Kris­ten Buck

→ Promi­nent CRO play­er Icon is bol­ster­ing its lead­er­ship, with Kris­ten Buck tak­ing the reins as CMO.

For slight­ly more than a year and a half, Buck was the SVP & chief of clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment at Op­tum, part of the Unit­ed­Health con­glom­er­ate. When she got there, she had al­ready held a post at the FDA in the gas­troin­testi­nal and hema­tol­ogy di­vi­sion, tasked with post-mar­ket­ing safe­ty for over 40 drugs. She had al­so spent 6 years as an ex­ec at As­traZeneca in clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and in its in­no­v­a­tive med­i­cines group.

Her back­ground cov­ers an ar­ray of ther­a­py ar­eas, in­clud­ing GI, women’s health, oph­thal­mol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, der­ma­tol­ogy, on­col­o­gy, liv­er, or­phan dis­eases and psy­chi­a­try.

Buck was a track and field ath­lete at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia and then moved on to Penn State to re­ceive her MD. She stayed in Penn­syl­va­nia to com­plete her in­tern­ship and res­i­den­cy in in­ter­nal med­i­cine at Abing­ton Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal.

Dublin-based Icon won Best Con­tract Re­search Or­ga­ni­za­tion (full-ser­vice providers) in De­cem­ber at the Scrip Awards in Lon­don.

“I’m ex­cit­ed to be lead­ing ICON’s po­si­tion on clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment trends, and re­view­ing and ad­vis­ing on our med­ical risks as the world wres­tles with the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic,” Buck said in a state­ment. “Pa­tient cen­tric­i­ty is ever more im­por­tant in the cur­rent cli­mate and I look for­ward to work­ing with the wider ICON team to broad­en our in­sights and ex­pand our ex­per­tise.”

→ Bri­an Di­Do­na­to has jumped in as CFO and head of strat­e­gy of TCR-fo­cused Im­muno­core, which is mov­ing on from Neil Wood­ford af­ter scor­ing a $130 bil­lion Se­ries B haul in March. Di­Do­na­to was most re­cent­ly the SVP and CFO at Achillion Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, ac­quired by Alex­ion. Oth­er pre­vi­ous stops for Di­Do­na­to in­clude Sorin Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, Cap­mark In­vest­ments as pres­i­dent and chief in­vest­ment of­fi­cer, Mor­gan Stan­ley and UBS Se­cu­ri­ties.

→ While work­ing to­wards its goal of pro­duc­ing 1 bil­lion vac­cines to fight Covid-19, as well as be­ing the com­pa­ny with one of the lead­ing vac­cines now in the clin­ic, Mod­er­na has ramped up its team with some new ap­point­ments. This comes af­ter news of their CFO Lorence Kim hit­ting the ex­it af­ter 6 years with the Boston-based up­start. Patrick Berg­st­edt, Jacque­line Miller and Char­bel Haber have all hopped aboard to help with the com­pa­ny’s light­ning-fast cam­paign. Berg­st­edt, a Mer­ck vet, is step­ping in as SVP for com­mer­cial vac­cines; Miller hails from GSK and comes in as SVP of in­fec­tious dis­ease de­vel­op­ment and Haber, mean­while, leaps over from Bio­gen as SVP of reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs.

Na­jat Khan

→ Over at J&J, Na­jat Khan has tran­si­tioned in­to the role of chief da­ta sci­ence of­fi­cer. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Khan had served as the COO in the re­search arm. R&D chief Math­ai Mam­men praised Khan for her bilin­gual ex­per­tise in two key lan­guages: the sci­ence of drug de­vel­op­ment as well as da­ta sci­ences. And han­dled prop­er­ly, that can guide R&D to more wins with low­er costs — a long­time mantra in a world where ROI is gen­er­al­ly sore­ly lack­ing. Pri­or to jump­start­ing her role at J&J, Khan served as a phar­ma con­sul­tant at the Boston Con­sult­ing Group.

→ Sin­ga­pore biotech Tes­sa Ther­a­peu­tics, which fo­cus­es on can­cer cell ther­a­pies, has un­der­gone a few lead­er­ship changes. An­drew Khoo has stepped aside as CEO but will re­main on Tes­sa’s board, and Jef­frey Buchal­ter, a board mem­ber since last March, has suc­ceed­ed him. Buchal­ter has been pres­i­dent and CEO of Archimedes Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, En­zon Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and Ilex On­col­o­gy. Chair­man of the board Teo Ming Kian al­so stepped down ef­fec­tive May 1, with for­mer No­vo Nordisk chair­man Göran An­do set to take his place.

