Biogen vet jumps to CSO at Third Rock Treg biotech; Karuna CEO is stepping down, but this isn’t goodbye

Ellen Cahir-McFarland

Just a few days into her new job, Ellen Cahir-McFarland’s office is being emptied.

Cahir-McFarland, formerly head of research at Annexon, is the new chief scientific officer of Abata Therapeutics, a preclinical biotech that’s developing regulatory T cell, or Treg, therapies for multiple sclerosis. On Monday, Abata will be moving from its current shared space to its new office in Watertown, MA — hence the emptying, Cahir-McFarland tells Endpoints News from a now bare, white-walled office room.

Cahir-McFarland grew up in an academic household and initially thought that she would go into academia as well, but when she did, “it was kind of lonely,” Cahir-McFarland said.

“I had a nice exposure through some consulting gigs that showed me the pharma model, and I realized that collective working together was much more my speed, much more suited my personality,” she added. Her first industry job was at Biogen, where she also worked on multiple sclerosis therapies.

She stayed at Biogen for 10 years, climbing up the ranks, before she jumped to Annexon to lead their research. Annexon is trying to create therapies that target C1q, a pathway involved in a number of neurodegenerative and inflammatory diseases. There, Cahir-McFarland pushed a number of programs into the clinic.

“The measures of success when you’re at a biotech without marketed products is very different than at Biogen,” she said of her time at Annexon, adding that “you have to wear a lot of hats.”

With Abata, Cahir-McFarland is moving to an even earlier-stage biotech, taking the place of interim CSO and Third Rock venture partner Andrea Van Elsas. Abata was incubated at Third Rock and launched out of stealth with $95 million in 2021.

“I actually — while I was at Biogen — had awareness of what was going on at Third Rock when this company was forming,” she said, “and I always thought it would be a really promising way to attack progressive MS because progressive MS is hard to go after, right? All the current therapies that are out there on the market attack the acute biology, and the progressive biology has really largely been undefined except by pathology.”

Abata says it hopes to get its Treg therapies into the clinic by 2024.

— Lei Lei Wu

Steve Paul

→ Steve Paul will still have a crucial part to play at neuro biotech Karuna Therapeutics. It just won’t be as president and CEO.

On Jan. 3, Paul will begin handling two different roles — president of R&D and CSO — and will pass the baton to Bill Meury. Paul keeps his seat on the board of directors, but lead independent director Christopher Coughlin will chair the board when the change takes effect. Karuna’s schizophrenia drug KarXT hit its primary endpoint in August, but the story didn’t end after the Phase III data drop: The biotech took advantage of the positive-data-to-public-offering trend with more gusto than virtually everyone else, raising an eye-popping $862.5 million.

Meury, the one-time chief commercial officer for Allergan, has been a partner at Hildred Capital Management since May 2020.

→ Longtime Ligand Pharmaceuticals CEO John Higgins announced this retirement earlier this week, handing things over to board member Todd Davis effective immediately. Higgins jumped on board in January 2007 after then-chairman Henry Blissenbach’s interim CEO stint and finished with a flourish, splitting antibody discovery unit OmniAb into a separate company in November 2021 and executing a SPAC merger four months later with Avista Public Acquisition Corp. II. Davis, the founder of RoyaltyRx Capital and HealthCare Royalty Partners, joined the board of directors two months into Higgins’ tenure at Ligand and is chairman at Vaxart.

Harlan Weisman

→ There’s a changing of the guard at Fort Worth, TX-based TFF Pharmaceuticals, where Glenn Mattes has exited stage left and Harlan Weisman will take on interim CEO duties at the thin film freezing (hence the name) biotech. Weisman led R&D at Centocor when J&J bought the company in 1999, going on to such roles as president of J&J Pharmaceutical R&D and chief science & technology officer of the Big Pharma’s medical devices & diagnostics business. From January 2020 until January 2022, Weisman co-founded, chaired and was CEO of Flame Biosciences, which emerged from stealth in September 2020 with $100 million in financing.

→ Philip Toleikis will step down as president and CEO of Sernova, and when he cedes control, he’ll embark upon a new role as the Ontario cell therapy biotech’s chief technology officer. Toleikis has held the top spots at Sernova since April 2009, and during a 10-year career with Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, he was VP, R&D – pharmacology and drug screening. Sernova and Evotec are going after diabetes in an alliance that utilizes the former’s Cell Pouch System.

