also held program and alliance management roles at TransForm Pharmaceuticals, a Johnson & Johnson company. Cash holds a BA in Pre-Med/Botany from Connecticut College.
The leadership changes are intended to support Strand’s continued progress toward advancing programmable mRNA therapeutics into clinical validation and broader therapeutic application.