Jef­frey Buchal­ter

→ Ex­pand­ing his role at CNS-fo­cused Im­pel Neu­roPhar­ma, Adri­an Adams is now the chair­man and CEO ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, re­plac­ing Jon Con­gle­ton. Adams was named chair­man of Im­pel’s board in Jan­u­ary, and be­fore then, he held nu­mer­ous CEO posts, in­clud­ing at Ar­alez Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Aux­il­i­um Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals (un­til its ac­qui­si­tion by En­do In­ter­na­tion­al plc) and Neu­rologix.

→ Along with chang­ing its name, Trovagene is do­ing some C-suite shuf­fling. Now called Cardiff On­col­o­gy, the San Diego-based pre­ci­sion can­cer meds com­pa­ny de­vel­op­ing the can­cer drug on­va­nsert­ib is pro­mot­ing Mark Er­lan­der to CEO, while Thomas Adams tran­si­tions from chair­man and CEO to ex­ec­u­tive chair­man. Er­lan­der had been the for­mer Trovagene’s CSO since 2013.

Mark Er­lan­der

→ Tim­o­thy Jones will lead Respir­eRx Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals as pres­i­dent and CEO, re­plac­ing Arnold Lip­pa, who served in those ca­pac­i­ties on an in­ter­im ba­sis. Lip­pa stays on as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man and CSO. Since Jan­u­ary, Jones had been on the board of Respir­eRx, which tar­gets treat­ment op­tions for such con­di­tions as ob­struc­tive sleep ap­nea and AD­HD, and or­phan dis­eases such as Frag­ile X syn­drome. Jones heads to Respir­eRx from Purisys, where he was VP of glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and med­ical OTC.

→ Ra­jiv Khosla has been se­lect­ed as CEO of NJ-based En­teris Bio­Phar­ma, re­plac­ing Joel Tune, who had been CEO the last four years. Be­fore he be­gan at En­teris, which de­vel­oped oral de­liv­ery tech­nol­o­gy called Peptel­li­gence, Khosla found­ed Ceutec, a busi­ness de­vel­op­ment con­sul­tan­cy that served bio­phar­mas and VCs. He was al­so at Bio­vail as VP of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment.

Tony Gib­ney

→ Last year around this time, Fog­Phar­ma in­tro­duced CSO Howard Stern. This week the Mass­a­chu­setts biotech has a new CFO and CBO in Tony Gib­ney, the for­mer EVP and CBO of Achillion who led the com­pa­ny’s sale to Alex­ion. Be­fore Achillion, Gib­ney’s life sci­ence in­vest­ment bank­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in­cludes stints at SVB Leerink, Mer­rill Lynch and Lehman Broth­ers.

→ Mi­lan-based Pin­Cell, which tar­gets rare der­ma­to­log­i­cal dis­eases and raised €1.65 mil­lion in seed fi­nanc­ing led by Sofinno­va Part­ners, has named Gabriel­la Cam­boni as CEO and will be a mem­ber of the board of di­rec­tors. Nordic Nanovec­tor CEO Lui­gi Cos­ta has al­so been pegged as chair­man of Pin­Cell’s board, and Pao­la Pozzi, a part­ner at Sofinno­va Part­ners, will al­so join as a board mem­ber.

Chris­tine Matthews

→ With the FDA ac­cept­ing the NDA for its mi­graine drug Qtryp­ta in March, Zosano Phar­ma has se­lect­ed Chris­tine Matthews as CFO. She was the Cal­i­for­nia bio­phar­ma’s in­ter­im CFO since Feb­ru­ary and was an ac­count­ing and fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant with RGP be­fore her time with Zosano. Matthews was al­so di­rec­tor of fi­nan­cial plan­ning & analy­sis at Cepheid and be­gan her ca­reer at Arthur An­der­sen.

→ Dou­glas Pagán is mov­ing to Dicer­na to be­come CFO, ef­fec­tive May 26. Be­fore join­ing Dicer­na, which an­nounced an RNAi col­lab­o­ra­tion with Al­ny­lam in April for al­pha 1 liv­er dis­ease, Pagán will wrap up his tenure as CFO and sec­re­tary of KSQ Ther­a­peu­tics. Pri­or to that, he was CFO of Paratek Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for five years.

→ A cou­ple of new moves have been made at Spruce Bio­sciences, which re­leased pos­i­tive re­sults in Sep­tem­ber from its Phase II study of its lead can­di­date tildac­er­font in adults with con­gen­i­tal adren­al hy­per­pla­sia. Samir Gharib joins the team as CFO, com­ing from Stemed­ica Cell Tech­nolo­gies where he had the same role. Mean­while, Dasharatha Red­dy is on board as VP of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing. She was pre­vi­ous­ly head of CMC at Lan­dos Bio­phar­ma.

