Atara brings on No­var­tis vet to re­place founder Ciechanover as chief

Af­ter found­ing T-cell im­munother­a­py com­pa­ny Atara Bio­ther­a­peu­tics us­ing Am­gen $AMGN drug as­sets in 2012, Isaac Ciechanover made a sur­prise de­ci­sion to leave the com­pa­ny this Jan­u­ary. No­var­tis vet­er­an Pas­cal Tou­chon is set to re­place him as chief, the South San Fran­cis­co biotech said on Tues­day.

Ex­ist­ing CAR-T ther­a­pies — No­var­tis’ $GILD Kym­ri­ah and Gilead’s $GILD Yescar­ta — tar­get a sin­gle anti­gen called CD19. Atara — akin to oth­er play­ers in pur­suit of next-gen CAR-T drugs — is work­ing on en­gi­neer­ing T cells (a type of white blood cell) to tack­le mul­ti­ple tar­gets for ad­dress­ing can­cers with di­verse cell types that of­ten be­come re­sis­tant to treat­ment, such as acute myel­oge­nous leukemia and B cell ma­lig­nan­cies.

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