TORL BioTherapeutics
, the antibody-drug conjugate startup led by former
Celgene
chief
Mark Alles
, has brought aboard a chief medical officer with big pharma chops.
Aran
Maree
will be overseeing clinical development at the Los Angeles biotech, born out of
Herceptin
founder
Dennis
Slamon
’s lab at UCLA.
Maree departs a nearly 20-year career at
Johnson
&
Johnson
, where he was chief medical officer of the medtech unit before stepping into the same post at the pharmaceuticals division, which was recently renamed
J&J Innovative Medicine
.
The J&J veteran’s move over to TORL comes as the biotech is just weeks into its first potentially registrational trial in CLDN6 positive platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. The well-funded startup is testing an ADC called TORL-1-23.
The pipeline also contains early-stage ADCs against CLDN18.2, CDH17 and DLK1. Other immunotherapies are also in the works.
Alles and crew raised a $158 million round in
April 2023
. Almost a year to the day, they raised
another round
of the exact same size. They’ve kept a low profile the entire time, wishing not to speak with the news media.
— Kyle LaHucik
→
Samsung Bioepis
has promoted
Kyung-Ah Kim
to president and CEO, becoming the first female exec in the
Samsung
universe to hold this title that isn’t part of the founding family. Kim has worked at the biosimilar maker since 2015 and had been development division leader for the past three years. Her predecessor,
Christopher Hansung Ko
, was CEO since its founding in February 2012 and will be the new leader of Samsung’s Future Business Division. The FDA
approved
Samsung Bioepis’
Soliris
biosimilar
Epysqli
in July, and the company
will soon launch
its
Stelara
biosimilar in the US.
→
Iskra Reic
will lead
AstraZeneca
’s China business as EVP of international. She’ll take over for
detained exec
Leon Wang
while he is still under investigation in China, a market that CEO
Pascal Soriot
called
“an important part of innovation in the industry” last month. Reic is a 23-year AstraZeneca vet who ran the vaccines and immune therapies unit after a stint as EVP for Europe and Canada.
→ On the same day President-elect
Donald Trump
nominated
Marty Makary
to lead the FDA, a commish from his first administration picked up a board seat.
Stephen Hahn
— the
current CEO
of
Flagship
company
Harbinger Health
— has joined the board at
Faeth Therapeutics
, a cancer startup that lists
Sid Mukherjee
and
Lewis Cantley
as founders. Faeth has also appointed
Rivus Pharmaceuticals
CEO and ex-
Aimmune
boss
Jayson Dallas
to the board. “Faeth’s approach of leveraging metabolic research in combination with AI has opened up metabolism as a new pillar in the treatment of cancer,” Hahn
said in a statement
.
→
Franklin Biolabs
, a contract research organization that
Jim Wilson
founded after
leaving
his leadership post at the University of Pennsylvania’s Gene Therapy Program,
has installed
a CEO.
Vatsala Naageshwaran
got promoted to head of business development for US CGT & lab services for
Pharmaron
and had a long career with
Absorption Systems
before it was sold to Pharmaron in late 2020. Brazilian health research institute Fiocruz
made a commitment
of up to $100 million for Wilson’s other venture,
GEMMABio
, in an effort to make gene therapies more accessible globally.
→
Scott Wolchko
will retire as president and CEO of
Fate Therapeutics
on Jan. 1, and R&D chief
Bob Valamehr
will take over, according to a Black Friday
release
. Wolchko was the San Diego biotech’s first CFO and vaulted to the top spot in 2015, succeeding former
Escient Pharmaceuticals
chief
Christian Weyer
. Valamehr has led R&D since 2018 and his promotion will coincide with his 15th anniversary at the company. You may recall that Fate, which has several CAR-T and CAR NK candidates in its pipeline,
ended
its development deal with J&J in January 2023 and subsequently laid off nearly half of its employees.
→
Paragon Therapeutics
continues to churn out public biotechs — and
now has a CEO
at the mother ship.
Susanna High
is the former COO of
bluebird bio
and, more recently,
Dyne Therapeutics
. She also had several roles that spanned more than nine years at
Alnylam
, including SVP, strategy and business integration. Two Paragon companies —
Jade Biosciences
and
Crescent Biopharma
—
reverse merged
their way
onto the Nasdaq
in October, and
Oruka Therapeutics
did the same
in April.
→
Volker Herrmann
is out as CEO of Flagship’s
Sonata Therapeutics
, and about 20 other staffers have also been let go,
Fierce Biotech
reported. Flagship brought two of its companies together,
Inzen Therapeutics
and
Cygnal Therapeutics
,
to form Sonata
two years ago. Herrmann had led Inzen, while Cygnal chief
Pearl Huang
eventually took the CEO job at
Dunad Therapeutics
. Herrmann spent more than 15 years at
Pfizer
and joined Flagship from
SQZ Biotechnologies
, where he was COO for nearly two years.
→
Arcutis Biotherapeutics
medical chief
Patrick Burnett
and chief commercial officer
Todd Edwards
have both been promoted
to EVP, and
Kent Taylor
has been elevated to SVP of sales. Burnett is a
Novartis
vet who left
Verrica Pharmaceuticals
to take the CMO job at Arcutis in August 2020; Peer Review
informed you
about Edwards’ appointment in September 2023, when he took over for
Ken Lock
after three years with
Incyte
; and Taylor — an Incyte vet in his own right — followed Edwards two months later as VP of sales.
→
OSE Immunotherapeutics
co-founder
Dominique Costantini
is retiring at the end of the year. The French I/O and I&I player has selected
Fiona Olivier
as chief corporate affairs and investor relations officer, and research head
Aurore Morello
earns a spot on the executive committee. Costantini, the former CEO who also chaired the board at OSE, had been director of development and strategy. “Many of us have benefited from Dominique’s mentorship and guidance over the years and we have grown stronger as a result,” CEO
Nicolas Poirier
said in a statement
.
Olivier spent more than three years with
Sanofi
as global head of corporate affairs for the General Medicines division. She had several job titles over an eight-year period at
AbbVie
, including head of global patient relations and international public affairs.
→ CAR-T cell therapy developer
AffyImmune
has recruited
Deyaa Adib
as CMO. Adib just had a very short stay at
FibroGen
and has also held this position at
Triumvira Immunologics
. AffyImmune, a company in
ORI Capital
’s portfolio, is under new management for the second time this year — in July,
Daniel Janse
took over
for
Matt Britz
as CEO. Britz had been elevated to the top spot in March after two years as operating chief.
→ At another CAR-T shop, ex-
Bellicum
and
Artiva Biotherapeutics
CEO
Tom Farrell
has been named president of Shanghai-based
Oricell
. “Tom is a transformative leader who has consistently delivered results. We believe he will undoubtedly accelerate our clinical development momentum in the US,” CEO
Helen Yang
said in a statement
. Oricell
raised
a $45 million Series B1 in February 2023 on top of a $120 million haul.
→
Merck
’s macrocyclic peptide partner
Unnatural Products
has tapped
Simon Bailey
as COO and president of R&D. Bailey left protein degradation biotech
Plexium
in March after more than four years as head of drug discovery and was SVP of research for
Intercept
from 2016-19. His 20-year career with Pfizer culminated in his role as senior director for worldwide medicinal chemistry in oncology.
→
Iovance Biotherapeutics
has promoted
Raj Puri
to chief regulatory officer. Puri spent two decades as a director at CBER in the Office of Tissues and Advanced Therapies before coming to Iovance in March 2022 as EVP, regulatory strategy and translational medicine. Iovance
fought through
multiple
delays
to receive the first-ever
FDA approval
for a tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte with its cell therapy
Amtagvi
.
→ Synthetic cell specialist
Slingshot Biosciences
has welcomed
Nimisha Srivastava
as COO. Srivastava held a number of roles over a decade at
Twist Bioscience
, where she was VP of engineering and eventually head of R&D. Slingshot also said last month that
it had named
Tiffany Salas-Morris
as chief commercial officer.
→
Sapience Therapeutics
, which is
testing
its beta-catenin antagonist
ST316
in colorectal cancer patients,
has recruited
Augustine Bourne
as VP, business development. He previously worked for
Mirati
as its business development and corporate strategy leader when
Bristol Myers Squibb
purchased the
Krazati
maker for $4.8 billion. In other Sapience news, ex-
Replimune
CBO
Pamela Esposito
now has a seat on its board of directors.
→ Swiss cancer vaccine developer
Nouscom
has recruited
Grünenthal
and
MorphoSys
alum
Eckhard Niemeier
as CBO. Niemeier just ended a three-year run as business chief at Danish biotech
Union Therapeutics
, and he was head of business development & portfolio management for
Pieris Pharmaceuticals
. “Cancer vaccines are, let’s say, back in fashion,” Nouscom CEO
Marina Udier
told
Endpoints News
in November 2023, when the biotech
announced
its Series C funding.
