Ab­bas Hus­sain

→ Ab­bas Hus­sain was once con­sid­ered to be a top can­di­date to take An­drew Wit­ty’s place as CEO of Glax­o­SmithK­line in 2016. When the job was ul­ti­mate­ly giv­en to Em­ma Walm­s­ley — who has been in her own spots of both­er re­cent­ly — Hus­sain quit as GSK’s glob­al pres­i­dent of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and vac­cines in Jan­u­ary 2017. Four years lat­er, Hus­sain gets be­hind the CEO wheel at Swiss-based Vi­for Phar­ma, which has a PDU­FA date of Aug. 23 with its Cara–part­nered drug Ko­r­su­va for pru­ri­tis in he­modial­y­sis pa­tients. Hus­sain of­fi­cial­ly takes over for the de­part­ing Ste­fan Schulze a week be­fore that date on Aug. 16. Schulze had been in charge at Vi­for since March 2020 and is leav­ing for per­son­al rea­sons.

In be­tween GSK and Vi­for, Hus­sain has been a se­nior part­ner at C-Bridge Cap­i­tal and held seats on the board of di­rec­tors at CSL, Te­va Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and Cochlear.

Doug Tre­co

→ What’s next for Doug Tre­co af­ter UCB ponied up $2.5 bil­lion in 2019 to buy the com­pa­ny he co-found­ed, Ra Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals? An­oth­er crack at lead­ing a biotech.

Tre­co re­places found­ing CEO Alex Leech at start­up Alchemab Ther­a­peu­tics, which in April pulled in $82 mil­lion from a Se­ries A round and is de­vel­op­ing an an­ti­body ther­a­py for Hunt­ing­ton’s while team­ing up with As­traZeneca on prostate can­cer re­search. Tre­co co-found­ed Ra Phar­ma in 2008 with Palleon CEO Jim Brod­er­ick, and he al­so co-found­ed Tran­skary­ot­ic Ther­a­pies, pur­chased by Shire in 2005.

→ Ben Thorner sig­naled on Twit­ter this week that he is leav­ing Mer­ck:

Af­ter 7.5 years at Mer­ck and near­ly 5 years lead­ing glob­al BD&L for MRL, it is time for me to move on (as of ear­ly Au­gust).  My time at Mer­ck has been stel­lar and I would not have trad­ed this ex­pe­ri­ence for any oth­er.

— Ben Thorner (@thorner_ben) June 21, 2021

Thorner’s de­par­ture is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of an on­go­ing chang­ing of the guard at Mer­ck in which CEO Ken Fra­zier of­fi­cial­ly pass­es the ba­ton to Robert Davis this com­ing Thurs­day. Dean Li has suc­ceed­ed Roger Perl­mut­ter — now the CEO of Eikon — as the phar­ma gi­ant’s R&D chief, and Car­o­line Litch­field took Davis’ old CFO job in April. Chief mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer Mike Nal­ly al­so broke away from Mer­ck to be­come CEO of Flag­ship-found­ed Gen­er­ate Bio­med­i­cines.

An­drew Hotchkiss

→ One of the 163 jobs that were slashed when Eli Lil­ly swooped in to buy Der­mi­ra — clos­ing up shop at the Men­lo Park, CA fa­cil­i­ty in the process — was that of CEO An­drew Hotchkiss. Get­ting up off the mat quick­ly, Hotchkiss is tak­ing con­trol of an­oth­er com­pa­ny: Draup­nir Bio, a Dan­ish car­dio­vas­cu­lar biotech fo­cused on PC­SK9. Be­fore lead­ing Der­mi­ra, Hotchkiss was chief com­mer­cial of­fi­cer and in­ter­im pre­de­ces­sor of CEO Bahi­ja Jal­lal at Im­muno­core and de­vot­ed more than two decades to Eli Lil­ly. The In­di­anapo­lis phar­ma bought Der­mi­ra for $1.1 bil­lion with its sights set on IL-13 in­hibitor le­brik­izum­ab to com­pete against Dupix­ent.

→ CSO Piet Wiger­inck is jump­ing ship at Gala­pa­gos months af­ter the com­pa­ny axed chunks of its pipeline fol­low­ing a re­jec­tion for Gilead-part­nered rheuma­toid arthri­tis drug fil­go­tinib. Wiger­inck joined the com­pa­ny in 2008 as SVP of de­vel­op­ment and be­came CSO in 2012. In his role, he over­saw the dis­cov­ery of nov­el tar­gets through to clin­i­cal proof-of-con­cept stud­ies, led the first clin­i­cal re­search in healthy vol­un­teers and was re­spon­si­ble for two Phase II pro­grams for fil­go­tinib, a JAK in­hibitor. Gala­pa­gos CMO Walid Abi-Saab will be tak­ing over ear­ly-stage de­vel­op­ment ac­tiv­i­ties, while Wiger­inck will be stay­ing with the com­pa­ny for an­oth­er five months as they search for a re­place­ment.

