Ku­ra co-founder heads to Asian mul­ti-na­tion­al as biotech eyes the goal posts for lead drug

Six years af­ter Ku­ra On­col­o­gy snagged a far­ne­syl trans­ferase in­hibitor from J&J and leapt straight in­to clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, one of the biotech’s founders is leav­ing to start a new chap­ter in his ca­reer.

CMO and de­vel­op­ment chief An­to­nio Gual­ber­to is ex­it­ing the com­pa­ny, and Ku­ra — led by long­time biotech en­tre­pre­neur Troy Wil­son — is on the hunt for a re­place­ment. Wil­son cred­it­ed the CMO for some key bio­mark­er work, in­clud­ing the dis­cov­ery of the CX­CL12 path­way as a tar­get of their lead drug tip­i­farnib. Those bio­mark­ers are be­ing re­lied on to de­fine the pa­tient pop­u­la­tion most like­ly to ben­e­fit from the drug.

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