Lonnel Coats→ Lexicon Pharmaceuticals CEO Lonnel Coats will retire July 7, 10 years to the day after accepting the job. Lexicon overcame numerous regulatory obstacles with its SGLT1/2 inhibitor sotagliflozin to earn an FDA approval for heart disease on May 26, 2023, and the treatment is now marketed as Inpefa. Lexicon is giving it another go with the drug in type 1 diabetes following an FDA rejection in this indication; the biotech’s attempts to reverse the CRL also fell short. Sanofi backed out of its alliance with Lexicon after the FDA verdict on sotagliflozin.
“I am truly blessed to have had the opportunity to spend the last decade leading this remarkable company,” Coats said in a statement, adding, “Lexicon has never been stronger.”
Coats also had an 18-year run with Eisai, where he was elevated to president and CEO of its US subsidiary Eisai, Inc.
Sung Lee→ Sung Lee had been one of the very few top execs at Vir Biotechnology to (barely) predate CEO Marianne De Backer — but that didn’t last.
Vir revealed in its Q1 update that Lee is out as CFO. He arrived at Vir from MorphoSys on March 27, 2023, one week before De Backer took over for George Scangos. The revolving door spins unrelentingly at Vir, which just said goodbye to medical chief Phil Pang and poached CSO Jennifer Towne from J&J in November. Now its top finance exec is gone, and so is Lisa Purcell, Vir’s SVP of research and translational medicine. According to her LinkedIn page, the Regeneron alum is now an entrepreneur-in-residence with Third Rock Ventures.
Keira Driansky→ Keira Driansky is coming to Ipsen as EVP, president of North America on May 13. Driansky will replace Stewart Campbell and ends a 13-year association with AstraZeneca, where she was country president for Belgium and Luxembourg. Earlier, she was responsible for more than 90 countries as global commercial head for the Tagrisso franchise. Last month, Ipsen joined forces on RNA-modulating small molecules with Bill Haney’s crew at Skyhawk Therapeutics for up to $1.8 billion and teamed up with Sutro Biopharma on ADCs.
Mark Mallon→ By George, Mark Mallon is back in Peer Review: He’s taken the CEO job at George Medicines, a London-based spinout from The George Institute for Global Health. Mallon’s appointment at the cardiometabolic disease specialist is his first CEO gig since a short-lived stint at NeoGenomics from 2021-22. After a career at AstraZeneca that spanned nearly a quarter century, Mallon was named CEO of Ironwood Pharmaceuticals in 2019, but headed for the exit two years later. Ironwood’s reformulation of Linzess derailed in May 2020, and a subsequent late-stage failure of its persistent acid reflux drug IW-3718 resulted in layoffs that affected 35% of the staff.
Rachelle Jacques→ As the merger with Peak Bio takes shape, Akari Therapeutics CEO Rachelle Jacques and COO Melissa Bradford-Klug are stepping out. Jacques, who came to Akari from Enzyvant in March 2022, will be succeeded by board member Samir Patel on an interim basis. Under the Akari name, the two biotechs will combine their pipelines — namely Akari’s geographic atrophy candidate PAS-nomacopan and Peak’s ADC platform — and deprioritize other programs.
Lisa Wyman→ Flagship’s bet on AI drug design, Generate:Biomedicines, has brought in Kym White as chief corporate affairs officer and promoted Lisa Wyman to chief technical operations officer. White, the ex-communications chief for Vertex and CVS Health, has spent the last three years as a senior advisor at two Alphabet companies: Isomorphic Labs (one of Generate’s competitors) and Verily. Wyman is a Shire alum who was SVP of technical operations for Acceleron before taking the same job at Generate in 2022. Generate and Isomorphic Labs certainly have company: Endpoints News broke the story last week about Xaira Therapeutics, the $1 billion AI biotech led by ex-Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne.
Emily Fox→ While we’re in this space, insitro has picked up Emily Fox as SVP of AI/machine learning. She pivots to industry from Stanford, where she was a professor in the statistics and computer science departments. Fox has also been a distinguished engineer and head of health AI for Apple. “AI leaders of Emily’s caliber who simultaneously have an understanding of biology and health are rare, and we are privileged to have recruited her to lead our AI/ML teams,” insitro CEO Daphne Koller (a former Stanford professor herself) said in a statement.
Tommy Leggett→ Effective May 7, Stephen Tulipano has resigned as CFO of Stoke Therapeutics and will be replaced by Tommy Leggett, who had been finance chief for Rick Modi at Affinia Therapeutics since December 2021. Leggett has also held this position at Axcella Health and Black Diamond. Stoke hired a chief commercial officer two weeks ago and Tulipano helped secure $125 million in a public offering after the biotech reported “clinically meaningful” results with its Dravet syndrome drug STK-001.
