Senior Director, Translational Medicine

Department: Research & Development

Reports To: President, Research & Development

cAMPfield is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing well-tolerated and highly effective oral medicines
, founded and led by industry veterans with success developing therapies for immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

Prifemilast is an investigational, potentially best-in-class, once-daily oral preferential PDE4B inhibitor designed to set a new standard of care for IBD. Prifemilast has been well-tolerated in more than 1000 clinical trial participants to date and has demonstrated robust efficacy in Phase 3 trials for plaque psoriasis. Many clinicians and patients prefer the convenience and familiarity of oral therapies, but currently approved oral treatments for IBD are limited by poor tolerability, safety concerns, or modest efficacy.

Prifemilast offers the potential to combine the convenience of an oral therapy with the safety and efficacy that patients deserve.

cAMPfield was founded by a team with a track record of developing category-defining IBD and immunology therapies, and launched with a $180 million Series A to advance prifemilast through registration-enabling trials. We have offices in San Diego, CA and Boston, MA.

cAMPfield is seeking a Senior Director of Translational Medicine to build and lead the translational strategy connecting prifemilast's mechanism of action (PDE4B-selective inhibition and cAMP-mediated modulation of mucosal inflammation) to clinical outcomes in IBD This leader will design and oversee the biomarker, endoscopic, histologic, and pharmacodynamic strategy across our clinical portfolio, and will play a central role in informing dose selection, patient stratification, and mechanistic differentiation versus other IBD therapies.

This is a senior, highly visible role reporting into R&D leadership with regular exposure to the executive team and board.

• Define and lead cAMPfield's translational medicine strategy across the prifemilast clinical program, from Phase 2 through registration-enabling studies.
• Design biomarker, pharmacodynamic, endoscopic, and histopathology sample strategies that link target engagement and mechanism of action to clinical response in IBD.
• Partner with Clinical Development, Clinical Pharmacology, and Biostatistics to integrate translational endpoints into protocol design and data analysis plans.
• Identify and validate biomarkers of disease activity, mucosal healing, and treatment response; explore predictive biomarkers to support patient stratification.
• Evaluate and manage relationships with central reading, histopathology, bioanalytical, and companion diagnostic vendors and academic collaborators.
• Translate emerging preclinical and clinical biomarker data into actionable recommendations for program strategy, including dose selection and lifecycle opportunities.
• Represent translational medicine in regulatory interactions and health authority briefing documents.
• Contribute to scientific publications, congress presentations, and investor/board materials describing prifemilast's mechanism and differentiation.
• Build and mentor a translational medicine function as the organization grows.

• PhD, MD, or MD/PhD in immunology, pharmacology, gastroenterology, or a related field.
• 12+ years of translational medicine or translational research experience in biotech or pharma, including direct experience in immune-mediated inflammatory disease (IBD experience strongly preferred).
• Demonstrated track record of designing and executing biomarker strategies that influenced clinical development decisions (e.g., dose…