Tessera Therapeutics' new CEO, Michael Severino

Michael Sev­eri­no trades in Ab­b­Vie perch for CEO role at Flag­ship’s gene med­i­cines biotech Tessera

Af­ter a few years as vice chair and pres­i­dent at what is an­tic­i­pat­ed to be­come the world’s largest drug­mak­er and one of the in­dus­try’s lead­ing R&D spenders, Ab­b­Vie’s Michael Sev­eri­no want­ed to wear a slight­ly dif­fer­ent hat in a vast­ly dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ment.

The sprawl­ing biotech cre­ations of Flag­ship Pi­o­neer­ing at­tract­ed him, and he was in­trigued by the idea of go­ing be­yond a tem­po­rary fix for dis­eases and in­stead dig in­to ge­net­ic med­i­cines in search of the elu­sive “cure.” Par­tic­u­lar­ly ap­pe­tiz­ing was Tessera Ther­a­peu­tics, the biotech at which he took over the helm on Wednes­day.

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