2 new appointments for Valencia company

MannKind Corp. of Valencia announced two more senior appointments to its leadership team earlier this week.

Joseph Saldanha has been named as Vice President of Marketing and Agustin (Tino) Quintero as Vice President of Market Value, Access and Trade.

Both will report to Michael Castagna, MannKind’s Chief Commercial Officer.

“Each brings a wealth of experience in commercialization, diabetes and pharmaceutical product launches, and their skills will be critical as MannKind moves forward with our commercial plans,” Michael Castagna said in a statement.

Saldanha has worked globally in the diabetes space for over 13 years. He previously worked with Sanofi, the company which recently terminated its agreement with MannKind to market and distribute its inhaled diabetes treatment Afrezza.

And he served as Director of Business Development for the insulin delivery device business at Johnson and Johnson Diabetes.

Quintero has 18 years of experience in the bio-pharmaceutical market and joins the company from AbbVie, a global biopharmaceutical company.

Prior to that, he held positions with Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Gilead.

Saldanha and Quintero can play critical roles with payors that benefit patients and produce “innovative and focused marketing and sales programs” to establish a presence for MannKind in the marketplace, said CEO Matthew Pfeffer in a statement.

Also, a conference call scheduled with analysts this week was delayed due to a retinal detachment suffered by Pfeffer which required emergency surgery to correct the condition.