Mikael Dolsten→ As we learned on Tuesday, Mikael Dolsten is set to leave — but another Pfizer leader is already gone: Eli Lilly’s radiopharma partner Aktis Oncology has welcomed Akos Czibere as CMO. Czibere had just been elevated to therapeutic area head of hematology-oncology at Pfizer in January. He worked on multiple drugs in the cancer portfolio in his seven years with the pharma giant, notably Talzenna (a PARP inhibitor originally approved for gBRCA-mutated, HER2-negative breast cancer in 2018) and Elrexfio (a bispecific BCMA-directed CD3 T cell engager that was approved last year for multiple myeloma).
Back at Pfizer, the company said in a statement that it will look for Dolsten’s successor “probably through early next year.” The CSO had led R&D for Wyeth before it was acquired in 2009, and he has since stayed at Pfizer for the last 15 years.
Akos CzibereDolsten’s upcoming departure was the first of two significant R&D transitions to come out of the biopharma landscape in as many days. AbbVie announced Wednesday that Tom Hudson has retired with immediate effect as CSO, global research, and Roopal Thakkar — the Chicago-area pharma’s medical chief for global therapeutics who has been in the Abbott/AbbVie family since 2003 — will be EVP of R&D and CSO under new chief executive Rob Michael.
If this week showed us anything, it’s that R&D moves aren’t letting up with the major pharmas. In 2023 alone, John Reed left Sanofi to take Mathai Mammen’s old job at J&J; Rupert Vessey stepped down from Bristol Myers Squibb to join Flagship; and Jay Bradner replaced David Reese at Amgen.
→ Eli Lilly said in an SEC filing that Gordon Brooks will step up to the plate as interim CFO on July 15. Brooks began his career at Lilly in 1995 and was bumped up to group VP, controller and corporate strategy in March. Departing finance chief Anat Ashkenazi is sticking around for a little while longer, but she will start a new chapter on July 31 as CFO of Alphabet after 23 years with Lilly.
Mike Exton→ Lexicon Pharmaceuticals wasted no time choosing Lonnel Coats’ successor, poaching Mike Exton from Novartis. The new CEO had a 14-year career at the Swiss pharma and was global head for a cardiovascular therapeutic area that boasts such drugs as Entresto and Leqvio. Earlier, he held a number of positions at Eli Lilly Australia from 2001-09. Lexicon’s dual SGLT1/SGLT2 inhibitor sotagliflozin was approved for heart failure in May 2023 and is branded as Inpefa. With Exton at the controls, Lexicon will also attempt a comeback with sotagliflozin in diabetes, an indication in which the biotech has come up empty in the past.
Kent Rogers→ Boston-based rare disease biotech EveryONE Medicines has named Kent Rogers as CEO and Grail president Josh Ofman as chairman of the board. Rogers has been a venture partner with ARCH after two years as chief commercial officer of EQRx. Jared Whitlock spoke to EveryONE co-founder Julia Vitarello last year about the antisense oligonucleotide that was developed especially for her daughter, Mila, who had a very rare form of Batten disease and died at the age of 10 in 2021. “This is not a science problem anymore,” Vitarello said. “We have the technology to find the underlying disease cause and create a drug for it.”
Samantha Pearce→ Jazz Pharmaceuticals has promoted Samantha Pearce to chief commercial officer. Pearce, who will begin her new role on Aug. 1, has been SVP of Europe and international for Jazz since March 2020 after nine years at Celgene, where she was elevated to head of international markets. It’s the second major leadership move at Jazz in the last few months, with Philip Johnson leaving Eli Lilly to join the company as CFO on March 1.
→ Although it doesn’t have a single commercial therapy on the market, hope springs eternal for Inovio, which has recruited Steven Egge as chief commercial officer. In his 20 years at Merck, Egge led the HPV cancer vaccines franchise (Gardasil) and he was the global commercial head for the fertility franchise before he joined Genfit in 2018. More recently, Egge had been SVP and general manager for women’s health at Sumitomo Pharma. Inovio reiterated in its Q1 report that a BLA is coming in the “second half of 2024” for its recurrent respiratory papillomatosis candidate INO-3107.
Pierre Kemula→ CureVac will be on the market for a new CFO when Pierre Kemula goes to Agomab in the same capacity on Nov. 1, ending an eight-year association with the German mRNA drugmaker. Kemula will replace Tolga Hassan, the former F-star COO who left Agomab in May “to explore new opportunities closer to home.”
