Jeff Wade→ The top leadership at Lexicon Pharmaceuticals is still undergoing a major makeover as president and COO Jeff Wade heads for the exit on Sept. 30 after 25 years with the Texas-based biotech. Wade won’t be around for the outcome of Lexicon’s latest attempt at an FDA nod in type 1 diabetes for sotagliflozin, which has a Dec. 20 decision date. The drug has already been approved for heart failure and is marketed as Inpefa. Lexicon laid off about 75 people in its sales and commercial teams in August “to right-size our promotional efforts around Inpefa for heart failure and reallocate resources to prepare for our potential launch” in type 1 diabetes and chronic kidney disease, CEO Mike Exton said in a statement. Exton succeeded Lonnel Coats as CEO a month earlier.
Deirdre Connelly→ Sarepta Therapeutics has appointed Genmab chair Deirdre Connelly to the board of directors. Connelly had a 26-year career with Eli Lilly before pivoting to GSK in 2009 as president, North America pharmaceuticals until her retirement in 2015. She’s also a board member at Macy’s and Lincoln Financial Group. Like Janet Woodcock before him, CBER Director Peter Marks helped Sarepta cross the goal line with a label expansion in June for its Duchenne muscular dystrophy treatment Elevidys — overruling his own staff and befuddling experts.
Mitchell Chan→ Mitchell Chan has replaced Vit Vasista as CFO of Regenxbio at a time when the company plans to start a pivotal study for its own Duchenne gene therapy. It’s another big change for Regenxbio after Ken Mills became executive chairman and Curran Simpson succeeded Mills as CEO on July 1. Chan spent a year with Catalio Capital Management as operating partner after he was elevated to the CFO post at Viela Bio. Vasista had been finance chief since 2009 and will be an advisor until Jan. 3.
→ Here’s a look at some CEO news that we covered earlier this week:
Shilpa SambashivanFormer Kite Pharma commercial chief Warner Biddle has succeeded Peter Maag as CEO of Kyverna Therapeutics, which also added ex-Kite CEO Christi Shaw to the board. Shares $KYTX of Kyverna have taken a precipitous fall since its $319 million IPO in February.
Ochre Bio co-founder Jack O’Meara is calling it quits after five years as CEO, but he tells Lei Lei Wu that he has an Alzheimer’s startup in the works. In a LinkedIn post announcing his departure, O’Meara also said that former F-star CEO and current Levicept chief Eliot Forster will be interim executive chair.
And Shilpa Sambashivan has been promoted to CEO of Nura Bio, which stapled an additional $68 million to its Series A — bringing its total to $141 million. Sambashivan was a project team lead at Amgen before becoming a founding member at Nura Bio.
Matt Kane→ Matt Kane is taking the top spot at Celyad Oncology, a Belgian biotech that has seen considerable turnover at the top. Celyad co-founder Michel Lussier filled in as interim CEO for a second time after Georges Rawadi’s sudden exit last December; he also took over when Filippo Petti stepped down in 2022. Kane co-founded Precision BioSciences with Derek Jantz and Jeff Smith, leading the company until he joined epigenome editing startup Tune Therapeutics as CEO in 2021. Kane’s LinkedIn page indicates that he left Tune in April, a year after he hired Jantz as CSO.
Gregg Gilbert→ Ex-Prometheus Biosciences chief Mark McKenna has found a CFO at his new I&I bet, Mirador Therapeutics. Gregg Gilbert had been a managing director in the healthcare investment banking group for Bank of America Securities since 2021 and worked at Bank of America Merrill Lynch for 15 years. After selling Prometheus and its inflammatory bowel disease drug to Merck for $10.8 billion, McKenna wasted little time getting Mirador off the ground with a $400 million Series A in March, one of the largest private financing rounds of 2024.
Ashley Hall→ GLP-1 competitor Structure Therapeutics has promoted Blai Coll to CMO and welcomed Ashley Hall as chief development officer. Coll, who replaces Mark Boch, had led clinical development for Raymond Stevens’ crew since May 2022 and was cardiovascular and metabolic platform lead, medical affairs at the end of a six-year stint with Amgen. Hall is an Amgen vet in her own right who held the role of development chief at Reneo Pharmaceuticals. Structure’s stock price soared in June $GPCR when it produced efficacy data with its oral GLP-1 GSBR-1290 that was on par with Eli Lilly’s obesity drug orforglipron.
