David Khougazian joins Flagship to build ‘partnerships with different flavors’; Former Novo Nordisk exec to lead Evaxion

David Khougazian

It’s a classic biopharma story.

In January, David Khougazian bumped into Flagship Pioneering founder Noubar Afeyan at the JP Morgan healthcare conference. They caught up, and Khougazian began talking to Flagship about a new role. Now, over half a year later, Khougazian has joined Flagship as its new growth partner.

Khougazian left Sanofi, where he’d spent a large chunk of his biopharma career. He most recently led Sanofi’s launches in China and emerging markets. Prior to that, he was CEO of Sanofi Pasteur MSD — Merck and Sanofi’s joint vaccine venture in Europe that the two companies stopped at the end of 2016. Khougazian had joined Sanofi by way of Aventis, where he was head of M&A until Sanofi acquired the company in 2004.

He told Endpoints News that he first met Afeyan around a decade ago. They began talking about a potential role for Khougazian then, but Khougazian opted to stay in Europe at the time. “We kind of paused it,” Khougazian said. “And now many years later, we resumed the discussions.”

In his new role, Khougazian is working on one key question: “How do you transform a buzzing, innovative company into a company that makes a big impact at scale, repeatedly?”

“That’s where growth is coming into play,” he said. “Building relationships, partnerships, that are potentially new kinds of partnerships with different flavors, including pharma.”

Typical biopharma partnerships involve Big Pharma collaborating on a compound with a biotech. “That’s the bread and butter, right? But this is becoming more and more challenging, very competitive,” Khougazian said. One of the questions he hopes to address is how to develop sustainable, long-running partnerships in the industry.

“In the future, best-in-class is even not enough,” Khougazian said. “You’ve seen the IRA — it is not going to be a walk in the park to create value out of adjacencies. How do you make partnerships on breakthroughs? How do you make long-standing partnerships about core innovation? And how do you make sure that everybody brings to bear their best assets and knowledge and expertise?”

— Lei Lei Wu

Christian Kanstrup

→ Copenhagen’s Evaxion Biotech is all set with its third CEO in more than a year as Christian Kanstrup succeeds Per Norlén. In a statement, chair Marianne Soegaard lauded Norlén for “initiating implementation of the strategic turnaround and setting up the validating procedures for the target AI-discovery approach,” but said “new skills must be brought in to benefit Evaxion.” Kanstrup spent more than two decades at Novo Nordisk, climbing to SVP and head of biopharma operations from 2017-19 before becoming an EVP at Netherlands-based Mediq. Lars Staal Wegner announced his resignation last August and Norlén took over after a short stint as CEO of Targinta.

Eduardo Bravo

→ Eduardo Bravo has lined up another CEO gig, this time at Citryll, a Dutch inflammatory disease biotech chaired by Candel Therapeutics chief Paul Peter Tak. Bravo’s previous turn as a CEO with his SPAC European Biotech Acquisition Corp (EBAC) resulted in a reverse merger with Swiss eye disease biotech Oculis on October 2022. He also ran TiGenix, which was sold to Takeda for more than $600 million in 2018, and Nordic Nanovector. Citryll’s new CBO is Tim Schenk, the ex-general manager of Janssen in Finland who was also commercial director for the Nordics and head of oncology for Germany at the J&J subsidiary. Bravo’s interim predecessor, Eric Meldrum, will concentrate on his CSO responsibilities.

Mark Shearman

→ After a planned merger with Wilbur Ross’ SPAC company fell apart last week, neuro-focused Aprinoia Therapeutics has tapped former Editas Medicine chief scientist Mark Shearman as CEO, while founder and chairman Ming-Kuei Jang will move from chief executive to president of the biotech’s Asia operations. Shearman parted ways with Editas in March, but the announcement was made in January, when the gene editing specialist initiated a pipeline reorg and laid off 20% of its staff. His association with Aprinoia dates back to its founding in 2015 as chairman of the scientific advisory board.

Morrey Atkinson

→ Vertex has elevated Morrey Atkinson to chief technical operations officer, head of biopharmaceutical sciences and manufacturing operations. Before his arrival as Vertex’s SVP of global commercial manufacturing and supply chain in 2020, Atkinson was in charge of global manufacturing operations at the tail end of his eight years with Bristol Myers Squibb. The Eli Lilly vet is also a board member at 89bio.

Long known as a cystic fibrosis giant, Vertex has a pair of cell therapy programs for type 1 diabetes in the works. Andrew Dunn spoke to CSO David Altshuler when the company unspooled positive early-stage results for VX-880, and Vertex revealed in its Q2 report that it dosed its first patient with VX-264.