Pe­ter Bach

→ Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing re­searcher Pe­ter Bach, an out­spo­ken tweet­mas­ter who’s spent a decade ar­dent­ly crit­i­ciz­ing the in­dus­try over drug pric­ing, has nabbed a spot at liq­uid biop­sy start­up Delfi Di­ag­nos­tics. Bach comes aboard as CMO of the Bal­ti­more-based biotech, which is look­ing for a bet­ter way to screen the blood for can­cer, af­ter spend­ing the last 23 years at Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing, where he’s been di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Health Pol­i­cy and Out­comes. In a note to our Zachary Bren­nan af­ter the an­nounce­ment, Bach joked, “In my con­tract I am al­lowed 14 tweets per week but no threads.”

Celia Econo­mides

→ An­drew Allen’s Grit­stone bio has brought on Celia Econo­mides as CFO. A glob­al med­ical af­fairs vet­er­an at Bio­Marin, Econo­mides bids adieu to Kezar Life Sci­ences, where she was SVP, strat­e­gy and ex­ter­nal af­fairs. Else­where in her ca­reer she’s been Au­rinia’s VP, cor­po­rate and pub­lic af­fairs.

In oth­er Grit­stone de­vel­op­ments, Ro­man Ye­len­sky is on his way out as chief tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cer “to co-found and lead a new start­up in the can­cer di­ag­nos­tics space, work­ing along­side a ma­jor health­care in­vestor,” per the re­lease. Ye­len­sky had been CTO since 2015 af­ter sev­er­al years at Foun­da­tion Med­i­cine. The Emeryville, CA biotech, which re­brand­ed from Grit­stone On­col­o­gy to its new name last month, has a sec­ond-gen Covid-19 vac­cine (CORAL) in a Phase I tri­al that is sup­port­ed by the NI­AID.

→ In a state of fail­ure-dri­ven flux with Fa­heem Has­nain tak­ing over the helm from Sheila Gu­jrathi and Luisa Salter-Cid off to an­oth­er CSO job at Flag­ship’s Pi­o­neer­ing Med­i­cines, the CMO po­si­tion that Jakob Dupont left in May 2020 at Gos­samer Bio hadn’t been filled yet. This week, it has. Gos­samer has pro­mot­ed Richard Aran­da, who came to the San Diego biotech three years ago and has been SVP and head of clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment since 2019. Aran­da is an­oth­er Re­cep­tos alum — par for the course at Gos­samer — and he was glob­al clin­i­cal lead for Oren­cia at Bris­tol My­ers Squibb. Dur­ing his time at No­vo Nordisk from 2011-15, Aran­da served as VP of med­ical sci­ence and in­flam­ma­tion.

One last Gos­samer-re­lat­ed note: EVP of reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs Caryn Pe­ter­son has tak­en a board seat at As­pen Neu­ro­science, where Has­nain is chair­man and Damien McDe­vitt took over as CEO in Jan­u­ary.

Shuyuan Yao

→ Al­lo­gene Over­land, a joint ven­ture in Chi­na that was es­tab­lished by Al­lo­gene and Hill­house-backed Over­land, has in­stalled Shuyuan Yao as CEO. Ed Zhang, Over­land’s COO/CBO and Al­lo­gene Over­land’s co-founder, had been in charge of the com­pa­ny on an in­ter­im ba­sis. Yao, who got his start as a sci­en­tist at Sang­amo, was CSO and head of re­search and tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­op­ment at WuXi Ad­vanced Ther­a­pies. A sim­i­lar joint ven­ture, Over­land AD­CT Bio­phar­ma, is in place with ADC Ther­a­peu­tics; Al­lo­gene Over­land’s goal is to spur the de­vel­op­ment of CAR-T ther­a­pies for pa­tients in Chi­na and through­out Asia, and while at WuXi, Yao was the dri­ving force be­hind its cell ther­a­py R&D busi­ness unit.

