Trou­bled Unum re­brands as Co­gent Bio­sciences, re­places CEO Chuck Wil­son with An­drew Rob­bins; Jen­nifer Fox ap­point­ed as CFO at David Hung-led Nu­va­tion Bio

→ Rife with tur­moil and hit with a bar­rage of FDA holds as it spi­raled in­to pen­ny-stock ter­ri­to­ry, Unum Ther­a­peu­tics hopes a new name — Co­gent Bio­sciences — and a new CEO can turn its for­tunes around. An­drew Rob­bins takes con­trol now and suc­ceeds Chuck Wil­son, who found­ed Unum in 2014.

The cell ther­a­py biotech stum­bled out of the gate when it de­buted on Nas­daq in 2018 and re­vealed that 2 of its 9 pa­tients died in one arm of their AC­TR087 tri­al. The FDA would hand down 3 dif­fer­ent holds, two for AC­TR087 and an­oth­er for its ex­per­i­men­tal ther­a­py AC­TR707. Adding in­sult to in­jury, Unum shed around 60% of its work­force and jet­ti­soned its old pipeline in fa­vor of a new one a few months ago.

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