Rhythm has named Lex Van der Ploeg, PhD, chief scientific officer. Van der Ploeg brings to Rhythm more than 25 years of drug development experience in obesity, metabolic diseases, and other therapeutic areas.

Van der Ploeg's experience includes 17 years at Merck Research Laboratories in various leadership roles. After Merck, he focused on personalized medicine as head, R&D at Abraxis Health, which was acquired by Celgene.