Jack Weinstein

→ To the Swiss Alps we go, where rare disease-focused Relief Therapeutics out of Geneva has promoted Jack Weinstein to CEO. Jeremy Meinen will now step in as finance chief after Weinstein had filled the roles of CFO and treasurer the last couple years. From 2004-11, Weinstein was CFO, treasurer and VP of business development with Catalyst Pharmaceuticals.

→ Here’s a roundup of other CEO news from late last week:

Chip Clark

Mark Levick will no longer be chief executive at Icelandic biosimilar maker Alvotech as founder and chairman Robert Wessman gets ready to take charge on Jan. 1. Hafrun Fridriksdottir, formerly the head of global R&D at Alvotech partner Teva, has been named COO with the same start date as Wessman.

Dropping its CDMO branch and diving into drug discovery, Texas-based iBio handed out pink slips to 60% of its workforce in November, and it turns out CEO Thomas Isett wasn’t spared either, resigning on Dec. 2. Chairman and ex-Genocea Biosciences chief Chip Clark is pinch-hitting while iBio looks for a successor.

Once known as NextImmune and “currently securing its next round of funding,” Swiss biotech NXI Therapeutics has teed up former Polyneuron Pharmaceuticals chief Ruben Herrendorff as CEO. Ulf Grawunder, the founder and ex-CEO of NBE-Therapeutics, is tagging along on the board of directors.

Tsveta Milanova

→ New Agios CEO Brian Goff is tapping the reservoir of talent at his old employer, bringing Tsveta Milanova into the fold as chief commercial officer on Jan. 3. Milanova held such posts as head of global commercial strategy and head of US commercial for Alexion while Goff was chief commercial and global operations officer at what is now AstraZeneca’s rare disease unit. She previously spent a decade at Celgene that culminated as global head, pricing and market access for the hematology and oncology division. Milanova replaces Richa Poddar, the CCO since December and a staffer at Agios for the last six and a half years.

Siang Chin

→ In January, Jennifer Doudna’s lab spinout Mammoth Biosciences was locking it up with Bayer in a deal that would pay $40 million upfront and more than $1 billion in potential downstream milestones for up to five in vivo gene editing candidates. Now, the team at Mammoth is making room for two new faces on its leadership team with the appointments of Phil Tinmouth as CBO and Siang Chin as general counsel. Tinmouth, a 20-year-old Vertex vet, most recently finished a stint at Pardes Biosciences, where he was chief business and strategy officer. His career at Vertex culminated in his role as VP and head of business development. Chin boasts earlier stints at Affymetrix, where she was also general counsel, and at Intuitive Surgical, where she was VP and assistant general counsel.

Paul Streck

→ When a big fish acquires a smaller fish in pharma, the exodus begins, and it’s been playing out in Peer Review with folks from Arena Pharmaceuticals after Pfizer’s $6.7 billion buyout. Doug Manion, Fabio Cataldi and Robert Lisicki are just some of the names that have moved on, and Arena CMO Paul Streck is decamping himself, signing on to Ron Cooper’s crew at Albireo in the same capacity. The FDA OK’d Albireo’s pruritus med Bylvay (odevixibat) in July 2021, and the Boston biotech reported positive Phase III results a couple months ago in another indication: patients with Alagille syndrome.

Rich Heyman

→ Rich Heyman has been named chairman of the board at RayzeBio, which has cashed in on the radiopharma tide to the tune of a $160 million Series D in September. We’re not implying anything here at Peer Review, but the ex-CEO of Aragon and Seragon has chaired the boards of two companies scooped up by Big Pharmas: Amunix (sold to Sanofi) and Vividion (sold to Bayer).

Eli Casdin

→ In what seems to be a recurring theme, Eli Casdin of Casdin Capital is walking away from the board of directors at heart disease player Tenaya Therapeutics, while Cleave Therapeutics CEO Amy Burroughs takes a spot. On Nov. 28, Kyle LaHucik reported that Casdin had stepped down from the board at EQRx after previous resignations at Century Therapeutics and Absci.

