Ex­clu­sive: Athi­ra CEO Leen Kawas re­signs af­ter in­ves­ti­ga­tion finds she ma­nip­u­lat­ed da­ta

Leen Kawas, CEO and founder of the Alzheimer’s up­start Athi­ra Phar­ma, has re­signed af­ter an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion found she al­tered im­ages in her doc­tor­al the­sis and four oth­er pa­pers that were foun­da­tion­al to es­tab­lish­ing the com­pa­ny.

Mark Lit­ton, the com­pa­ny’s COO since June 2019 and a long­time biotech ex­ec­u­tive, has been named full-time CEO. Kawas, mean­while, will no longer have ties to the com­pa­ny ex­cept for own­ing a few hun­dred thou­sand shares.

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