Gone away are the blue­bird ex­ecs as COO, CMO both leave the nest; Mike Nal­ly is lat­est ma­jor fig­ure to move on from Mer­ck

→ As blue­bird bio’s reg­u­la­to­ry con­cerns swell yet again by press­ing the pause but­ton for Lenti­Glo­bin a month ago, Joanne Smith-Far­rell won’t be around to see how the saga plays out with the FDA. Smith-Far­rell has tak­en the helm at Long­wood-backed B cell biotech Be Bio­phar­ma, which launched last Oc­to­ber with a $52 mil­lion Se­ries A round. She was pre­vi­ous­ly blue­bird’s COO and busi­ness unit head, on­col­o­gy, and she first came to Nick Leschly’s team as CBO in 2017 af­ter her Big Phar­ma ex­pe­ri­ence in busi­ness de­vel­op­ment with Mer­ck and Pfiz­er. Smith-Far­rell tells our Kyle Blanken­ship that her de­ci­sion to be­come CEO at Be Bio wasn’t re­lat­ed to the de­ci­sion to split blue­bird in­to two com­pa­nies in Jan­u­ary.

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