In addition to hiring a new CFO, Agomab has brought in former Seagen CEO David Epstein to succeed John Haurum as chairman of the board. The Belgian biotech is developing candidates for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and fibrostenosing Crohn’s disease.
Lovisa Afzelius→ Noubar Afeyan discussed Flagship Pioneering’s new $3.6 billion fund with Kyle LaHucik earlier this week, and the biotech incubator also disclosed a fair amount of leadership moves. Microsoft Research chief medical scientist Junaid Bajwa will come to Flagship in September as senior partner and head of UK, and science partner for the Pioneering Intelligence initiative; Lovisa Afzelius, who has left her imprint on numerous Flagship companies, and Pioneering Medicines president Paul Biondi have both been promoted to general partner; and ex-Moderna chief digital and operational excellence officer Marcello Damiani is now a senior partner, as is former Thermo Fisher COO Mark Stevenson. Other appointments include Dina Ciarimboli (general counsel and executive partner), Gary Pisano (executive partner and chief strategist) and Justine Levin-Allerhand (executive partner, origination and corporate development).
Paul Edick→ Paul Edick is retiring as CEO and chairman at Xeris Biopharma. President and COO John Shannon will replace Edick as CEO on Aug. 1, and on the same date, ex-Boehringer Ingelheim general counsel Marla Persky will chair the board. Shannon came to Xeris in 2017 as COO and was elevated to his current role three years later. Under Edick’s leadership, Xeris merged with Strongbridge Biopharma in 2021, and as much as $75 million is on the line in a deal with Amgen that was announced in January. The large pharma will use Xeris’ tech to develop a subcutaneous formulation of thyroid eye disease drug Tepezza.
→ Developing its GPR65 inhibitor PTT-4256 for advanced solid cancers, Oxford, UK-based Pathios Therapeutics has tapped Paul Higham as CEO. Meanwhile, founding CEO Stuart Hughes will slide into the CSO slot. Higham spent almost four years as CEO of Helsinki-based Valo Therapeutics (not to be confused with Flagship’s Valo Health). This spring, Bristol Myers and Canaan participated in Pathios’ $25 million Series B financing.
Jason Tardio→ Jason Tardio was part of the layoffs that affected 43% of the staff at Ovid Therapeutics, but he has quickly moved on to Immunic as president and COO. Tardio had been the operations chief at Ovid for the past three years and was the biotech’s chief commercial officer from 2019-21. He also led the multiple sclerosis franchise in his short tenure at Novartis and was promoted to general manager/managing director for the Latin America South office to close out nearly a decade with Biogen.
Fraser Wright→ Fraser Wright, the Spark Therapeutics co-founder who has been involved in the development of gene-based therapies like Luxturna, Kymriah and Beqvez, has taken on the role of chief gene therapy officer at Kriya Therapeutics. Wright is a scientific co-founder at Kriya and had been chief scientific advisor for Shankar Ramaswamy’s crew since its inception. In 2018, Wright became chief technology officer at Axovant — one of the many “Vants” launched by Ramaswamy’s brother, Vivek — after its Alzheimer’s bet crumbled in Phase 3 and it pivoted to gene therapy.
Alastair Garfield→ The Rhythm is gonna get Alastair Garfield again: He’s returned to Rhythm Pharmaceuticals after three years as Rectify Pharma’s head of translational sciences and strategy. This time around, Garfield has moved into the CSO slot at Rhythm, which earned an FDA approval with its MC4R agonist Imcivree for chronic weight management in 2020 while he was head of research. Imcivree would get another nod from the agency in patients with Bardet-Biedl syndrome in June 2022. Rhythm has other MC4R agonists in the pipeline: LB54640 from LG Chem and RM-718.
Henry Pelish→ Cancer drug developer Nuvalent has promoted Henry Pelish to CSO. Pelish has been involved with Nuvalent long before it emerged from stealth in 2021 and had served as SVP of drug discovery since February 2023. Nuvalent touted Phase 1 data last October for its tyrosine kinase inhibitor NVL-655, then raised $300 million in a public offering.
Barbara Leyman→ Barbara Leyman has joined antibody-drug conjugate maker Sutro Biopharma as chief business development officer. Leyman spent the last two years at GenEdit and was promoted to SVP of corporate development at the Genentech partner in January. She’s also led business development for Calico Life Sciences (2018-20) and Lyell Immunopharma (2020-22). Sutro recently teamed up with Ipsen on a ROR1-targeting ADC named STRO-003 in a deal worth as much as $900 million.
