Laid off from Im­muno­Gen, an ex-Gen­zyme and Shire ex­ec heads to an ARCH up­start

Im­muno­Gen CBO Blaine Mc­K­ee got laid off af­ter the com­pa­ny had a big Phase III fail­ure last March, but by the time his of­fi­cial ex­it came around in De­cem­ber, he al­ready land­ed a plum new gig. ARCH Ven­ture Part­ners had tapped the long­time ex­ec­u­tive to run a biotech will­ing to spend a lot of cash in an area that had gone un­der-in­vest­ed: kid­ney dis­ease.

Now that biotech is emerg­ing from stealth mode with 12 em­ploy­ees, $51 mil­lion in Se­ries A fund­ing from ARCH and UCB Ven­ture and two new meth­ods of di­rect­ly at­tack­ing a dis­ease and an or­gan that drug de­vel­op­ers have long on­ly tried to mit­i­gate from the side. They’ve al­so got a new name: Walden Bio­sciences.

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