Yaqrit, a late clinical-stage company developing treatments for advanced liver diseases, has significantly expanded its leadership team with strategic appointments aimed at accelerating clinical development and commercialization of its therapeutic pipeline.
The company recently announced the appointment of Ronen Israel to its management board. Israel, a healthcare innovator and hedge fund strategist, brings extensive financial and U.S. investment experience to Yaqrit. With a background spanning economics, finance, and biomedical science, Israel previously spent 22 years at AQR Capital Management as a Principal and senior portfolio manager before co-founding BioConvergent Health, an innovative oncology company.
"Ronen brings a wealth of diverse financial and US investment experience to Yaqrit, at a time when the company's financial potential continues to track clinical endeavors and ambitions," said Troels Jordansen, Yaqrit's Chief Executive Officer.
Simultaneously, the company has appointed Amrik Shah, ScD, as Chief Biometrics Officer. Shah is a highly experienced biostatistician with over 20 years of experience in strategic design and analysis of clinical trials. His pharmaceutical background includes positions at Schering-Plough/Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Biogen, Shionogi, and Intercept Pharma, with expertise spanning cardiovascular disease, anti-infectives, neuroscience, and non-viral liver disease.
Shah's recent work has focused on advising biotech companies on drug development strategy, clinical endpoints, and regulatory interactions with the FDA and EMA, particularly in liver diseases including metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF), and hepatitis B.
Professor Rajiv Jalan, Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Yaqrit, emphasized the importance of Shah's appointment: "Amrik's experience will further enhance the clinical precision with which Yaqrit is able to approach its markets. A highly innovative portfolio in a poorly served disease area still requires agile alignment with regulatory expectation."
Building on Earlier Strategic Appointments
These latest additions build upon Yaqrit's earlier leadership expansion announced in February 2025, which included Tauhid Ali, Ph.D., as Board Director, Darren Rubin as VP of Amalive, and Sarah van Hellenberg Hubar-Fisher as VP of Business Development.
Ali, formerly Vice President at Takeda where he served as Head of Search and Translational Science for Rare Diseases, brings extensive experience in project and company building. Rubin heads Yaqrit's subsidiary Amalive, which is advancing ornithine phenylacetate, a Phase 3-ready asset for hepatic encephalopathy. Hubar-Fisher, with 20 years of experience at Johnson & Johnson/Janssen, oversees business development with a focus on Yaqrit's medical device assets entering registrational trials.
Advancing a Diverse Liver Disease Portfolio
Yaqrit's pipeline includes three novel therapeutics at Phase 2-3 of development and two medical devices providing treatments for advanced cirrhosis and acute-on-chronic liver failure. Key drug candidates include YAQ006 (IV OPA) and YAQ007 (oral OPA), which are being prepared for advanced clinical trials.
The company's focus on hepatic encephalopathy addresses a significant unmet need. This potentially reversible neurological dysfunction, associated with excess ammonia in the blood, affects as many as 40% of decompensated cirrhosis patients, with approximately 200,000 patients hospitalized in the US annually with acute episodes. Recurrence rates are high, with 40-50% of patients experiencing a second episode within a year of the initial event.
Strategic Vision for Clinical Development
The expanded leadership team positions Yaqrit to implement funding streams and build pharmaceutical partnerships to advance its therapeutic portfolio through late-stage clinical development.
"Our goal is to develop each of our assets into an effective treatment within advanced liver disease," said Jordansen. "With these appointments, Yaqrit bolsters corporate functions while also retaining focus on each of its distinct products to deliver the clinical product that patients need."
The company's strategic appointments reflect its commitment to addressing the global burden of decompensated cirrhosis, which affects over 10 million patients worldwide annually. In this condition, the liver can no longer perform its usual functions, leading to increased blood ammonia levels, immune dysfunction, and multiple organ failure. While compensated cirrhosis patients have a median survival exceeding 12 years, this drops dramatically to about two years for those with decompensated cirrhosis.
As Yaqrit prepares for a multi-pronged clinical push in advanced liver disease, these leadership additions strengthen its capabilities in funding, regulatory affairs, and clinical trial design—critical components for successfully bringing innovative treatments to a patient population with urgent unmet needs.