An­drew Guggen­hime

→ Fresh off $100 mil­lion Se­ries D fi­nanc­ing to help take its Pre­vnar 13 ri­val SVX-24 to the clin­ic, SutroVax has wel­comed An­drew Guggen­hime as CFO and CBO. Guggen­hime was Demi­ra’s CFO from 2014 un­til Eli Lil­ly ac­quired the com­pa­ny in Feb­ru­ary. He has a pletho­ra of oth­er CFO roles to his cred­it, in­clud­ing at Car­dioDx, Cal­is­to­ga Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and Facet Biotech Cor­po­ra­tion.

→ Can­cer ther­a­py-fo­cused An­chi­ano is ap­point­ing Steve Di­Pal­ma as its CFO. Di­Pal­ma had been a se­nior fi­nan­cial ad­vi­sor to Cam­bridge, MA-based An­chi­ano the last two years, in ac­cor­dance with Dan­forth Ad­vi­sors. His pre­de­ces­sor, Jonathan Bur­gin, is leav­ing as the biotech clos­es its Is­rael of­fices and fa­cil­i­ties. Di­Pal­ma has held lead­er­ship roles at nu­mer­ous com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Fo­rum Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, RXi Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, and at Cat­a­lyst On­col­o­gy, where he was pres­i­dent and CEO.

→ For­mer Pfiz­er ex­ec Robert Fo­er­ster has signed on to be CFO at Oligomer­ix, a Bronx biotech de­vel­op­ing nov­el ther­a­peu­tics for Alzheimer’s dis­ease and re­lat­ed neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­or­ders. Dur­ing his tenure with the phar­ma gi­ant, Fo­er­ster as­sumed such roles as se­nior di­rec­tor, com­mer­cial de­vel­op­ment for emerg­ing mar­kets and se­nior di­rec­tor of Pfiz­er Japan’s busi­ness de­vel­op­ment di­vi­sion.

→ With its Neu­trox fam­i­ly of prod­ucts that in­cludes Aven­o­va and CelleRx, Nov­aBay Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has a new CFO. An­drew Jones has jumped on board to re­place the in­ter­im CFO, Lynn Christo­pher, who con­tin­ues in a con­sul­tan­cy role. Jones was pre­vi­ous­ly VP, fi­nance of MyoScience for a lit­tle over a year un­til Paci­ra Bio­Sciences ac­quired it last Au­gust.

→ Speak­ing of Paci­ra Bio­sciences, which fo­cus­es on non-opi­oid treat­ments, the com­pa­ny has brought in Don­ald Man­ning to be CMO. Man­ning had been CMO of Ad­ynxx since 2012, and he al­so held po­si­tions at No­var­tis (glob­al head of anal­gesics de­vel­op­ment) and Cel­gene (VP and neu­ro­sciences ther­a­peu­tic area head).

Noreen Henig

→ Af­ter CMO stints at Breath Ther­a­peu­tics and Pro­QR Ther­a­peu­tics, Noreen Henig is tak­ing on the same CMO role at Kezar Life Sci­ences, which fo­cus­es on treat­ments for au­toim­mune dis­eases and can­cer. Pri­or to Pro­QR, Henig spent six years at Gilead, no­tably as se­nior di­rec­tor, glob­al med­ical af­fairs, res­pi­ra­to­ry and PAH.

→ Pa­lo Al­to-based Life­Max Lab­o­ra­to­ries, which in April was grant­ed fast track des­ig­na­tion for LM-030 li­censed from No­var­tis and in a Phase II/III piv­otal clin­i­cal tri­al for treat­ing Nether­ton syn­drome, has tapped Michael Huang as its CMO. Huang was CMO of Spruce Bio­sciences and was pre­vi­ous­ly VP of clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment at both Reg­u­lus Ther­a­peu­tics and Aus­pex Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

→ GSK vet Ian Catch­pole has land­ed the CSO po­si­tion at Ho­ra­ma af­ter some con­sult­ing work and a gig as di­rec­tor of re­search at TC Bio­pharm. Catch­pole was at GSK for 25 years, cap­ping his tenure as “cell and gene ther­a­py dis­cov­ery” trans­la­tion­al leader and by be­ing named a GSK Fel­low in 2016. His ex­per­tise al­so ex­tends to oph­thal­mol­o­gy, vac­ci­na­tion and im­muno-on­col­o­gy.

Elaine Jones

→ Los An­ge­les biotech Myst Ther­a­peu­tics, which de­vel­ops se­lect­ed TIL-based au­tol­o­gous T cell (Pu­riT) ther­a­py prod­ucts for can­cer, has tapped George Smith as VP of busi­ness op­er­a­tions. Smith was the founder and in­te­grat­ed pro­gram lead at Iqvia’s Gene Ther­a­py Cen­ter and their se­nior di­rec­tor, port­fo­lio and in­no­va­tion.