Matthias Will→ Novartis and Gilead veteran Matthias Will has succeeded Edgar Braendle as chief development officer at Autolus Therapeutics. Will had led clinical development at CRISPR Therapeutics and CytomX before his most recent gig as CMO of Dren Bio. The FDA is expected to make a decision by Nov. 16 on Autolus’ CD19-directed CAR-T obecabtagene autoleucel, or obe-cel.
→ According to an SEC filing, Crinetics chief commercial officer Jim Hassard will pack his bags on Oct. 14 in what’s described as a “termination without cause.” The 17-year Amgen vet came to Crinetics from Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals in March 2022. Phase 3 successes with its acromegaly drug paltusotine have propelled Crinetics to an NDA filing “later this year” and “an expected market launch in 2025,” CEO Scott Struthers said in the San Diego biotech’s second-quarter report. CFO Mark Wilson cited personal reasons for his own upcoming departure, which was also included in Crinetics’ Q2 update.
Alison O’Neill→ Allosteric drug discovery shop HotSpot Therapeutics has introduced Alison O’Neill as CMO. O’Neill is the former medical chief at Surface Oncology, which was acquired by Coherus BioSciences last year for $65 million. She had a senior leadership role in the global oncology division at Sanofi and was VP of clinical development for Radius Health.
Adam Simpson→ Ex-Icosavax CEO Adam Simpson has landed at Frazier Life Sciences as a venture partner on its company creation team and will work out of Frazier’s office in San Diego. Simpson sold the vaccine developer to AstraZeneca last December, and his previous company — celiac disease specialist PvP Biologics— was purchased by Takeda in 2020.
Ruben Tommasi→ Ruben Tommasi has been named CSO of Entact Bio, a Watertown, MA-based biotech led by ex-Ribon Therapeutics CEO Victoria Richon that is developing enhancement-targeting chimeric molecules, or ENTACs. Tommasi has also held this role at Dunad Therapeutics and AstraZeneca spinout Entasis Therapeutics. Entact Bio has kept a relatively low profile since its $81 million Series A in 2022, but it did show up in Peer Review this spring when it recruited fellow Entasis vet Michael Gutch as COO.
Joanne Beck→ Third Rock’s Treg developer Abata Therapeutics has resurfaced in Peer Review for the first time in more than a year, naming Joanne Beck as chief technical officer. The Shire and Celgene alum is the ex-technical chief at Aerium Therapeutics, the Covid biotech led by Rajeev Venkayya that recently shut down because of a surge in new variants. In April 2023, Abata poached Sonoma Biotherapeutics CMO Leonard Dragone for the same role.
Rob Lauzen→ Led by ex-Teva R&D chief Michael Hayden, neuro biotech Prilenia has tapped Rob Lauzen as CFO and Jason Marks as chief legal officer. Lauzen was VP, investor relations and head of financial planning & analysis at Dyne Therapeutics, which made a CMO change and lost its COO and CBO earlier this month. Marks just had a short stint with Teva as a senior legal advisor to global transactions and global finance. The Bausch Health alum has also been chief legal and compliance officer at Amarin.
Christopher Whitmore→ San Francisco eye disease biotech Ray Therapeutics has selected Christopher Whitmore as CFO. Whitmore had held the same position with Immune-Onc Therapeutics since July 2022, and he was VP, finance & administration for Harpoon Therapeutics from 2018-21. Ray Therapeutics, which hauled in a $100 million Series A last year, will test its gene therapy RTx-015 in patients with retinitis pigmentosa.
Manesh Naidu→ Tris Pharma has promoted VP of marketing Manesh Naidu to the role of chief commercial officer. Naidu joined the New Jersey-based company in 2023 after a stint as chief marketing officer of Althera Pharmaceutical. Naidu’s résumé also includes stints at McKinsey, Mallinckrodt, Novartis, Pfizer and Bellerophon Therapeutics. In May, Tris snagged the first liquid non-stimulant ADHD drug approval in the US. Onyda XR will be used to treat ADHD in children at least 6 years of age.