Ga­bor Veres

→ Ga­bor Veres has been pegged as CSO at oc­u­lar gene ther­a­py out­fit Vedere Bio II, the start­up that Cyrus Moza­yeni launched to the tune of a $77 mil­lion Se­ries A af­ter No­var­tis ac­quired the first Vedere Bio back in Oc­to­ber. Since 2019, Veres was head of gene ther­a­py re­search at Bio­Marin, which was dealt one of the more shock­ing CRLs last sum­mer with its he­mo­phil­ia A gene ther­a­py. Veres was VP of pre-clin­i­cal re­search at blue­bird bio from 2010-19, lead­ing projects on such drugs as Zyn­te­glo.

Leone Pat­ter­son

→ Ad­verum’s shares tum­bled sig­nif­i­cant­ly in April when a pa­tient lost vi­sion in one eye dur­ing its gene ther­a­py tri­al for di­a­bet­ic mac­u­lar ede­ma. Pres­i­dent, CFO and one-time CEO Leone Pat­ter­son re­signed yes­ter­day for the ever-pop­u­lar pur­suit of oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties, leav­ing Christo­pher DeRespino — who’s been the CBO at Ad­verum since Feb­ru­ary — as act­ing CFO. DeRespino was ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment dur­ing his eight years at Am­gen.

Christo­pher DeRespino

Mean­while, Pe­ter Soparkar has been pro­mot­ed to the COO slot af­ter join­ing Ad­verum as chief le­gal of­fi­cer in Oc­to­ber 2019. Soparkar was VP, as­so­ciate gen­er­al coun­sel dur­ing his 10-year tenure at Jazz Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

→ Pro­tein degra­da­tion biotech Nurix Ther­a­peu­tics, which has on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions with Gilead and Sanofi, has ap­point­ed Ste­fani Wolff COO and EVP, prod­uct de­vel­op­ment. Wolff just nabbed a board seat at Rain Ther­a­peu­tics and was chief de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer at Prin­cip­ia Bio­phar­ma be­fore land­ing these dual roles. Af­ter start­ing her ca­reer with Eli Lil­ly in sales and mar­ket­ing, Wolff would then spend 13 years in on­col­o­gy and im­munol­o­gy at Genen­tech, and she would lat­er be VP of de­vel­op­ment and glob­al project team leader for Onyx Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

Elaine Caugh­ey

→ While we’re on a roll with pro­tein degra­da­tion com­pa­nies, Nel­lo Main­olfi-led Kymera Ther­a­peu­tics out of Wa­ter­town, MA, has se­lect­ed Elaine Caugh­ey as CBO. Caugh­ey leaves Flag­ship-found­ed Cyg­nal Ther­a­peu­tics, where she was CBO for Pearl Huang and joined the team just af­ter its Oc­to­ber 2019 launch. Be­fore Cyg­nal, she was head of strat­e­gy and op­er­a­tions, glob­al mar­ket ac­cess to close out her six-plus years at Bio­gen. Kymera fol­lowed up its $102 mil­lion Se­ries C round in March 2020 with an IPO to­tal­ing near­ly $200 mil­lion.

Glenn Re­icin

→ Glenn Re­icin has tak­en on CFO re­spon­si­bil­i­ties at food al­ler­gy play­er Al­ladapt — co-found­ed by Kari Nadeau and CEO Ash­ley Dom­bkows­ki in 2018 — in a move that comes af­ter two years as CFO at Sig­ilon Ther­a­peu­tics. Re­icin has al­so been pres­i­dent of Grey­lock Bio­med­ical Ad­vi­sors and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Mor­gan Stan­ley. He is the broth­er of Alise Re­icin, the for­mer Mer­ck and Cel­gene ex­ec who is cur­rent­ly pres­i­dent and CEO of Tec­ton­ic Ther­a­peu­tic.

Jes­si­ca Gross­man

→ When IgGenix — an­oth­er Nadeau biotech — emerged from stealth with a mod­est $10 mil­lion round, Bruce Hi­ron­a­ka told our Max Gel­man that he didn’t in­tend to stay CEO for long. True to his word, Hi­ron­a­ka steps aside as Jes­si­ca Gross­man takes com­mand of the South San Fran­cis­co food al­ler­gy play­er. Gross­man has pre­vi­ous­ly been CEO at Med­i­cines360 and she’s on the board of Daré Bio­science that’s chaired by William Rastet­ter, who’s al­so chair­man of Grail, Neu­ro­crine and Fate.