→ Im­munother­a­py-fo­cused Grit­stone On­col­o­gy has ap­point­ed Elaine Jones as chair of the board of di­rec­tors. From 2008 to 2019, Jones was vice pres­i­dent, world­wide busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and se­nior part­ner at Pfiz­er Ven­tures and has been gen­er­al part­ner at Eu­clid­SR Part­ners.

→ Nordic Nanovec­tor is reshuf­fling its ex­ec team in an ef­fort of cost-sav­ing ini­tia­tives an­nounced in ear­ly April. CFO Tone Kvåle and chief hu­man re­sources of­fi­cer Ri­ta Dege have part­ed ways with the com­pa­ny. Mean­while, Ma­lene Brond­berg, VP in­vestor re­la­tions and cor­po­ra­tion com­mu­ni­ca­tions, has been ap­point­ed CFO. Brond­berg joined the com­pa­ny in Feb­ru­ary 2018 and brought ex­pe­ri­ence from her time with The re­struc­tur­ing has re­duced the num­ber of ex­ec­u­tives from nine to sev­en.

→ Codex­is has filled two new­ly-cre­at­ed po­si­tions. Ste­fan Lutz has stepped in as SVP, re­search, and Karl Schoene is al­so div­ing in as SVP, de­vel­op­ment and op­er­a­tions. Lutz was a pro­fes­sor and chair of the chem­istry de­part­ment at Emory, while Schoene had pre­vi­ous­ly been pres­i­dent, CEO and di­rec­tor of El­e­vance Re­new­able Sci­ences.

→ Part­ner­ing with Pfiz­er on its an­ti­sense ther­a­py AKCEA-ANGPTL3-LRx, Akcea Ther­a­peu­tics has cho­sen Car­la Poul­son as SVP and chief hu­man re­sources of­fi­cer. Poul­son makes the tran­si­tion to Akcea, ma­jor­i­ty owned by Io­n­is, from Ver­tex, where she was VP, se­nior hu­man re­sources busi­ness part­ner.

Stephen Mi­gausky Imara

→ Af­ter the an­nounce­ment of their CMO hit­ting the ex­it late last month, NEA-found­ed Imara has added Stephen Mi­gausky to the ranks as SVP, le­gal and gen­er­al coun­sel. Pri­or to join­ing Imara, Mi­gausky served as gen­er­al coun­sel at Ar­Qule and has pre­vi­ous­ly served in roles at Ver­tex.

→ Scott Byrd, Ian Mills and Gor­don Mc­Mur­ray have joined Fra­zier Health­care Part­ners as en­tre­pre­neur-in-res­i­dence con­sul­tants. The three were pre­vi­ous­ly a part of the man­age­ment team at Fra­zier port­fo­lio com­pa­ny Out­post Med­i­cine and served as CEO, CMO and CSO re­spec­tive­ly. They have re­cent­ly formed Pi­o­neer Ther­a­peu­tics. For­mer­ly, Byrd was pres­i­dent and COO at Aca­cia Phar­ma; Mills was head of clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment at Mit­subishi Tan­abe Phar­ma Eu­rope and Mc­Mur­ray had a stint at Pfiz­er Glob­al R&D.

→ Next-gen T cell play­er TCR² Ther­a­peu­tics — which snagged a $75M IPO last year — has added Stephen Web­ster, the for­mer CFO of Spark Ther­a­peu­tics, to its board of di­rec­tors. Web­ster will take over for Mitchell Fin­er who is step­ping down from the board.

Stephen Web­ster

→ Af­ter rais­ing $200M-plus for their IPO in Feb­ru­ary, drug dis­cov­ery soft­ware play­er Schrödinger has wel­comed Jef­frey Chodake­witz and Gary Gins­berg to its board of di­rec­tors. Chodake­witz pre­vi­ous­ly held posts at Ver­tex and Mer­ck, while Gins­berg served stints at Time Warn­er and Soft­bank Group.

→ ALX On­col­o­gy, which de­vel­ops ther­a­pies that block the CD47 check­point path­way, has ap­point­ed Rekha Hem­ra­jani to its board of di­rec­tors. Hem­ra­jani is the pres­i­dent and CEO of Ar­a­vive and the for­mer COO and CFO of Ar­cus Bio­sciences.

→ Re­cur­sion, which bills it­self as the first AI biotech to launch hu­man tri­als, has en­list­ed R Mar­tin Chavez and Ter­ry-Ann Bur­rell to its board of di­rec­tors. Chavez is the for­mer CFO, chief in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer and glob­al co-head of the se­cu­ri­ties di­vi­sion at Gold­man Sachs and Bur­rell cur­rent­ly serves as CFO of Beam Ther­a­peu­tics.