Tobira Theraputics, a biotech startup advancing a novel HIV anti-retroviral therapy that hopes to compete with HIV therapeutic powerhouse Gilead Sciences, is beefing up its management team to drive development of its innovative single-tablet regimen for HIV infection.

The South San Francisco-based drugmaker has just added three new hires to its senior management team. They include two former key members of Gilead’s clinical and research teams. Joining the company are Caroline Loewy as executive vice president and chief financial officer, Jeff Enejosa, as senior director of clinical research, and Mark Menning as director of pharmaceutical sciences.

Loewy brings more than 20 years of strategic, operational and financial experience, having served as CFO at Poniard Pharmaceuticals and Corcept Therapeutics. During her tenure at these companies she successfully raised approximately $300 million of investment capital to support late-stage development programs. Previous to her roles as CFO, she was a Wall Street equity research analyst covering the biotechnology industry.

Enejosa has more than 18 years of clinical and pharmaceutical industry experience in designing and executing clinical trials for antiviral therapeutics and as a doctor treating HIV infected patients. At Gilead, he was the director of clinical research, where he supervised and led all stages of clinical trial planning and execution in HIV and chronic hepatitis B, including pivotal studies that led to the regulatory approvals of the Gilead drugs Viread, Truvada, and Atripla.

Menning has more than 15 years of pharmaceutical development expertise, most recently as a senior research scientist at Gilead where he led the co-formulation and process development of several fixed-dose combination HIV drugs. He is a co-inventor of the Truvada, Atripla, Complera, and the recently approved Stribild tablets.

These key hires complete Tobira’s management team and will work together to advance its lead compound, cenicriviroc, through the final stages of clinical development. Cenicriviroc is a novel, oral, once-daily, fixed-dose combinable, dual inhibitor of chemokine receptors CCR5 and CCR2. While CCR5 is a well-validated therapeutic target that prevents entry of HIV into immune cells, Tobira says cenicriviroc has the potential to be the first once-daily, dual chemokine inhibitor that is combinable into either fixed-dose combination therapies or complete single-tablet regimens.

In May 2012, Tobira completed enrollment in an ongoing mid-stage study of cenicriviroc in antiretroviral treatment-naive patients infected with CCR5-tropic HIV-1. Tobira plans to present twenty-four week dose response data from this clinical trial at a scientific meeting in the first quarter of 2013.

“We believe cenicriviroc has the potency, safety and properties to become a key component of innovative, once-daily, single-tablet complete regimens for HIV,” says Andrew Hindman, Tobira’s president and CEO. “In the past 18 months, we have built a world-class team of drug development and business executives whose expertise will drive Tobira’s future growth.”

Having a strong management team has become critical for raising the next capital round. Tobira is backed by a syndicate of life science investors including Domain Associates, Frazier Healthcare Ventures, Montreux Equity Partners, Novo Ventures and Canaan Partners.