→ With Adam Walsh step­ping in as CFO of New­port Beach, CA-based eye dis­ease biotech jCyte, the crew keeps grow­ing af­ter Shan­non Blalock hit the scene as CEO along with a new CCO, gen­er­al coun­sel and oth­er ex­ecs. Walsh has been CFO for the last year at Cat­alyt­ic Life Sci­ences fol­low­ing near­ly five years at Stifel as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and se­nior an­a­lyst, biotech­nol­o­gy eq­ui­ty re­search. In Ju­ly 2020, jCyte un­veiled pos­i­tive Phase IIb da­ta for its re­tini­tis pig­men­tosa ther­a­py, called jCell.

→ De­vel­op­ing a gut mi­cro­bio­me ther­a­py for en­teric hy­per­ox­aluria, South San Fran­cis­co’s Novome Biotech­nolo­gies has ap­point­ed Lachy McLean CMO. Be­fore his most re­cent head of re­search post at Tra­vere (re­brand­ed from the Mar­tin Shkre­li days of Retrophin), McLean had a 12-year tenure at Take­da, mak­ing the climb to VP and glob­al head of trans­la­tion­al clin­i­cal sci­ence im­munol­o­gy.

Michael Han­na

→ Back in Sep­tem­ber we men­tioned that Ve­r­alox Ther­a­peu­tics had named Pal­la­dio Bio­sciences CEO Alex Mar­tin chair­man of the board, and the Fred­er­ick, MD biotech has since added Big Phar­ma vet Michael Han­na to its team as CMO. From 2004-16, Han­na was in­volved in glob­al clin­i­cal re­search at Bris­tol My­ers, pre­dom­i­nant­ly as the clin­i­cal lead for the block­buster Eliquis. Ve­r­alox’s lead drug, VLX-1005, is geared to­ward those with he­parin-in­duced throm­bo­cy­tope­nia (HIT).

→ We told you in De­cem­ber about John Maxwell leav­ing his CFO post at New Jer­sey-based Aque­s­tive Ther­a­peu­tics. His suc­ces­sor, Ernie Toth, has been fill­ing the job on an in­ter­im ba­sis, but as of this week he’s in­ter­im no more and has al­so been named an SVP. Toth’s CFO ex­pe­ri­ence in­cludes JHP Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals (now Par Ster­ile Prod­ucts), Aris­Glob­al and EHE Health.

→ As of April 14, Alek­sey Krylov has got­ten sit­u­at­ed as CFO of NK-fo­cused Cy­toIm­mune Ther­a­peu­tics, pre­ced­ing Co­di­ak CEO Doug Williams’ ap­point­ment as chair­man. Krylov, the founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Ftera Ad­vi­sors, has been an in­ter­im or act­ing CFO on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions, in­clud­ing with Sel­l­as Life Sci­ences and re­Vi­sion Ther­a­peu­tics.

Sta­cy Cline Amin

→ Adding to the num­ber of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials who have filed in­to the firm this year, Sta­cy Cline Amin will co-lead the FDA reg­u­la­to­ry and com­pli­ance prac­tice at Mor­ri­son & Fo­er­ster as a part­ner in life sci­ences in health­care. Be­fore join­ing Mo­Fo, Amin was the FDA’s chief coun­sel in the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion from 2018-21 and deputy chief coun­sel for the HHS.

→ Kevin Schutz has jumped on board at Tiziana Life Sci­ences — fo­cused on the ver­i­ta­ble grab bag of on­col­o­gy, neu­rol­o­gy, in­flam­ma­tion and in­fec­tious dis­eases— as VP of reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs. Schutz’s in­volve­ment with­in the reg­u­la­to­ry realm ex­tends to oth­er gigs at Ipsen, Amarin, In­smed, and more re­cent­ly with Os­mot­i­ca Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

→ Penn­syl­va­nia biotech Ocu­gen, which is work­ing on gene ther­a­pies for eye dis­eases and co-de­vel­op­ing a Covid-19 vac­cine called Co­v­ax­in, has wel­comed Ken In­chausti as head, in­vestor re­la­tions & com­mu­ni­ca­tions. From 2004-10, In­chausti held com­mu­ni­ca­tions and me­dia re­la­tions posts at Glax­o­SmithK­line, and he then rose to se­nior di­rec­tor, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions dur­ing his sub­se­quent 10+ years at No­vo Nordisk.

Greg Sukay

→ With its top­i­cal rof­lu­mi­last cream for­mu­la­tion far­ing well in Phase III tri­als for plaque pso­ri­a­sis, Ar­cutis has ush­ered in Greg Sukay as VP of man­u­fac­tur­ing and process tech­nolo­gies. This new door opens for Sukay af­ter a 22-year run with Am­gen that took him to Asia as plant man­ag­er and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Am­gen Sin­ga­pore and that end­ed as ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Am­gen Con­tract Man­u­fac­tur­ing.

