AnaptysBio CEO Exits After Decade in the Role
Former AnaptysBio CEO Hamza Suria/Courtesy AnaptysBio
AnaptysBio president and chief executive officer Hamza Suria has stepped down from his roles effective immediately, after a decade in these positions.
In addition to letting go of his executive functions, Suria will also be vacating his board director post. He will stay on in an advisory capacity.
Board member Daniel Faga will take the helm as president and CEO in the interim. Faga has been a member of the AnaptysBio board since December 2021 and brings over two decades of life sciences industry experience to the firm. He most recently served as the chief operating officer at Mirati Therapeutics and was the chief business officer at Spark Therapeutics prior to that. He also served as managing director and founding member of the healthcare advisory arm of Centerview Partners and as a management consultant in the life sciences practice of PRTM.
Suria steps down at a time of positive health for the company. AnaptysBio closed out the 2021 fourth quarter with $615.2 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments, up from $411.2 million in the previous year. The company suffered a net loss of $32.5 million in the quarter and $57.8 million in the financial year to December 31, 2021, from a net income of $33.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2020.
"We advanced our wholly-owned antibody product pipeline and completed a $250 million royalty monetization transaction in 2021. We look forward to multiple clinical readouts in 2022 and remain focused on developing first-in-class therapeutic antibodies using a capital-efficient business model," Suria said in an earlier press release.
AnaptysBio's primary pipeline includes imsidolimab (anti-IL-36R Ab), which demonstrated safety and efficacy in the Phase II GALLOP trial for generalized pustular psoriasis rosnilimab (PD-1 agonist Ab). This has an ongoing Phase II AZURE trial for moderate-to-severe alopecia areata and ANB032 (BTLA modulator Ab), which is expected to share Phase I topline results in the second quarter of 2022. In early March 2022, however, the company shared topline data from its Phase II ACORN trial, which found imsidolimab unable to meet primary and secondary endpoints for moderate-to-severe acne.
"I am confident in the future of imsidolimab and our pipeline of innovative antibody-based therapies and pleased to help lead AnaptysBio into this next chapter. We look forward to evaluating further clinical data across all three of our clinical stage programs throughout 2022," commented Faga in the latest announcement.
"Our Board of Directors will undergo a strategic portfolio review. This will include defining the clinical path forward across a breadth of potential inflammation-focused indications that could be pursued for each of our clinical and preclinical therapeutic antibody programs as well as the optimal deployment of our approximately $615 million in cash as of the end 2021," Faga added.