BioSpace Movers & Shakers, May 29
Progenity – San Diego-based Progenity named Damon Silvestry as its chief operating officer. Silvestry will oversee key business functions with the goal of delivering operational excellence, coordinating product teams to achieve ambitious growth targets, and driving the company’s service culture. Most recently, Silvestry served as Senior Vice President, Operations and People Office at Natera, where he led a team of more than 350 members to deliver both genetic testing and liquid biopsy services to enable earlier detection of cancer and determine optimal treatments.
Corbus – John Amedio, Jr. was named vice president and head of CMC Development and Commercial Manufacturing. Amedio previously served as the Principal at Amedio CMC Consulting where he assisted emerging and established pharmaceutical and life science companies with the technical and regulatory CMC development of small molecules from the bench to the market for seven years.
Centricity Vision – Formerly known as Mynosys Cellular Devices, the newly-branded Centricity announced a new executive leadership team helmed by Chief Executive Officer Rob Thornhill. Other team members include Chief Financial Officer Louis Bunn, head of marketing Todd Pinkney, Kevin Pratt who will be head of sales, R&D and manufacturing head Dan Glazerman and Nealen Hartman, who will serve as head of regulatory affairs and quality assurance.
Poietis – 4D Bioprinting company Poietis formed its Scientific Advisory Board and named members Geoffrey Gurtner and Michael H. May. Gurtner is vice chairman for innovation at Stanford University School of Medicine and May is president and CEO of the Center for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine in Toronto.
Crinetics Pharmaceuticals – Adriana Cabré was named vice president of human resources for San Diego-based Crinetics Pharmaceuticals. Cabré brings over 25 years of experience in human resources to the role, most recently serving as President of ACC People Strategies, a consulting practice she founded to provide customized human resource solutions. Prior to that, Cabré served as chief people officer at National University. Before that, she was head of Human Resources at MedImpact Healthcare Systems, Inc. and held a similar role at Amylin Pharmaceuticals. She has also served as a Human Resources Director for both CooperVision and Motorola.
Acquist Therapeutics – Inflammatory disease-focused Acquist Therapeutics named two new members to its board of directors, Thomas P. Haverty and John R. Redman. Haverty has more than 30 years of pharmaceutical and biotechnology experience. He is currently interim Chief Medical Officer (CMO) at Eloxx Pharmaceuticals, where he oversees clinical studies of eukaryotic read-through agents in rare hereditary diseases. Haverty previously held leadership roles at Immusan T, Merck Research Labs, Schering-Plough Research Institute, and Johnson & Johnson's Pharmaceutical Research Institutes. Redman also has more than 30 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, with leadership roles in clinical development, medical affairs, and regulatory oversight and strategy. He is currently CEO of Proteus Ventures LLC. Most recently, he worked as a clinical consultant for Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Jounce Therapeutics, Sanofi Genzyme, and Curis. Previously, Redman held leadership development roles at ICON, Incyte, Celator, and Wyeth Ayerst (now Pfizer).
Urovant Sciences -- Jim Hindman was named to the board of directors of Urovant Sciences. Hindman brings more than 30 years of financial and strategic experience to his new role. He joins the Urovant Board after a long career with Allergan, where he most recently served as chief financial officer.
Circle Pharma – William G. Kaelin was named chairman of the company’s Scientific Advisory Board and as a Science Advisor to the company’s board of directors. Kaelin is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and a professor of medicine at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. Kaelin has been widely recognized for his contributions to cancer biology.
Flagship Biosciences -- Aymii Couzelis has been named to the executive team of Flagship Biosciences as chief information officer. Aymii will work to strengthen Flagship’s ability to dynamically scale technology capabilities throughout the company’s application development, help desk, network engineering, project management, quality assurance, laboratory operations, and data security functions. Before joining Flagship, Aymii spent more than a decade as CIO for MediFit Corporate Services, a corporate wellness firm. She was previously CEO of ENSOMA and served on the Society of Information Management’s board of directors. At US West Advanced Technologies, Aymii was team lead for the project that created an artificial intelligence-based self-healing infrastructure to repair telephone network problems.
Bluelight Therapeutics – Formerly known as Biodesy, Inc., the Bay Area-based company rebranded as Bluelight and named Mark Gallop as its chief scientific officer. Gallop is also an Executive-in-Residence at 5AM Ventures and has served on Biodesy’s Board of Directors since 2018. He will be responsible for driving BlueLight’s drug discovery and development efforts and brings more than three decades of scientific leadership and experience advancing drugs to the clinic. Previously, he was the scientific leader and/or co-founder of three innovative drug discovery companies, Rubedo Life Sciences Inc., Nurix Inc. and XenoPort Inc. The new brand identity aligns with the company’s long-term strategic focus on applying its proprietary, structure-driven platform to develop small molecule therapeutics against challenging drug targets to treat a wide range of serious diseases.
Kinnate Biopharma – Nima Farzan was named CEO of Kinnate Biopharma. Farzan brings nearly two decades of executive leadership and commercial and development experience in the biopharmaceutical industry to the Kinnate team, most recently as president and CEO of PaxVax. Prior to PaxVax, he held a series of roles with increasing responsibility at Novartis AG, most recently as head of U.S. Marketing in the company’s Vaccines & Diagnostics division. Prior to Novartis, Farzan worked at DoubleTwist. He is currently a member of the Keros Therapeutics Board of Directors.
Tegra Medical – J. Mark King is stepping down from his role as CEO of Tegra and as Head of the Medical division within SFS Group after 10 years.
Neuromod Devices Limited – Ireland-based Neuromod named Rosemarie Tully as COO. Tully most recently held the role of chief business officer, responsible for business development, corporate and commercial strategy. Tully will now assume responsibility for all of Neuromod’s operating activities, including manufacturing, supply chain, regulatory, quality and compliance functions.
Evox Therapeutics – Martin Andrews was named non-executive director of Evox Therapeutics. Most recently, Martin was senior vice president of Rare Diseases at GlaxoSmithKline. Prior to that, he was senior vice president of Global Vaccines Commercial, where he led the development of the growth strategy and transformation of the commercial capability in GlaxoSmithKline's Vaccines division. Andrews previously held board positions at Orchard Therapeutics and the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. He is currently a Non-Executive Director of Freeline Therapeutics.
Delcath Systems – John Purpura was named interim CEO of Delcath Systems, Inc.
Renovacare – Robin A. Robinson, vice president of scientific affairs, was named the company’s new chief scientific officer. Robinson will additionally chair the RenovaCare Scientific Advisory Board. Prior to joining RenovaCare, Robinson served as founding director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) that leads development and stockpiling of medical countermeasures for national preparedness and response to man-made threats, pandemic influenza, and emerging infectious agents.
True Terpenes – Oregon-based True Terpenes created its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) to research the medical potential of terpenes and the potential entourage effect, where the benefits of medical cannabis can be enhanced when combined with terpenes. Cannabis and small molecule experts Ethan Russo and Randall Murphy were named to the new board. Russo was also a Senior Medical Advisor for GW Pharmaceuticals’ research on cannabis therapies. Murphy is a former tenured faculty member at New York University who has worked on clinical trials for pharma companies and launched pharma startups.