→ That’s not the on­ly Ar­cutis-re­lat­ed news. The com­pa­ny’s CEO, Frank Watan­abe, has been elect­ed to the board of di­rec­tors at Ang­ie You’s Amu­nix. Watan­abe be­came the chief ex­ec­u­tive at Ar­cutis in 2017 af­ter be­ing named pres­i­dent a year ear­li­er.

Scott Braun­stein

→ Mar­i­nus Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals CEO Scott Braun­stein is grab­bing a seat on CRISPR genome-edit­ing Cari­bou Bio­sciences‘ board of di­rec­tors. Pri­or to his cur­rent role at Mar­i­nus, Braun­stein was with Ais­ling Cap­i­tal and Paci­ra Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. Braun­stein al­so sits on the boards of Treve­na and Con­stel­la­tion Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

→ Flag­ship epi­ge­net­ic pro­gram­ming start­up Omega Ther­a­peu­tics has a seat ready for Luke Be­shar on the board of di­rec­tors. The ex-CFO of NPS Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Be­shar is al­so the chair­man of Pro­tara and is on the boards of Re­genxbio and Tril­li­um.

→ Mar­cio Souza has joined the board of di­rec­tors at Austin, TX-based Ae­glea Bio­Ther­a­peu­tics, which is in Phase III with its lead drug for arginase-1 de­fi­cien­cy. Souza, the pres­i­dent and CEO of Prax­is Pre­ci­sion Med­i­cines, is for­mer­ly the COO of PTC Ther­a­peu­tics.

Nis­han de Sil­va

→ Langer-backed Se­lec­ta Bio­sciences has opened a spot for Nis­han de Sil­va on its board of di­rec­tors. Cur­rent­ly, de Sil­va is the CEO and di­rec­tor of AFYX Ther­a­peu­tics. Pri­or to that, de Sil­va served as COO and di­rec­tor of Po­sei­da Ther­a­peu­tics and CFO and VP of fi­nance and strat­e­gy at Lig­and Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

→ San Fran­cis­co-based Spruce Bio­sciences has reeled in Kirk Ways to its board of di­rec­tors. Ways re­cent­ly served as CMO of Nu­ve­lu­tion Phar­ma and pri­or to that role was head­ing drug de­vel­op­ment units at John­son & John­son’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal re­search and de­vel­op­ment group. In ad­di­tion, Ways has had stints at Bio­S­tra­tum, Aven­tis and Lil­ly Re­search Lab­o­ra­to­ries.

Son­ja Nel­son

→ Fort Laud­erdale-based medtech Mo­tus GI has brought on Son­ja Nel­son to its board of di­rec­tors and as chair of the au­dit com­mit­tee. Cur­rent­ly, Nel­son is the SVP, fi­nance at Im­mu­ni­ty­Bio, fol­low­ing the merg­er of the com­pa­ny with Nan­tK­west — where she served as CFO for sev­er­al years. Pri­or to Nan­tk­west, Nel­son was with Alt­heaDx and Ca­dence Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

→ Ve­rastem On­col­o­gy, which in May won a break­through nod for its com­bo ther­a­py in ovar­i­an can­cer, has made the ad­di­tions of Paul Bunn and Les­ley Solomon to its board of di­rec­tors. Bunn is a pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine and James Dud­ley chair in can­cer re­search, di­vi­sion of med­ical on­col­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado School of Med­i­cine. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Bunn served in roles at the US Na­tion­al Can­cer In­sti­tute-Navy Med­ical On­col­o­gy branch, Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado Can­cer Cen­ter and In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion for the Study of Lung Can­cer (IASLC) among oth­ers.

Mean­while, Solomon is a ven­ture chair at Re­design Health. Pri­or to her role at Re­design, Solomon was the chief in­no­va­tion of­fi­cer at Dana-Far­ber Can­cer In­sti­tute.

→ Ab­b­Vie’s CD47 part­ner I-Mab has re­cruit­ed An­drew Zhu to its sci­en­tif­ic ad­vi­so­ry board. Zhu hops aboard the Chi­nese biotech as a pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine at Har­vard Med­ical School, di­rec­tor emer­i­tus of liv­er can­cer re­search at Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, CSO of Ji­ahui Health and di­rec­tor of Ji­ahui In­ter­na­tion­al Can­cer Cen­ter (JICC) in Shang­hai.