Join­ing the ex­o­dus at Gilead, CMO An­drew Cheng makes the switch to biotech CEO — trig­ger­ing a cross-coun­try move for Akero

An­drew Cheng spent close to 20 years at Gilead, end­ing as its chief med­ical of­fi­cer af­ter play­ing a key role in de­vel­op­ing a string of block­busters. Now, af­ter mak­ing a re­cent ex­it at Gilead in an ex­o­dus of top ex­ecs, he’s sur­faced at the helm of an up­start biotech with plans to play a dis­rup­tive role in the bur­geon­ing NASH field.

Cheng is the new CEO of Akero Ther­a­peu­tics, and his re­cruit­ment was im­por­tant enough for the still-small com­pa­ny to de­cide to switch its head­quar­ters from the hot hub in Cam­bridge, MA to trendy San Fran­cis­co. And start­up CEO Jonathon Young will now switch to the COO’s job.

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