FDA’s No. 2 oncology official departs for biotech startup

A quiet, San Diego-based startup with hundreds of millions to work with just poached the second in command at FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence — Julia Beaver.

Julia Beaver

Beaver, who spent almost 10 years at FDA, was most recently the acting deputy director of the Office of Oncologic Diseases, one step on the career ladder below FDA’s oncology chief Rick Pazdur.

According to her LinkedIn, Beaver has been SVP of clinical development at Treeline Biosciences since January. The biotech, focused on the “outer edge of scientific possibility,” was co-founded by ex-Loxo chief Josh Bilenker, who was a life sciences VC investor in a prior life, and before that, a medical officer at the FDA.

The 130-employee startup with more than $700 million in funding is also led by Jeffrey Engelman, the former head of oncology at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.

Beaver and Pazdur ushered in a new age for cancer drugs, with faster approvals and new pilot projects that other divisions of FDA look to as examples, like Project Orbis, which has brought together regulators from around the world on new approval decisions.

While authoring FDA guidance documents on expanding eligibility criteria, male breast cancer, placebos and blinding, Beaver also published multiple regulatory research projects and co-leads the Next Generation Sequencing Translational Research Laboratory.

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