George Lasezkay, PharmD, JD
Dr. Lasezkay has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Clearside since March 2020, as Interim CEO from April 2019-March 2020, and has been a member of the board of directors since August 2018. Dr. Lasezkay has an accomplished history of success in the life sciences industry. For the past 15 years, he has served as an independent director on the boards of a number of domestic and foreign emerging biopharmaceutical companies, both public and private. Dr. Lasezkay currently serves on the board of directors of TheraVida, Inc., a clinical stage drug development company. Previously, Dr. Lasezkay served as Executive Vice President, General Counsel at Acucela Inc., a development stage company that specializes in identifying and developing novel ophthalmic therapeutics. For the 12 years prior to joining Acucela, he was President of Horizon Pharma Group, a private life sciences consultancy practice. Prior to his private consultancy practice, Dr. Lasezkay was Corporate Vice President for Corporate Development at Allergan, Inc., the global pharmaceutical and medical aesthetics company. His 13 years of progressive experience at Allergan includes a number of executive leadership positions, including being a member of the company’s Executive Committee, Assistant General Counsel for Commercial Affairs, and General Counsel for the Asia-Pacific Region. In these positions, he played a critical role in developing corporate strategy and was responsible for a wide variety of licensing, R&D collaboration and acquisition transactions involving new technologies, products and companies. Earning B.S. Pharmacy and Doctor of Pharmacy degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and a J.D. degree from the Southern California Gould School of Law, Dr. Lasezkay also has a multi-disciplinary background in private firm and in-house legal practice, hospital pharmacy practice, clinical pharmacokinetics consultation and clinical drug research.