When Sam Truex turned out the lights at Quench Bio, she is­sued a heart­felt post out­lin­ing the rea­sons be­hind why the for­mer in­flam­ma­to­ry dis­ease play­er closed its doors. That bold hon­esty was ap­pre­ci­at­ed some­where as Truex will now jump aboard a fa­mil­iar team at At­las Ven­ture to give star­tups the best pos­si­ble chance at suc­cess.

At­las has tapped Truex as its newest ven­ture part­ner, the firm an­nounced on Mon­day. To­day is her first of­fi­cial day on the team. And her first as­sign­ment? Lead­ing a stealthy At­las-backed start­up that em­ploys most of the team from Quench.

“We built a team at Quench Bio that I was quite proud of build­ing to­geth­er with the oth­er lead­ers, and that team has want­ed to stay to­geth­er for the most part,” she said, adding that she’ll lead the plat­form com­pa­ny un­til they find a long-term CEO.

Quench said it was wind­ing down op­er­a­tions in ear­ly March, af­ter a cou­ple failed at­tempts at tar­get­ing the gene Gas­der­min D to treat in­flam­ma­to­ry dis­eases. The Cam­bridge, MA-based biotech said the gene proved “un­drug­gable” with their tech­nol­o­gy, and auc­tioned off its re­search to keep oth­er Gas­der­min pro­grams mov­ing for­ward.

Truex told End­points News that she ful­ly in­tends to take the helm at an­oth­er biotech — but for now, she’ll help At­las get oth­er com­pa­nies off the ground while choos­ing the one that’s a good fit for her.

“What I’m hop­ing to do next is work in a com­pa­ny where the ther­a­pies that we’re work­ing on are al­ready in or near the clin­ic,” she said. “I would like to get back to a fo­cus that’s more heav­i­ly on pa­tients and clos­er to de­liv­er­ing ther­a­pies to pa­tients.”

While this marks the first time Truex has been em­ployed by At­las, she’s worked with the VC firm in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties since 2014, when she be­came CBO of au­toim­mune-fo­cused Pad­lock Ther­a­peu­tics. Be­fore that, she spent rough­ly eight years each at Gen­zyme and Bio­gen.

Michael Gilman

Michael Gilman, who found­ed and helmed Pad­lock, said he was “thrilled to con­vince Sam to come on­board.” Two years lat­er, she led the com­pa­ny through a $600 mil­lion buy­out by Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, which was at­tract­ed by the biotech’s pro­tein/pep­tidyl argi­nine deim­i­nase (PAD) in­hibitor dis­cov­ery pro­gram.

“Sam is smart, strate­gic, fo­cused, and has a tremen­dous ca­pac­i­ty for work. Most im­por­tant­ly, she’s moral­ly ground­ed, with a strong sense of right and wrong and deep pas­sion for the caus­es she be­lieves in,” Gilman told End­points in an email. He’s now in Waltham, MA, lead­ing Ar­rakis Ther­a­peu­tics’ pur­suit of small mol­e­cule med­i­cines that di­rect­ly tar­get RNA.

Truex went on to serve as COO and head of cor­po­rate de­vel­op­ment at Syn­log­ic, be­fore start­ing at Quench Bio in 2018. The Dart­mouth grad said there were oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties she could have tak­en af­ter Quench, but none seemed like the “per­fect fit.”

Bruce Booth

“So I thought: Why not work with the peo­ple I know and al­ready re­spect to start some­thing that will be the per­fect fit?” she said.

Bruce Booth, an At­las part­ner who’s worked with Truex at both Pad­lock and Quench, called the new hire a “great leader and ex­pe­ri­enced se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur.”

“Hav­ing worked with her across mul­ti­ple star­tups, she’s proven her­self to be an ac­com­plished ex­ec­u­tive who leads with in­tegri­ty,” Booth said. “She al­so in­spires all of us with her com­mit­ment to giv­ing back to the com­mu­ni­ty. It’s a re­al priv­i­lege to have her join At­las to help us build the next gen­er­a­tion of star­tups.”

Following the Supreme Court’s historic decision on Friday to overturn Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years, Attorney General Merrick Garland sought to somewhat reassure women that states will not be able to ban the prescription drug sometimes used for abortions.

Following the decision, the New England Journal of Medicine also published an editorial strongly condemning the reversal, saying it “serves American families poorly, putting their health, safety, finances, and futures at risk.”

Despite whispers of a busy year for M&A, deal activity in the pharma space is actually down 30% on a semi-annualized basis, according to PwC’s latest report on deal activity. But don’t rule out larger deals in the second half of the year, the consultants said.

PwC pharmaceutical and life sciences consulting solutions leader Glenn Hunzinger expects to see Big Pharma companies picking up earlier stage companies to try and fill pipeline gaps ahead of a slew of big patent cliffs. Though a bear market continues to maul the biotech sector, Hunzinger said recent deals indicate that pharma companies are still paying above current trading prices.

The story of Amryt Pharma’s candidate for the genetic skin condition epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, will soon enter another chapter.

After the Irish drugmaker’s candidate, dubbed Oleogel-S10 and marketed as Filsuvez, was handed a CRL earlier this year, the company announced in a press release that it plans to submit a formal dispute resolution request for the company’s NDA for Oleogel-S10.

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis made a name for himself in the 2020 election cycle as the darling of the pharma industry, accepting hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions, even from the likes of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

Those contributions have led Tillis to attempt to re-write patent laws in pharma’s favor, a move which failed to gain steam in 2019, and request for a third time since January that the FDA should help stop “the false narrative that patent protections are to blame for high drug prices.”