Simon Jones→ After picking up $51.4 million from a Series A back in February, UK biotech Curve Therapeutics is back again with a new exec. Simon Jones is joining the team as CFO and COO from SpyBiotech, where he also headed the finance and operations functions. Before that, Jones was CFO at Karus Therapeutics, Eykona Technologies and Glide Pharmaceutical Technologies.
Subhashis Banerjee→ New Jersey I&I biotech Vyne Therapeutics has introduced Subhashis Banerjee as SVP of clinical development. Banerjee just finished an 11-year run with Bristol Myers, where he was VP & disease area head, rheumatology and dermatology — namely for the plaque psoriasis drug Sotyktu. He’s also an AbbVie and Pfizer alum who held the role of global clinical program lead for Taltz at Lilly.
→ Nathalie Daste has cited personal reasons for her resignation from Leo Pharma nine months into the job, and Michael Meyer is filling in as interim EVP of global people & corporate affairs until the Danish dermatology company finds a replacement. Meyer has worked at Leo Pharma for 12 years in various capacities, including head of HR business partnering.
Joan Shaw→ Two former Bellus Health colleagues are joining up again at Nocion Therapeutics. Joan Shaw has been named SVP, clinical operations, while Catherine Bonuccelli is joining Nocion’s scientific advisory board. At Bellus, Shaw was SVP of clinical operations and Bonuccelli was CMO. Before joining Nocion, Shaw also held roles at AstraZeneca, DuPont Pharma and Takeda, among others. Meanwhile, Bonuccelli brings experience from GSK and a 20-year stint at AstraZeneca. The new appointments at Nocion come after a financing round back in March, which saw the company grab $62 million to go up against Merck and GSK in chronic cough.
Robert Geller→ In April, Peer Review brought you news of Robert Geller’s appointment as head of medical at PharmaEssentia. Now, Geller has been promoted to general manager. To refresh, Geller is the former CMO of Aravive and has held roles at Coherus BioSciences, Heron Therapeutics, Alexion and Vion Pharmaceuticals.
→ French biotech ImCheck Therapeutics has recruited Stephan Braun as CMO to help support the ongoing development of its lead candidate. Braun hops aboard from CureTeq, where he was group CMO. He’s also had stints with Ipsen and Amgen, and an academic tenure as professor at the department of obstetrics and gynecology at universities in Munich and Innsbruck, Austria.
Angie You→ Attovia Therapeutics has elected ex-Alpine Immune Sciences CEO Mitchell Gold and Architect Therapeutics chief Angie You to the board of directors. Led by former Zai Lab president and COO Tao Fu, Attovia followed up its $60 million launch round with a $105 million Series B in May.
→ Argenx CEO Tim Van Hauwermeiren has picked up a new board seat at Lexeo Therapeutics. He’s still a board member at David Hallal-chaired iTeos Therapeutics and used to be on RayzeBio’s board of directors before it was sold to Bristol Myers.
Adam Rosenberg→ VectorY, the Dutch ALS biotech that hauled in a $138 million Series A last fall, has appointed Adam Rosenberg as chairman of the board. Rosenberg also chairs the board at Ambagon Therapeutics and Albert Seymour–led Seamless Therapeutics.
→ Former Gilead commercial leader Paul Carter has been named chairman of Swiss-based Memo Therapeutics. His predecessor, Elias Papatheodorou, “is transitioning into an executive role at a European biotech,” Memo said in a statement. Carter is also on the boards of Immatics, Hutchmed and Kyowa Kirin International.
Tony de Fougerolles→ Ex-Moderna CSO and former Evox Therapeutics CEO Tony de Fougerolles has replaced Marijn Dekkers as chairman of Belgian mRNA shop etherna. Last week, de Fougerolles accepted another chairman post at London-based LIfT BioSciences.
→ Vaxcyte has elected Imvax CEO James Furey to the board of directors. The former Spark COO also has board seats at Adaptimmune and Sensorion.
→ UK Treg biotech Quell Therapeutics, which inked a deal with AstraZeneca last June, has reserved a seat on its board of directors for Luke Beshar, who is taking over from founding chair Martin Murphy. Beshar is currently chairman of Protara Therapeutics and Inotrem.