Companies strengthen their leadership teams and board with this week’s Movers & Shakers.
Bristol Myers Squibb – Elizabeth Mily was named executive vice president of strategy and business development at BMS. The appointment is effective March 30. In this role, Mily will oversee company strategy and all business development activities, including strategic partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, as well as other strategic initiatives. Mily joins Bristol Myers Squibb from Barclays, where she was the managing director and chair of the Global Lifesciences group in the global healthcare unit. Prior to joining Barclays, Mily served as head of Corporate Strategy and Development at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Prior to that she spent 16 years at Goldman, Sachs.
FUJIFILM – Christine Vannais has been named chief operating officer of FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies’ facility in North Carolina. Vannais will be leading all aspects of FDB’s North Carolina operations. Vannais joined FDB in 2012 and has led the North Carolina Manufacturing Operations team since 2014 as part of the Site Leadership Team. Vannais brings over 20 years of experience working in a variety of industries including contract biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing, USDA biological vaccine manufacturing and research, FDA and EU small molecule manufacturing, primary and secondary packaging operations, API potent compound manufacturing, Department of Defense sites, among others.
Advicenne – France-based Advicenne announced that Luc-André Granier has left his role as chief executive officer of the company. The board of directors has elected André Ulmann, a current board observer of the company, as Interim CEO of Advicenne. Ulmann has over 30 years’ experience as a pharmaceutical industry executive in various positions. Ulmann also serves on Asarina board of directors and has served on the Advicenne board since 2008. In 2018, he was the recipient of the First John Baxter award for Entrepreneurship given by the American Endocrine Society. The search for a permanent CEO is ongoing.
Recursion – Shafique Virani was named chief corporate development officer of Utah-based Recursion, a digital biology company. Virani will serve as both Recursion’s chief business officer and CEO of its newly formed Development Corporation. Virani will lead the internal development of Recursion’s clinical-stage assets as the CEO of its Development Corporation, a wholly-owned unit of Recursion. In December 2019 Recursion spun-out CereXis, a rare, neuro-oncology company that is pursuing a Phase 2/3 registration study for Neurofibromatosis Type 2, demonstrating the translatability of discoveries made on Recursion’s platform into domain-focused subsidiaries. Virani most recently served as CEO of Navire Pharma and CoA Therapeutics, two subsidiaries at BridgeBio Pharma. He also held leadership roles at Roche.
Sofinnova – Jonathan Leff was named executive partner of Sofinnova Investments. With more than 25 years of clinical development experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, Leff has focused on providing his strategic drug development expertise to aid companies from target identification to FDA approval and commercialization. Leff most recently served as chief medical officer of Ascendis Pharma. Previously, Leff served as head of research and development at InterMune, which was acquired by Roche in 2014. Before InterMune, he was CMO at KaloBios Pharmaceuticals and CMO at Halozyme Therapeutics.
ImCheck Therapeutics – Hans Henrik Christensen was named chief financial officer and chief operating officer of France-based ImCheck. Christensen joins ImCheck from Samplix ApS, a start-up life sciences company, where he served as CFO. Before that, he was CFO of Exiqon A/S, a publicly-traded life science tools and services company acquired by Qiagen N.V.
Leap Therapeutics – Cambridge, Mass.-based Leap Therapeutics made significant changes to its executive leadership team. Christopher K. Mirabelli will be stepping down from his role as president and CEO Officer effective April 1. Mirabelli will continue to serve as the chairman of Leap’s Board of Directors and provide ongoing leadership and guidance around the company’s biomarker and research efforts. Douglas E. Onsi, Leap’s CFO, will take over as president and CEO. He will also maintain his current role as CFO. Cynthia Sirard, head of clinical research and development has been promoted to CMO. Mark O’Mahony, vice president of Manufacturing, has been promoted to Chief Manufacturing Officer. And, Leap said John Littlechild will be stepping down from the company’s board of directors.
RubrYc Therapeutics –Ramesh Baliga was named chief science officer of California-based RubrYc Therapeutics. Prior to joining RubrYc, he served as the vice president of Discovery Biology at IGM Biosciences. Before IGM Biosciences, Baliga was founder and CSO of Extend Biopharma, where he created a novel platform for discovery and manufacture of site-specifically labeled Antibody Drug Conjugates and next-generation biologics. Previously, Baliga spent nearly a decade leading drug discovery initiatives and building drug discovery platforms, with increasing measures of responsibility at Sutro Biopharma, Catalyst Biosciences, and Cytokinetics.
