(Photo: SUWIT NGAOKAEW/Shutterstock.com)

Alpharetta-based Clearside Biomedical has named Leslie Zacks as general counsel and chief compliance officer.

Clearside, which specializes in the development of treatments to restore and preserve vision for people with serious eye diseases, announced the hire on Tuesday.

Zacks joins the clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company after several years in-house at other pharma companies, most recently at Atlanta-based specialty pharmacy Arbor Pharmaceuticals, where he had served as vice president, GC and chief operating officer since 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile. Previously, Zacks was executive VP, GC and COO at Shionogi Pharma Inc. from 2004 to 2010.

Zacks could not immediately be reached for comment about his move.

Earlier in his career, Zacks, a registered patent attorney, was an associate at Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy and later a partner at Hunton & Williams (now Hunton Andrews Kurth), where he specialized in intellectual property, technology licensing and transactional matters, his LinkedIn profile said.

While at Powell Goldstein, Zacks was a member of the defense team that successfully represented machine-packaging company R.A. Jones & Co. in a bet-the-company patent case, according to a September 2001 report in The National Law Journal.

Clearside CEO and president Daniel White said in a statement that the company is preparing to submit its first new drug application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before the end of this year.

“Leslie's expertise in navigating the legal and regulatory requirements for the development and commercialization of new products, combined with his established record for developing effective strategies that mitigate risk and enhance business value, will be a tremendous asset for us going forward as we continue to plan Clearside's transition from a clinical-stage to a commercial-stage company,” he said.