→ After spending two years as entrepreneur-in-residence at SR One — the venture arm of his former employer, GlaxoSmithKline — Chris Roberts is back at the frontlines of biotech.

As CSO of Black Diamond Therapeutics, Roberts joins CEO David Epstein in driving their targeted kinase inhibitors toward the clinic. He will lead research and early development on the biotech’s MAP platform, which zeroes in on allosteric mutations of oncogenes. Its lead candidate, BDTX-189, targets EGFR and HER2 regardless of tumor type.

Too often, Alex Arfaei arrived too late. 

An analyst at BMO Capital Markets, he’d meet with biotech or pharmaceutical heads for their IPO or secondary funding and his brain, trained on a biology degree and six years at Merck and Endo, would spring with questions: Why this biomarker? Why this design? Why not this endpoint? Not that he could do anything about it. These execs were coming for clinical money; their decisions had been made and finalized long ago.

→ In biotech, long-term survival in the executive ranks can depend a lot on the quality of your connections in the venture/investing side of the business.

So when Randy Schatzman exited Alder after taking the company from conception to the threshold of a likely approval for a new migraine therapy, it was his relationship with longtime backers that led him to his new job as CEO of Bolt Biotherapeutics, announced this week.

→ After a stint consulting for Avidea Technologies, Bill Enright is back at the CEO game Vaccitech’s new chief. Like Altimmune — which Enright led for 11 years — Vaccitech has a dual focus on cancer and infectious diseases. The appointment brings him from Baltimore to Oxford, UK, where he will oversee pivotal data readout from its lead influenza program. Meanwhile, Tom Evans will transition to the CSO post, steering the science and R&D “that underpin Vaccitech’s tech inducing CD8+ and CD4+ T cell responses against foreign pathogens and tumors.

→ Ignyta founder and ex-CEO Jonathan Lim is beefing up the team at Erasca, his new startup dedicated to erasing cancer. Genentech vet Gary Yeung has been promoted to chief operating and financial officer, leaving an open CBO role for David Chacko to step in. Chacko joins from Versant Ventures, where, as a principal, he was credited for advancing several portfolio companies through fundraising, business development and other affairs. Les Brail, who has been working on Neon’s personalized neoantigen vaccine, will be the VP of clinical development; Karen Gilmore, one of Lim’s old colleagues at Ignyta, has been tapped as VP of finance.

→ Bain Capital is deploying one of its top investors to Cerevel Therapeutics, steering a $350 million-plus neuro play carved out of Pfizer. Orly Mishan — a co-founder and principal of Bain’s life sciences unit — was involved in the partnership that birthed the biotech spinout in the first place. As Cerevel’s first chief business officer, she is tasked with corporate development, program management as well as technical operations. 

→ After bagging $12 million to advance its lead drug candidate CB-5339 — a (VCP)/p97 inhibitor — through early clinical development, Cleave Therapeutics is beefing up its executive team. Amy Burroughs will be leading the helm as CEO while Scott Harris joins as COO. Burroughs was an executive-in-residence at 5AM Ventures, which led the recent financing, where she also served as a strategic commercial advisor to portfolio company Crinetics Pharmaceuticals. Given her early experience with the team at Genentech and background in life sciences consulting, Burroughs brings critical perspectives on “understanding market needs, building partnerships and attracting top-notch talent,” said board chairman and former Cleave CEO Laura Shawver.

→ Rubius Therapeutics — clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a new class of medicines called red cell therapeutics — made the addition of Kris Elverum to its senior leadership team as SVP of business development and strategy. Elverum joins the company from Turnstone Biologics and has previously served at SQZ Biotech, Novartis and McKinsey & Co. 

→ As Epizyme preps a transition to the commercial stage — which could come as early as next January if the FDA comes through — it’s installing Paolo Tombesi as CFO. A Novartis vet, Tombesi has overseen a similar transition for Insmed, helping launch a subsidiary in Japan and bringing in more than $1 billion by Epizyme’s count. Aside for the sarcoma application, now under priority preview, a second NDA for tazemetostat is slated for later this year, he added.

→ On the same day it announced a $17.5 million Series C, life sciences and health data company Seer unveiled that it had lured former FDA commissioner and ex-CMS administrator Mark McClellan on to its board. “Mark’s deep understanding of the health care ecosystem and visionary insights on policy reform will be crucial in informing our thinking as we work to bring our liquid biopsy and life sciences products to market,” said Seer chief and founder Omid Farokhzad in a statement.