George Scangos (L) and Marianne De Backer

Pi­o­neer­ing biotech icon George Scan­gos hands in his re­tire­ment pa­pers — and this time it’s for re­al

George Scan­gos, one of the all-time great biotech CEOs, says the time has come to turn over the reins one last time.

The 74-year-old biotech leg­end spent close to three decades in a CEO post. The first was at Ex­elix­is — which is still heav­i­ly fo­cused on a drug Scan­gos ad­vanced in the clin­ic. The sec­ond “re­tire­ment” was at Bio­gen, where he and his team were cred­it­ed with a big turn­around with the now fad­ing MS block­buster Tec­fidera. And the third comes at Vir, where he trad­ed in his Big Biotech cre­den­tials for a mar­quee founder’s role back on the West Coast, ham­mer­ing out a Covid-19 al­liance with Hal Bar­ron — then R&D chief at GSK — and break­ing new ground on in­fec­tious dis­eases with some high-pow­ered ven­ture play­ers.

Endpoints Premium

This article is for premium subscribers only

Upgrade to a premium subscription plan for unlimited access, and join our community of key biopharma players.