Con­stel­la­tion Phar­ma re­cruits its for­mer BD chief to take the helm as CEO

Con­stel­la­tion Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has lured back its for­mer BD chief to take the helm.

Ji­gar Raythatha, the first ex­ec­u­tive re­cruit­ed at a boom­ing Jounce, is now mov­ing up from his role as chief busi­ness of­fi­cer to be­come the CEO at Cam­bridge, MA-based Con­stel­la­tion, where he al­so led the BD team for a 4-year stint.

Con­stel­la­tion has had its ups and downs. For­mer CEO Kei­th Dionne — who left in 2016 and is now an en­tre­pre­neur-in-res­i­dence grow­ing up new com­pa­nies at Third Rock — scrapped a buy­out op­tion deal with Genen­tech in 2015. The big Roche sub­sidiary had tried to cher­ry pick as­sets from the biotech’s epi­ge­net­ics pipeline, Dionne told me at the time, rather than fol­low through with a buy­out. And Dionne no­tably cel­e­brat­ed the breakup with a se­ries of par­ty Tweets.

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