→ David Meek­er left Gen­zyme last April af­ter a 23-year run, in­clud­ing six years as pres­i­dent af­ter Sanofi stepped in to buy the land­mark biotech six years ago. Five months lat­er, af­ter adding a string of biotech board po­si­tions to his sched­ule, Meek­er has land­ed his next big gig in biotech run­ning KSQ Ther­a­peu­tics in Cam­bridge, MA. At KSQ, he says, you can start an ex­per­i­ment us­ing cut­ting edge tech­nol­o­gy and no bias about out­comes. With CRISPR,“we can study all 20,000 genes in the genome across a mul­ti­tude of dis­ease mod­els and find out which of those tar­gets has the biggest im­pact in mod­u­lat­ing the dis­ease. We can do it one shot, 20,000 genes at a time.”

Sam Kulka­rni

→ Af­ter steer­ing CRISPR Ther­a­peu­tics to an IPO last year as the last of the big three gene edit­ing com­pa­nies to make the leap in­to the pub­lic mar­kets, found­ing CEO Rodger No­vak is step­ping down and hand­ing the reins over to the orig­i­nal chief busi­ness de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer, Samarth Kulka­rni. There’s no spe­cif­ic rea­son giv­en for No­vak’s de­par­ture, oth­er than the gener­ic “per­son­al rea­sons” of­ten cit­ed dur­ing these kinds of change­ups. No­vak is stay­ing on the board.

→ Shafique Vi­rani, a busi­ness de­vel­op­ment ex­ec at Roche/Genen­tech, has been named the new CEO of Navire Phar­ma. Part­ner­ing with MD An­der­son, the biotech will work on in­hibit­ing SHP2 in fight­ing can­cer tu­mors. “Navire’s com­pounds po­tent­ly bind SHP2 and pre­vent ac­ti­va­tion of the pro­tein, block­ing its abil­i­ty to pro­mote tu­mor growth,” said Vi­rani. Bridge­Bio is bankrolling the start­up to the tune of $30 mil­lion.

→ Loan Hoang-Sayag is ex­it­ing her post as CMO at Cel­lec­tis, ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly. Math­ieu Si­mon, the COO/EVP of the im­munother­a­py com­pa­ny, will be step­ping in as the in­ter­im.

→ An­ge­lo Moess­lang has joined In­Gen­eron as their new CEO. For­mer­ly, Moess­lang was the CFO at Fre­se­nius Med­ical Care North Amer­i­ca, where he worked his way up start­ing in 1995.

→ Halozyme Ther­a­peu­tics‘ chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Mark Ger­gen is leav­ing to “pur­sue pro­fes­sion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties out­side the Com­pa­ny.”

→ Sumi­ta Ray is the new gen­er­al coun­sel of Calithera Bio­sciences.

→ Ad­verum Biotech­nolo­gies has added Lin­da Neu­man as VP of clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment. She hails from Sune­sis Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

→  Ste­fan Oel­rich worked his way up and is now the ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of Sanofi’s di­a­betes & car­dio­vas­cu­lar unit.

→ Ganesh Kaun­dinya has been pro­mot­ed to the COO/CSO gig at Mo­men­ta. He is one of the co-founders of the Cam­bridge, MA-based com­pa­ny.

→ Im­muno­core has ap­point­ed An­drew Hotchkiss as their new chief com­mer­cial of­fi­cer. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he worked at Eli Lil­ly, be­gin­ning in ’96.

→  Mar­go Heath-Chiozzi is now SVP of reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs at Celldex Ther­a­peu­tics.

→  Amit Shah is the CFO at Ma­ri­na Biotech.

→ Con­tra­Fect’s new COO is Lisa Ric­cia­r­di.

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.

The National Institutes of Health has again declined to use so-called “march-in” rights to lower the price of Astellas and Pfizer’s prostate cancer drug Xtandi despite being invented at UCLA with grants from the US Army and NIH.

“Given the remaining patent life and the lengthy administrative process involved for a march-in proceeding, NIH does not believe that use of the march-in authority would be an effective means of lowering the price of the drug,” NIH told prostate cancer patients Robert Sachs and Clare Love, in a letter shared with Endpoints News. The institutes’ analyses found Xtandi “to be widely available to the public,” an indication that there was not a pressing need for the US to act.