Christina Coughlin→ Alastair Smith has ended his 19-year tenure as CEO of Avacta Group and has passed the baton to Christina Coughlin. Peer Review caught up with Coughlin in late 2021 when she was named CEO of CytoImmune Therapeutics. Prior to that appointment, she had a string of CMO roles at Immunocore, Tmunity and Rubius Therapeutics.
David Liu→ Co-founded by David Liu and Keith Joung to solve gene editing’s thorniest problems, Nvelop Therapeutics made a $100 million debut last month. Liu and Joung are the headliners for Nvelop’s new scientific advisory board that includes Genenta co-founder Luigi Naldini and Mammoth Biosciences SVP Gabor Veres, among others. Nvelop has also plucked head of translational research Luca Biasco from Sana Biotechnology, where he was executive director of hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy.
→ Monte Rosa Therapeutics CSO Owen Wallace is leaving “to transition to a Chief Executive Officer role at a UK-based biotechnology company,” according to a release. The Novartis and Eli Lilly vet came over to Monte Rosa in February 2021 after almost four years as CSO of Fulcrum Therapeutics.
Mary Kay Fenton→ Mary Kay Fenton has succeeded Jeffrey Trigilio as CFO of Cullinan Therapeutics. In 2019, Fenton ended an 18-year career at Achillion to join Semma Therapeutics as CFO, and when Vertex bought Semma for $950 million, Fenton became VP, strategic operations for Vertex’s cell and genetic therapies unit. She jumped to the CFO post at Talaris Therapeutics in 2021 and would step in as interim CEO before Tourmaline Bio reverse merged with the company last year. Cullinan Therapeutics entered the autoimmune chat in mid-April and changed its name from Cullinan Oncology.
Michael Sofia→ Arbutus Biopharma co-founder Michael Sofia is retiring as CSO at the end of the year. Arbutus has been involved in protracted patent squabbles with Moderna and Pfizer over their Covid-19 vaccines while closing the book on coronavirus efforts and its oral RNA destabilizer AB-161.
→ In March, Nicholas Edmunds began his new role as chief development officer, head of preclinical development with London-based Charm Therapeutics. Edmunds previously served as chief technology officer and head of discovery at Mission Therapeutics, and the Pfizer alum is the former head of new modalities, drug safety and metabolism for AstraZeneca. Co-founded by David Baker from the Institute for Protein Design, Charm made a $50 million splash in June 2022 with contributions from F-Prime Capital, OrbiMed and Khosla Ventures, among others. Charm has raised a total of $70 million, according to the release.
Alberto Toso→ Swiss biotech Alentis Therapeutics has promoted Alberto Toso to CSO. After a stint as department head in Roche’s molecular targeted therapy group, oncology, Toso was named head of oncology at Alentis in 2021 and moved up to SVP last year. Beyond its lead asset, an anti-Claudin-1 antibody called ALE.C04, Alentis also has a pair of anti-Claudin-1 ADCs in its pipeline.
Samuel Zhang→ Innovent has made its second major hire in a two-week period, appointing Samuel Zhang as global CBO. Zhang had been CBO for Gracell Biotechnologies, the CAR-T cell therapy player that AstraZeneca purchased at the end of last year. He also worked for some of the biggest names in pharma — Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb and Novartis — before his first CBO gig at NeoImmuneTech. Peer Review informed you about Innovent’s other new exec, oncology CMO Nageatte Ibrahim, in our April 19 edition.
Scott Gangloff→ Competing with drug developers like Madrigal Pharmaceuticals and 89bio in NASH — a liver disease often referred to as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) — Akero Therapeutics has selected Scott Gangloff as chief technology officer. Gangloff heads to Akero from Incyte, where he was VP, global biopharmaceutical development. Akero and 89bio are testing FGF21-based drugs, while Madrigal’s Rezdiffra is a thyroid hormone receptor beta (THR‑β) agonist.
→ Clay Siegall’s Immunome, which picked up the desmoid tumor treatment AL102 from Ayala Pharmaceuticals in February, has enlisted 16-year Genentech vet Kinney Horn as CBO. When Olema Oncology trimmed its staff by 25% in March 2023, Horn also packed his bags and co-founder Cyrus Harmon gave up his post as chief research officer.
Doug Carlson→ Avalyn Pharma, a pulmonary disease biotech that nabbed a $175 million Series C last summer, has welcomed Doug Carlson as CFO and CBO. Carlson is a Lundbeck business development vet who held the role of chief operating and financial officer with Ikena Oncology (taking the lead on its $144 million IPO) and Avenge Bio.
