Pieris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced the appointment of Hitto Kaufmann, Ph.D. as Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer and the departure of Allan Reine, M.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Dr. Kaufmann will be responsible for the Company's drug discovery, protein engineering and bio-manufacturing activities, while overseeing alliance management and serving as site head for its German RD facility. He is a biopharma leader with over 20 years of experience in research, development and manufacturing with a track record in development of about 100 biological therapeutic entities.

Prior to joining Pieris, Dr. Kaufmann spent five years at Sanofi, where he held several executive positions in Industrial Affairs and RD. During his time there, he led efforts to build a strong cross-divisional end-to-end technology platform for Sanofi Biologics that included several strategic deals. He also went on to head Global Biopharmaceutics Development, managing over 700 employees across three sites tasked with drug substance and drug product technical development, analytics, clinical supply and release.

Finally, he oversaw key strategic projects on digitalization and data sciences, as well as the integration of the Ablynx platform into the Sanofi network.