→ Backed by Jeff Bezos, Seattle-based Nautilus Biotechnology has named Kentaro Suzuki as chief marketing officer. Suzuki most recently served as VP and general manager of Agilent Technologies’ mass spectrometry division. Before that, he was with Takeda and Hewlett-Packard.
Teresa Perney→ San Francisco-based 89bio has appointed Teresa Perney as chief regulatory and quality officer. Perney held this title at EQRx after five years with Myovant Sciences as SVP of regulatory and quality. Madrigal Pharmaceuticals finally broke through with an FDA approval for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (also referred to as NASH), and 89bio is enrolling patients for late-stage studies of pegozafermin — one for non-cirrhotic MASH and another for MASH with compensated cirrhosis. “I’m eager to leverage my experience to navigate the regulatory landscape and help bring this innovative therapy to patients worldwide,” Perney said in a statement.
Steve Caffé→ There’s also a new regulatory chief at Disc Medicine: Steve Caffé spent five years with CRISPR Therapeutics as head of regulatory affairs until his departure last December. Earlier, he had numerous stops as a regulatory exec with such companies as Ra Pharmaceuticals, Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, AMAG Pharmaceuticals and MedImmune. Shares of Disc $IRON fell sharply in early April after mixed data with its drug for a rare blood disorder called erythropoietic protoporphyria, but have rebounded since.
→ Although AI-designed drugs haven’t exactly lived up to the hype, companies like BPGbio are trying to flip the narrative. This week, GSK alum John Beeler has joined the team as SVP of business development. Beeler comes to BPGbio from Bristol Myers Squibb, where he took on the role of business development search & evaluation lead.
Marie Evangelista→ Macrocycle startup Circle Pharma has brought in Marie Evangelista as SVP and head of cancer biology, and promoted Constantine Kreatsoulas to SVP and head of discovery technology sciences. Evangelista spent the last two years as VP of oncology at one of the most ambitious AI drug developers, Recursion. The longtime Genentech vet also had a brief tenure with Frontier Medicines as senior director of translation medicine. Kreatsoulas had a nine-year run at GSK and was the pharma giant’s interim head, computational toxicology before coming to Circle in 2021 as head of research and VP, research informatics and computational chemistry. Circle disclosed its $54 million Series D in an SEC filing this summer.
→ South San Francisco-based Ideaya Biosciences has recruited Douglas Snyder as general counsel. Snyder most recently served as chief legal officer and secretary of GW Pharmaceuticals. Earlier in his career, Snyder was general counsel and secretary at Actelion and Eisai. Back in July, Ideaya inked a $406.5 million deal with Biocytogen.
Guy Varady→ Deerfield Group has rolled out the welcome mat for two new execs: Guy Varady as EVP, integrated marketing and Bob Josefsberg as EVP, communications. Before this, Varady was SVP, management supervisor for DDB Health and held a number of roles at IPG Health and Omnicom Health Group. Meanwhile, Josefsberg was VP, corporate communications at Karuna Therapeutics and managing director at Chamberlain Healthcare Public Relations.
→ Tempest Therapeutics, which revealed early PFS and OS data for its liver cancer combo last October, has brought on Sheldon Mullins as VP, regulatory affairs. Mullins joins the team after gigs at Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals and Ardelyx. Earlier in his career, Mullins was with Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Onyx Pharmaceuticals and Genentech. In addition to Mullins’ appointment, Darrin Bomba and Henry Johnson have been promoted to the titles of VP, development operations and VP, CMC & medicinal chemistry, respectively.
Dipal Doshi→ Entrada Therapeutics CEO Dipal Doshi has picked up a seat on the board of directors at āshibio, a California biotech that will push its ex-Gilead drug andecaliximab into a Phase 2/3 study for patients with an ultra-rare bone disorder called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP). Āshibio came out of stealth mode this summer with a $40 million raise.
→ Akari Therapeutics, which is developing PAS-nomacopan for geographic atrophy, has elected former Epizyme CEO Rob Bazemore to the board of directors. Bazemore is also a board member at Ardelyx and Nuvation Bio.