→ Shape Therapeutics has appointed a new chief people officer: Matt Valentino had been VP of global talent acquisition at DoorDash for nearly three years, but he’s familiar with the biotech world as head of talent acquisition for Calico from 2016-20. Back in the 2000s, Valentino was the lead recruiter for R&D, preclinical sciences and clinical/medical affairs at Genentech.
Eugene Kennedy→ Eugene Kennedy has landed at Carisma Therapeutics as CMO. He had spent a year in the same post at Galera Therapeutics, but left last September after the FDA handed a CRL to avasopasem manganese, a drug for head and neck cancer patients with radiotherapy-induced severe oral mucositis. Carisma said last month it would lay off 37% of its staff, scrapping development of one CAR-M program while pressing pause on another.
Matt Kowalsky→ Enanta Pharmaceuticals has recruited Matt Kowalsky as chief legal officer. The Sanofi Genzyme legal vet had the same title at Sigilon Therapeutics, and he would be promoted to chief of staff, chief legal and administrative officer before Eli Lilly scooped up the Flagship biotech last summer. Phase 2 studies for Enanta’s RSV candidate zelicapavir are ongoing as GSK’s Arexvy owns the bulk of the market share against Pfizer’s Abrysvo — and Moderna tries to nudge its way into the field with its RSV vaccine hopeful mRNA-1345.
→ Sphere Fluidics’ CEO and co-founder Frank Craig is heading into retirement and the company has found his successor in Dale Levitzke. Levitzke formerly served as SVP of global sales and support at Vizgen and prior to that was VP, worldwide sales and marketing at Dropworks. Earlier in his career, Levitzke held roles at NanoString Technologies, Illumina and Helixis.
Leon Hooftman→ Roche alum Leon Hooftman will take over as medical chief of Barinthus Biotherapeutics in June after Margaret Marshall retired last summer. Hooftman had been CMO at Dutch biotech ISA Pharmaceuticals since May 2018. Barinthus was known as Vaccitech when the Oxford spinout co-invented AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine.
→ PDS Biotechnology has brought Stephan Toutain on board as COO. Toutain served in the same role at Anavex Life Sciences and was CCO of Interleukin Genetics. Earlier in his career, Toutain was with Alnylam, Sarepta, Alexion, Celgene and J&J.
Adam Hughes→ South San Francisco-based Vicinitas Therapeutics has promoted its VP of medicinal chemistry Adam Hughes to the role of CSO. Before Vicinitas, Hughes was head of chemistry at Terray Therapeutics and executive director of medicinal chemistry at Theravance Biopharma.
→ London immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibody developer Epsilogen has named Ashley Nagle as CBO and non-executive director Peter Finan as non-executive chairman. Nagle joins the team from RemedyBio, where he was VP of business development. Before that, he held positions at Lonza, Almac Sciences, Fulcrum Pharma, OncoSynergy and NexGenix, and was CEO at SeaGull Therapeutics. Meanwhile, Finan replaces Dave Chiswell, who is leaving the company for personal reasons. Finan currently serves as a partner at Epidarex Capital and has also been global head of the respiratory disease area and site head for the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.
Steve Altschuler→ Former Spark Therapeutics chairman Steve Altschuler has been named chairman of the board at ViaNautis Bio, a University College London spinoff that reeled in a $25 million Series A last November. The company that Altschuler now leads, Corner Therapeutics, just launched with $54 million in Series A financing.
→ Ex-Spark CFO Stephen Webster has a spot on the board of directors at Gritstone bio, while former Denali finance chief Steve Krognes will step down. CEO Andrew Allen was candid about the primary endpoint after Gritstone’s neoantigen cancer vaccine didn’t make the grade in a mid-stage trial: “Pioneering new spaces carries inherent risks, and with regard to defining molecular response, we simply got it wrong,” he said in a statement.
Reshma Kewalramani→ One-time Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers and Vertex chief Reshma Kewalramani will retire from the board of directors at Ginkgo Bioworks. Coming up next on Ginkgo’s board: Myrtle Potter and XYZ Venture Capital managing director Ross Fubini. Potter handed the CEO reins to Tsutomu Nakagawa at Sumitomo Pharma America on April 1.
→ Alistair Gray, 75, has retired from the board of directors at Silence Therapeutics, which revealed positive mid-stage data on its siRNA candidate zerlasiran for cardiovascular disease in March. Gray chairs the pension trustee board and life assurance scheme trustee board for Scottish Enterprise.