→ Incidentally, EQRx is losing one of its business execs to Be Bio, the engineered B cell medicine (BeCM) developer that secured a $130 million raise in April from the likes of ARCH Venture Partners and Bristol Myers Squibb. John Mayfield, Be Bio’s new CBO, started at EQRx three years ago and had been VP, corporate and business development since December 2020. He’s also had business development gigs at Voyager and Foundation Medicine.

Shreehas Tambe

→ Biocon Biologics — a subsidiary of Biocon, which was hit with a couple of 483s at its sites in Malaysia and India in September — is ushering in Shreehas Tambe as managing director and CEO. Tambe is taking over the reins from Arun Chandavarkar, who will continue to serve as non-executive, non-independent director of the company’s board. Tambe has been with Biocon as deputy CEO and, during his career with the company, has helped acquire Viatris’ global biosimilars business and seal an alliance with the Serum Institute Life Sciences.

Diego Cadavid

→ When we last saw Diego Cadavid in Peer Review, he was taking the CMO job at X4 Pharmaceuticals after a Phase II flop with losmapimod when he was head of clinical development at Fulcrum Therapeutics. As X4 offers a glimmer of hope with its recent Phase III mavorixafor data, Cadavid has moved on to become medical chief for Alice Zhang at Verge Genomics. Prior to his time at Fulcrum, Cadavid was a senior medical director with Biogen, where Verge board member Al Sandrock spent 23 years before his latest chapter as CEO of Voyager.

→ Getting ready to lift the curtain on data for its oral menin inhibitor revumenib at ASH, Syndax Pharmaceuticals has enlisted Steve Sabus as chief commercial officer. Sabus briefly had the same title at Turning Point Therapeutics before it was acquired by Bristol Myers for $4.1 billion this summer. Earlier, he spent 15 years in a variety of posts at Astellas, including head of the oncology business unit that boasts such drugs as Xtandi (with Pfizer) and Padcev (with Seagen).

Pete Schmidt

→ Making more changes in the post-Tillman Gerngross era, Invivyd (née Adagio) has promoted Pete Schmidt to CMO and recruited Jeremy Gowler as chief operating and commercial officer. Chief development officer Ellie Hershberger is out, “but is anticipated to provide consulting services for development activities,” according to the press release. Schmidt was Invivyd’s VP of clinical research before moving on up to the C-suite, while Gowler is an ex-VP at Emergent BioSolutions who’s recently been commercial global head of the biopharma business unit for Sandoz.

Dimitiris Agrafiotis

→ Mike Nally has poached Dimitris Agrafiotis from Pfizer, naming him chief digital officer of Generate Biomedicines, one of this year’s Endpoints 11 honorees. Since leaving his position as chief information officer of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in February 2021, Agrafiotis had been VP, digital for Pfizer’s worldwide research, development and medical organization.

Lata Jayaraman

→ Greg Verdine’s LifeMine Therapeutics has a couple of new execs, starting with Elliot Ehrich as CMO and EVP of translational science. Ehrich comes to the GSK fungi partner from Bill Haney-led Skyhawk, where he rose from CMO to president, and the ex-venture partner with 5AM Ventures is also an 18-year veteran at Alkermes. LifeMine has also appointed Lata Jayaraman as EVP and head of biology after she led oncology drug discovery at Bristol Myers’ Mechanisms of Cancer Resistance (MoCR) Thematic Research Center.

Otmane Boussif

→ Swiss non-viral gene therapy shop Anjarium Biosciences has made several big hires this year from the boardroom to the C-suite, and this week is no different with Otmane Boussif as chief technology officer. Boussif just had the same duties at Sensorion and is the ex-global head of cell & gene therapy technical development at Novartis. CEO Stephen Yoo arrived in June and Rocket Pharmaceuticals chief Gaurav Shah was named chairman four months later at Pfizer-backed Anjarium, which emerged from stealth in September 2021 with a $61 million Series A.

→ Founded and led by former Celgene clinical development exec Jay Mei, Shanghai cancer upstart Antengene has welcomed Amily Zhang as CMO — replacing Kevin Lynch, who will serve as a senior medical expert. Zhang held a series of roles at Bayer before pivoting to Jiangsu Hengrui in 2019: first as VP, head of clinical development – oncology, then as CMO for oncology since April.

→ ARCH has brought in Patrick Weiss as a venture partner, ending a nine-year run at Twist Bioscience that saw him ascend to COO in January 2020. Weiss is also a board member at Slingshot Biosciences, a synthetic cell outfit that debuted last summer with a $23 million Series A.

