Rolling up its sleeves, Ax­o­vant scoops up five gene ther­a­py vets to pro­pel new pipeline

Hav­ing as­sem­bled a large­ly pre­clin­i­cal pipeline of gene ther­a­pies through a cou­ple of li­cens­ing pacts, Ax­o­vant is ex­pand­ing the crew charged with ex­e­cut­ing its high-stakes turn­around mis­sion.

All five ex­ecs com­ing on board are sea­soned vets from big name bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies, with ex­per­tise rang­ing from man­u­fac­tur­ing and tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tions to reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs and com­mer­cial­iza­tion.

  • Greg MacMichael, SVP of tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tions, was the for­mer glob­al head of cell and gene ther­a­py tech­ni­cal de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing at No­var­tis;
  • Parag Meswani, SVP of com­mer­cial strat­e­gy and op­er­a­tions, joins from Spark Ther­a­peu­tics — a US pi­o­neer of the field;
  • Paul Ko­rner, SVP of clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, held the VP of med­ical strat­e­gy and clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment role at Sarep­ta Ther­a­peu­tics, an­oth­er emerg­ing gene ther­a­py play­er;
  • Greg Stew­art, SVP of vec­tor de­liv­ery and op­ti­miza­tion, had a stint at neu­rol­o­gy-fo­cused Voy­ager Ther­a­peu­tics;
  • Sean O’Bryan, VP of reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs, jumps from the same role at Lyso­gene.

Un­der the lead­er­ship of CEO Pa­van Cheru­vu — who was pro­mot­ed to the job in the af­ter­math of a spec­tac­u­lar fail­ure in Alzheimer’s that saw his pre­de­ces­sor David Hung out the door along­side al­most half the staff — Ax­o­vant has been re­cen­ter­ing its pipeline around gene ther­a­pies tar­get­ing neu­ro­log­i­cal and neu­ro­mus­cu­lar dis­eases.

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