Senior Director, Clinical Safety Physician

About this role

About Avalyn:
Avalyn aims to transform the treatment paradigm for pulmonary fibrosis and other serious, rare respiratory diseases. The company is advancing optimized inhaled formulations of established antifibrotic medicines designed to deliver drug directly to the lungs, enhance local efficacy, and reduce systemic side effects. Avalyn’s AP01 program is an optimized inhaled formulation of pirfenidone currently being evaluated in MIST, a global Phase 2b clinical trial in patients with progressive pulmonary fibrosis (PPF). AP01 has demonstrated encouraging safety and clinical activity across Phase 1b and an ongoing, multi-year open-label extension trial, with long-term data supporting the potential to preserve lung function while improving tolerability relative to historical oral pirfenidone. Avalyn’s AP02 program is an optimized inhaled formulation of nintedanib currently being evaluated in AURA, a global Phase 2 clinical trial in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Avalyn is also advancing AP03, an inhaled fixed-dose combination of pirfenidone and nintedanib, designed to deliver multiple antifibrotic mechanisms through a single lung-targeted platform. By leveraging its proprietary drug-device approach and deep expertise in rare respiratory disease development, Avalyn aims to establish a new standard of care in pulmonary fibrosis through inhaled, lung-targeted therapies. For more information, please visit avalynpharma.com and follow the company on LinkedIn.
Position Overview:
The Senior Director, Clinical Safety Physician provides medical leadership and oversight of drug safety across Avalyn’s portfolio of inhaled antifibrotic investigational products. The role is accountable for the ongoing medical evaluation, surveillance, interpretation, documentation, and communication of emerging safety data, including adverse event assessment, signal detection, and characterization of potential risks, ensuring that safety findings are appropriately incorporated into clinical development and risk management decisions. This is a hands-on leadership role suited to a clinical-stage, scaling biotech company. The Senior Director directly reviews adverse event cases, safety listings, and aggregate safety data, identifies and assesses emerging safety signals, and provides medical recommendations to inform ongoing study conduct and development decisions. The individual also serves as the medical safety lead across Clinical Development, Clinical Operations, Regulatory Affairs, Biostatistics, Data Management, Medical Writing, Quality Assurance, and external CRO and pharmacovigilance (PV) partners. The Senior Director integrates safety considerations into clinical development strategy and execution, establishes and oversees fit-for-purpose pharmacovigilance processes and systems, and provides medical safety leadership in interactions with senior leadership, governance committees, external partners, and health authorities. The Senior Director reports to the SVP Clinical Development and partners closely with cross-functional leadership to ensure appropriate medical oversight of safety across the portfolio.
Responsibilities:
Medical Safety Leadership & Oversight

• Provide medical leadership and oversight of safety across Avalyn’s clinical-stage investigational products, including the inhaled pirfenidone (AP01), nintedanib (AP02), and fixed-dose combination (AP03) programs.

• Perform medical review and assessment of serious adverse events (SAEs), adverse events of special interest (AESIs), deaths, discontinuations due to adverse events, and other medically significant events, including assessment of seriousness, causality, expectedness, and clinical significance.

• Review case narratives and ensure appropriate follow-up of medically important information.

• Apply clinical judgment to distinguish drug-related safety findings from manifestations of the underlying disease (e.g., progression of pulmonary fibrosis, acute exacerbations), concomitant illness, and background events.

• Identify, evaluate, and escalate potentially important safety findings, and provide medical judgment on emerging concerns and their implications for development.

Clinical Trial Safety

• Provide ongoing safety oversight of Phase 1–3 clinical trials through periodic review of aggregate adverse events, laboratory abnormalities, vital signs, ECGs, pulmonary safety parameters, and other clinically relevant safety data.

• Review blinded and, when appropriate, unblinded safety information in accordance with established study procedures.

• Provide medical safety input into clinical trial design and execution, including protocols, safety monitoring plans, informed consent documents, and protocol amendments, ensuring appropriate safety assessments, monitoring requirements, and risk mitigation measures are incorporated.

• Provide medical safety expertise and support Data Monitoring Committee (DMC) / Independent Data Monitoring Committee (IDMC) activities as appropriate.

• Lead cross-functional safety review meetings with Clinical Development, Clinical Operations, Biostatistics, and Data Management.

Signal Detection & Benefit-Risk Assessment

• Lead medical safety surveillance across Avalyn’s development programs; proactively identify, investigate, and medically evaluate potential safety signals, integrating individual cases with aggregate clinical, laboratory, and nonclinical data.

• Develop documented medical assessments of emerging safety signals and recommend additional evaluation, monitoring, or risk-mitigation strategies.

• Lead and maintain an evolving benefit-risk assessment for each investigational product, integrating safety with efficacy, pharmacology, and nonclinical information in the context of the disease and patient population.

• Evaluate how emerging safety findings may affect dose selection, eligibility criteria, safety monitoring, endpoints, trial execution, and provide medical recommendations regarding…