Mer­ck-backed Quar­tet places biotech vet Ger­hard Koenig at the helm

Ger­hard Koenig has land­ed the top job at Quar­tet Med­i­cine, just a few months af­ter Mer­ck grabbed a buy­out op­tion in its $575 mil­lion pain drug part­ner­ship deal. The for­mer CSO at Fo­rum, which was shut down re­cent­ly in the wake of a key tri­al fail­ure and clin­i­cal hold, Koenig takes the reins af­ter found­ing in­vestor At­las Ven­ture arranged a $23 mil­lion Se­ries A.

Launched in late 2013, Cam­bridge, MA-based Quar­tet is tak­ing a new path in de­vel­op­ing a pain med­ica­tion. Their work is based on re­search at Mass Gen­er­al, which showed that a ge­net­ic de­fect in a slice of the pop­u­la­tion pre­vents a spike in a chem­i­cal called BH4 fol­low­ing an in­jury, help­ing man­age their chron­ic pain. The biotech has fo­cused on mim­ic­k­ing that process with a small mol­e­cule.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER