BioSpace Movers & Shakers, Sept. 17
Biopharma and life sciences companies strengthen their leadership teams and boards with these Movers & Shakers.
TScan Therapeutics – Zoran Zdraveski was named chief legal officer of TScan Therapeutics. Most recently, Zdraveski served as the chief legal and technology operations officer at Magenta Therapeutics Inc. from April 2017 to April 2021. Prior to Magenta, he was the vice president and associate general counsel at Epizyme Inc. from July 2012 to April 2017. Before that, he held patent counsel positions at Ironwood and Genzyme Therapeutics.
Muna Therapeutics – Denmark-based Muna Therapeutics appointed Donald Nicholson, as independent chairman of the company Board of Directors. Nicholson has deep experience across both biotech and large pharma. He was previously the chief executive officer of Nimbus Therapeutics and was responsible for major transactions with Gilead, Celgene and Genentech. Prior to this, he spent 25 years at Merck, where he held various strategic, leadership and operational roles across diverse therapeutic areas including inflammation, immunology and neuroscience, amongst others. He is chair of the boards of directors at NodThera, Disc Medicine and Jnana Therapeutics, and board director at Kymera Therapeutics and Generation Bio.
Lyra Therapeutics – Jason Cavalier was named chief financial officer of Lyra Therapeutics. He succeeds Don Elsey, who is retiring as the CFO and is expected to serve in an advisory role to assist with the transition. Cavalier joins Lyra after serving as managing director, head of Life Sciences Mergers & Acquisitions at Cantor Fitzgerald. Prior to Cantor, he held several senior-level positions at RBC Capital Markets, including Director, Mergers and Acquisitions. He also held investment banking roles of increasing responsibility at Barclays Capital, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers.
Aadi Bioscience – Emma Reeve was appointed to the board of directors as audit committee chair. She currently sits on the boards of PTC Therapeutics and privately-held Ribon Therapeutics and is Audit Committee Chair at both companies, and was recently appointed to the board of Editas Medicine. Most recently, Reeve was CFO of Constellation Pharmaceuticals.
AltruBio Inc. – Jesse Hall was appointed to the new role of chief medical officer at Bay Area-based AltruBio. Prior to joining AltruBio, Hall served as CMO at Sublimity Therapeutics. Prior to Sublimity, Hall served as an executive medical director of Ardea Biosciences, medical director at Amgen, and associate medical director at Abbott Laboratories, respectively.
LifeMD, Inc. – New York-based LifeMD appointed Naveen Bhatia to its board of directors. Bhatia is a private investor and has served as a director of numerous public and private companies; currently, he serves on the board of directors of Blue Yonder, EquipmentShare, RG Barry, and CRG Financial. He also previously served as the chairman of the Board of Cotton Holdings from 2010-2019. From 2013 to 2020, Bhatia was a Senior Director in the Tactical Opportunities group of Blackstone, involved with sourcing, evaluating, and executing investment opportunities.
ViaCyte, Inc. – Timothy Kieffer was named chief scientific officer of ViaCyte. Kieffer joins ViaCyte from the University of British Columbia, where he oversaw the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Medicine with a focus on the development of novel gene and cell therapy approaches to treat diabetes.
Sema4 – Gustavo Stolovitzky was appointed to the new position of CSO at Sema4. Stolovitzky spent 23 years at IBM Research, where he was appointed IBM Fellow, the highest technical honor bestowed by IBM. His most recent role was the founding Chair of the Exploratory Life Sciences Program at IBM Research and, previously, he was the Director of the Translational Systems Biology and Nanobiotechnology Program.
Mediar Therapeutics – Simon Sturge joined Mediar as its executive chairman. Most recently, Sturge served as CEO of Kymab, a company developing innovative antibody treatments. Prior to joining Kymab, Sturge was the chief operating officer of Merck Healthcare, responsible for the company’s global commercial and manufacturing operations, as well as serving as a member of Merck’s healthcare executive board. Earlier, Sturge was senior vice president of biologicals at Boehringer Ingelheim where he ran the German biopharma’s global biosimilars business. He also served as chairman at two biopharma startups, Silence Therapeutics and Nemesis Biosciences.
Genocea Biosciences – Jennifer Herron, CCO at ADC Therapeutics, has joined the Genocea Board of Directors. Before joining ADCT, Herron was CCO at ImmunoGen, president and executive vice president of Global Commercial, at MorphoSys US, and CCO at Ariad Pharmaceuticals. Earlier in her career, she held commercial leadership roles in major multinational pharmaceutical companies such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis Oncology, and SmithKline Beecham.
EG 427 – France-based EG 427named Grzegorz Sarek as vice president of Research. Prior to joining EG 427, Sarek was director of Gene Therapy and Translational Research at DiNAQOR AG in Zurich. He was previously Principal Scientist at F. Hoffmann-La Roche and was Group Leader in Molecular Virology at Imperial College London, UK.
Adaptive Phage Therapeutics – Jesse L. Goodman was appointed to the Adaptive Phage Board of Directors. Goodman is a Professor of Medicine and Attending Physician, Infectious Diseases, at Georgetown University, where he directs the Center on Medical Product Access, Safety and Stewardship. Until February 2014 he served as the chief scientist of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. From 2003 to 2009, he was director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Goodman has previously served on numerous boards and advisory committees for organizations including the CDC, NIH, WHO and the Coalition on Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. He currently serves on the board of the United States Pharmacopeia, as an independent non-executive director for GlaxoSmithKline plc, and is on the board of Intellia Therapeutics, which is developing CRISPR based treatments for human disease.
Pyxis Oncology – Jay M. Feingold was named CMO of Pyxis. Most recently, Feingold served as CMO and senior vice president of ADC Therapeutics. Previously, Feingold worked as vice president of U.S. Medical Affairs and chairman of the Global Medical Affairs Oversight Committee at Daiichi Sankyo. Earlier in his career, Dr. Feingold held various executive roles of increasing responsibility at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and was a member of the Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics and an Associate Director of the Bone Marrow Transplant Program at the University of Connecticut.
Aurion Biotech – Tim Largen was appointed vice president of manufacturing. His role will include managing Aurion Biotech’s internal team and as a division of CorneaGen, Inc., working with external teams at Cognate BioServices, Inc., a Charles River Company, and at S-RACMO, a joint venture of Sumitomo Chemical Company, Ltd., and Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Company, Ltd., to help support cell production in the United States and Japan, respectively. He joins Aurion Biotech from Lykan Bioscience, a start-up contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) where he led manufacturing sciences and technologies supporting a diverse client base. Prior to Lykan, Largen spent nearly a decade in roles of increasing responsibility at Dendreon, where he was responsible for establishing and running a high-volume cell therapy production facility. Before Dendreon, Largen held operations and supply chain roles at several life sciences companies, including Argos Therapeutics, Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (now Progenics), Trace Life Sciences, and NeoRx Corporation.
Kronos Bio – Marni Knottle was named senior vice president of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. Prior to Kronos Bio, Knottle was vice president of Corporate Communications at Gilead Sciences, where she was responsible for the company’s corporate brand, financial communications, media and social media strategies, and employee communications. She joined Gilead in 2013 and led efforts to integrate internal and external communications across channels and audiences. Prior to Gilead, she covered business news, including the biopharmaceutical and health care industries at the San Francisco Chronicle, Bloomberg News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
ReForm Biologics – Neal Muni was named COO. Prior to joining ReForm, Muni most recently served as the CEO of Azurity Pharmaceuticals (formerly CutisPharma). Prior to Azurity, Muni served as the Head of New Product Planning and Corporate Strategy at Sunovion Pharmaceuticals. Before that, Muni was an engagement manager at the healthcare investment bank Leerink Swann (now SVB Leerink). He was a Medical Officer in the Division of Cardiovascular Devices at the FDA before joining Leerink. Over the past 20 years, Neal Muni has maintained staff appointments at Harvard Medical School and its teaching hospitals, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Faulkner Hospital, as well as Harvard Medical School’s Wyss Institute.
AM-Pharma B.V. – Lars R. Boesgaard was named CFO of Netherlands-based AM-Pharma. Boesgaard’s career spans 25 years and includes CFO roles at public and private companies. Boesgaard will be AM-Pharma’s first U.S.-based executive team member. Prior to joining AM-Pharma, Lars Boesgaard was CFO of Columbia Care. Before that, he served as CFO of Nasdaq-listed Roka Bioscience. Before Roka, he held several senior finance positions with US-Nasdaq-listed companies Insulet Corporation and Alexion Pharmaceuticals as well as Denmark-based Novo Nordisk A/S.
OncoOne – Austria-based OncoOne named Brent Meadows as its chief business officer. Before joining OncoOne, Meadows served as the commercialization lead for many of Biogen’s pipeline assets. Prior to Biogen, Meadows led the commercial insights into Baxalta’s (then Shire’s) oncology pipeline. Meadows’ background includes various senior marketing leadership at Baxalta, Bristol Myers Squibb, Regeneron, and Johnson & Johnson.
Jounce Therapeutics – Former Constellation Pharma CEO Jigar Raythatha was appointed to the Jounce board of directors. Raythatha served as the CEO of Constellation Pharmaceuticals, Inc. from 2017 until its acquisition by MorphoSys AG in July 2021. Raythatha is also currently a member of the American Cancer Society New England Area Board. Before joining Constellation as CEO, Raythatha served as chief business officer of Jounce, where he helped build the company from inception to a 100-person, publicly traded organization. Earlier in his career, Jigar worked with Red Abbey Venture Partners and held roles of increasing responsibility at Biogen and as a management consultant at A.T. Kearney.
Celularity, Inc. – Andrew L. Pecora was appointed president of Celularity. Pecora previously served as president of the Physician Enterprise, Chief Innovations Officer, and the Institutional Research Official of Hackensack Meridian Health. There, he oversaw more than 7,500 physicians as well as the business and clinical operations of the John Theurer Cancer Center and clinical and basic research of the Center for Discovery and Innovation. Pecora also is a Professor of Medicine and Oncology at Georgetown University. Pecora is founder and serves as chairman of Cota, Inc., a real-world evidence-based data and analytics company.
Saniona – Wendy Dwyer was appointed chief business officer of Saniona. She most recently served as CBO for Surface Oncology. Previously, Dwyer was CBO at Portal Instruments Inc., where she secured a key device partnership with a large pharmaceutical company. Prior to that, she served as vice president of Corporate Business Development with Ipsen Bioscience Inc. Dwyer also previously held senior business development positions at AstraZeneca plc, Antigenics Inc., Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Indevus Pharmaceuticals Inc.