Philadelphia — Hemispherx Biopharma has announced the appointment of Ronald Ritz as senior director of Manufacturing. Ritz served as senior director of Technical Operations at Enzon Pharmaceuticals from 2008 until 2010, and as senior director of Manufacturing Operations from 2005 to 2008, where he was responsible for the manufacture of Enzon’s four commercial products at their South Plainfield, NJ facility.
"Mr. Ritz’s experience and expertise will greatly strengthen the manufacturing depth of our natural interferon commercial product, Alferon N Injection, as well as our experimental therapeutic, Ampligen, being developed for a number of clinical settings including vaccine enhancement and potential treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome." said William Carter, chairman and CEO of Hemispherx Biopharma.
Previous to working at Enzon, Ritz worked at Discovery Laboratories as vice president of Manufacturing Operations, and at Elan Pharmaceuticals as executive director. He served 20 years at Johnson & Johnson as director of Operations in the Blood Bank Business Unit. Ritz has a vast amount of experience working with the FDA as well as the European Regulatory Agencies and has worked in a GMP environment throughout his career. His 30 years of pharmaceutical manufacturing knowledge consists of blood derived products, parenteral vaccines, and biologic pegylation processes.
Ritz received a MBA from Fairleigh Dickenson University in Madison, NJ and BS in Biology from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, and will be joining Hemispherx as at its New Brunswick, NJ manufacturing facility.
SOURCE: Hemispherx Biopharma