→
Incendia Therapeutics
has appointed
Bradford Smith
as its first finance chief. Smith has previously been CFO for a number of companies, including
Homology Medicines
,
Ocular
Therapeutix
,
OmniGuide
,
NeuroMetrix
and
Synarc
. Smith also sits on the boards of
Lyra Therapeutics
and
eGenesis
.
→ Massachusetts-based
ITF Therapeutics
has recruited
Erica Monaco
as COO. Monaco joins with previous COO experience from
Medicus Pharma
and
Biofrontera
, where she also served as CEO and CFO). Earlier in her career, Monaco was with
Sun Pharmaceuticals
and
Deloitte
.
→ Portuguese CRO
FairJourney Biologics
has brought aboard
Marc van Dijk
as CSO, responsible for the company’s antibody discovery and engineering divisions. Dijk also served in the role at
MiNK
Therapeutics
, and earlier in his career, Dijk was with
Genmab
as VP of antibody technology and chief technology officer at
4-Antibody
and
Agenus
.
→
CRISPR Therapeutics
veteran
Chris Gemmiti
has landed
at
Cellino
as SVP of therapeutics development. Gemmiti was in charge of CMC for
Casgevy
, CRISPR and
Vertex
’s sickle cell gene therapy, and became VP of technical operations in April 2022. Cellino recently caught our attention
by appointing
Recursion
CEO
Chris Gibson
to its board of directors.
→ Looking for the next breakthrough in psychedelic therapy,
MindMed
has hired
yet another exec, bringing in
Javier Muniz
as VP of research and development strategy. He just finished up a 10-year career with the FDA, where he was associate director for therapeutic review in the agency’s Division of Psychiatry within the Office of Neuroscience. This is MindMed’s third notable leadership move in the past few months, following the additions of chief regulatory and quality assurance officer
Gregg Pratt
and corporate affairs chief
Stephanie Fagan
.
→ Former Bristol Myers exec
Kristen Hege
leads a new crop
of clinical advisory board members at
Gilead
’s
cancer partner
Cartography Biosciences
.
Kevin Parker
’s crew has also welcomed
Affini-T Therapeutics
CMO
Dirk Nagorsen
, UCSF’s
Bridget Keenan
and
Josep Tabernero
from the Vall d´Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona.
→
Beam Therapeutics
has added
Chirfi Guindo
to the board of directors. Guindo had a 27-year career with Merck before joining
Biogen
in 2017, then returned to Merck in July 2022 as chief marketing officer for the Human Health division. Click here for Andrew Dunn’s
Slack interview
from February with CEO
John Evans
, who also
spoke to Endpoints
for an early look at Beam’s gene-edited sickle cell data.
→ Ex-
Decibel Therapeutics
CEO
Laurence Reid
has sewn up a spot
on the board of directors at hereditary angioedema biotech
KalVista Pharmaceuticals
. Reid sold Decibel to
Regeneron
for $109 million
in August 2023 and chairs the board at
Broken String Biosciences
. The FDA has assigned a June 17 decision date for KalVista’s HAE drug
sebetralstat
.
→ Backed by
The Column Group
,
8VC
and others, California ADC developer
Hexagon Bio
has elected
Ideaya Biosciences
CEO
Yujiro Hata
to its board of directors. This was Hexagon’s first press release of any kind since its
$77 million Series B
in February 2023.
→ Longtime EY vet
Fran Schulz
has joined
the board of directors at
Tim Lu
’s
Senti Bio
, as
Seer
chief
Omid Farokhzad
exits. Shares
$SNTI
went through the roof on Monday, rising more than 600% and settling on a 363% jump after Senti Bio
disclosed
Phase 1 data for its CAR-NK cell therapy
SENTI-202
.
→
Day One Biopharmaceuticals
co-founder and R&D leader
Sam Blackman
is headed
to the board of directors at
Bonum Therapeutics
, the Seattle-based I/O biotech that sprouted from
Good Therapeutics
and
nabbed
a $93 million Series A two years ago. Blackman will retire from Day One at the end of the year.
→ Rare disease AI company
Healx
has named
Abcam
founder
Jonathan Milner
as non-executive chairman, taking over from co-founder
David Brown
, who will remain on the board. Despite Milner’s
opposition
, Abcam completed its acquisition of
Danaher
exactly one year ago.