Leisha Emens

→ Boston cancer biotech Ankyra Therapeutics has selected Leisha Emens as SVP, translational research. This is Emens’ first industry post after four years at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Hillman Cancer Center and another 16 years at Johns Hopkins. Chaired by Tillman Gerngross, Ankyra poached CMO Joseph Elassal from Regeneron in October.

→ As CSO Michael O’Dwyer is returning to his role as a full-time professor of hematology at the University of Galway in Ireland, NK cell therapy-focused ONK Therapeutics is picking up Bruce McCreedy as his replacement. McCreedy hops aboard from Myeloid Therapeutics, where he was holding the same role. McCreedy boasts quite the packed résumé with stints at Precision Biosciences (SVP cell therapy and immuno-oncology research), NexImmune (EVP and chief development officer), Fulcrum Pharma Developments (president and CEO), Triangle Pharmaceuticals (VP of clinical virology and diagnostics), Roche and Organon.

Carrie Carretta

→ Carrie Carretta is heading over to NRx Pharmaceuticals — a company that’s been on the FDA no-go list for its Covid-19 treatment — as SVP, clinical development and medical affairs. Carretta is joining after a recent stint with Boehringer Ingelheim as executive director, therapeutic area head for clinical development and medical affairs. Carretta is also co-founder and managing partner at C&G Holdings and formerly served as CP, medical and scientific affairs at Pendulum Therapeutics.

→ Boulder, CO-based OnKure, which is run by Array Biopharma co-founder Tony Piscopio, has enlisted Roberta Alton as VP of clinical operations. Alton joins the company from Denovo Biopharm, where she served as head of clinical operations. Alton also has experience under her belt from her time at Halozyme and PRA Health Sciences.

Eric Van Zanten

→ Seattle cancer biotech Atossa Therapeutics has pegged Eric Van Zanten as VP, investor and public relations. For the last year and a half, Van Zanten served as VP of communications for Faron Pharmaceuticals; at Bristol Myers, he was director of oncology communications and head of commercial and medical communications.

→ San Diego-based Molecular Assemblies is welcoming aboard Mark Nibbe as VP, operations. Nibbe hails from Illumina, where he served as senior director, new product introduction. Before that, Nibbe was with Aurora Biosciences.

Mahesh Karande

→ Takeda CRISPR partner KSQ Therapeutics has added Mahesh Karande to the board of directors. Karande has helmed Flagship’s Omega Therapeutics since its September 2019 launch, with newfound competition in the epigenetics space from Epic Bio and its CEO/Women in Biopharma R&D honoree Amber Salzman.

→ California-based cytokine mimetics developer Medikine has elected Roland Buelow, the founder and ex-CEO of Teneobio, to the board of directors. Buelow founded Ancora Biotech with his son Ben after selling Teneobio to Amgen in July 2021.

Nicole Onetto

→ Nicole Onetto has joined the board of directors at CDR-Life, a Swiss I/O biotech that lined up big investors like RA Capital, Jeito Capital and Omega Funds for its $76 million Series A this spring. A Bristol Myers and Gilead vet, Onetto is the ex-CMO of ZymoGenetics and OSI Pharmaceuticals.

→ Agios founder Craig Thompson is making his way back to familiar pastures, rejoining the board of directors at Charles River Laboratories. Thompson was CEO and president at Charles River and formerly sat on its board from 2013 to 2018. While away, he was serving as president and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In addition to his seat here, Thompson also participates on the board of Regeneron.

Jayne Morgan

→ Working on its next-gen Covid vaccine GEO-CM04S1, GeoVax has given Jayne Morgan a seat on the board of directors. Morgan is the executive clinical director of the Covid Task Force at Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta.

→ Gritstone bio’s CBO and EVP Matthew Hawryluk is making his way onto the board of directors at Predictive Oncology. Prior to his current role, Hawryluk was VP of corporate and business development at Foundation Medicine and had a variety of roles at Thermo Fisher Scientific.

→ Jason Fenton is heading over to the board of directors at Invea Therapeutics. Currently, Fenton is the head of healthcare equity capital markets at Oppenheimer & Co and has prior experience at Cowen as head of healthcare capital markets.

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