Christelle Huguet

→ Ipsen is tapping Christelle Huguet as EVP, head of R&D. She takes over from Howard Mayer, who is retiring Sept. 22. Huguet joined the Ipsen team back in May 2020, starting as SVP and head of research, external innovation and early development. Prior to Ipsen, Huguet was serving as CSO for X-Chem and ZebiAI Therapeutics. Before that, she had a stint at Alexion and an 18-year gig with Pfizer. Last week, Ipsen passed back the rights to a Parkinson’s drug after it flunked in a Phase II study.

Houman Ashrafian

→ Sanofi has found John Reed’s successor and made a few other moves, as documented by Amber Tong on Thursday. SV Health Investors managing partner Houman Ashrafian, who co-founded such companies as Mestag Therapeutics, Sitryx and TRex Bio, will start a new chapter as Sanofi’s R&D chief on Sept. 11. Dietmar Berger had been pinch-hitting in this capacity and returns to his role as CMO and global head of development.

Elsewhere, AstraZeneca vet Madeleine Roach will become head of business operations on Oct. 1, earning a promotion to this new post after coming to Sanofi in January 2022 as head of internal audit and risk management; global head of digital Emmanuel Frenehard has been bumped up to chief digital officer; and Bill Sibold, the head of Sanofi’s specialty care global business unit, bids farewell after nearly a dozen years with the French pharma. Brian Foard, the head of specialty care North America and US country lead, will temporarily take his place.

Jim Doherty

→ As it executes a pipeline reorg stemming from the FDA’s rejection of zuranolone in major depressive disorder, Sage is making some hard cuts that even involve two of its founding members. CSO Al Robichaud and chief development officer Jim Doherty are on their way out at Sage, along with 40% of the staff, as Sage rallies around zuranolone in postpartum depression (marketed as Zurzuvae), SAGE-718 and SAGE-324. Mark Pollack, Sage’s SVP of medical affairs for the last 15 months, is also packing up his office. SVP of discovery research Mike Quirk has been promoted to chief scientist, while CMO Laura Gault leads development and business chief Chris Benecchi takes charge of medical affairs.

Kurt Graves

→ Kurt Graves has resurfaced as president and CEO of a Harvard spinout that he chairs, i2o Therapeutics. In the same release, i2o said it raised a $46 million Series A “with top-tier biotech investors,” but didn’t specify which ones. Graves is best known for his 11 years as president and CEO of Intarcia Therapeutics, which was plagued by two FDA rejections for the same type 2 diabetes drug/device that i2o just obtained, dubbed ITCA 650. This is essentially Intarcia 2.0: If you try to go to Intarcia’s website, it redirects to i2o’s page. An FDA advisory committee is set to meet this month to discuss ITCA 650.

Ajim Tamboli

→ Ajim Tamboli has landed at gene editing player Arbor Biotechnologies as CFO after his recent resignation from the same position at Monte Rosa Therapeutics. In the 2021 biotech bonanza, Tamboli helped steer Monte Rosa to a $222.3 million IPO — is Arbor almost ready to do the same? — and was also the financial chief for Rodin Therapeutics. One of several companies from the creative world of Feng Zhang, Arbor is targeting liver and CNS diseases as CEO Devyn Smith continues to assemble his team. Just a few weeks ago, Deanna Petersen began her tenure as CBO.

Samira Shaikhly

→ South San Francisco GPCR developer Septerna has opened September with two new execs: Samira Shaikhly (chief people officer) had a 15-year career in human resources with Gilead before she pivoted to now-defunct Ambys Medicines as chief people officer last year. And David Martin (SVP of development sciences) is the former executive director of renal research at Amgen who was the nonclinical and clinical pharmacology leader for QED Therapeutics. With co-founder and Third Rock venture partner Jeffrey Finer at the controls, Septerna nabbed a $150 million Series B megaround in July.

Jeff Caravella

→ Jeff Caravella has left Biotheryx to take the CFO job at superkine developer Medicenna, succeeding Elizabeth Williams. Peer Review informed you about Caravella’s appointment as CFO of Biotheryx in April 2022, and before that the J&J vet had a three-year run as VP of finance at Tango Therapeutics. A couple weeks ago, Medicenna introduced new CBO Brent Meadows, an ex-commercialization lead for Alzheimer’s, neuropsychiatry, ophthalmology and emerging therapeutic areas at Biogen.

→ Oxford, UK-based Scancell has recruited Sath Nirmalananthan as finance chief. Nirmalananthan recently spent a year and a half with Prenetics as CFO of the EMEA region. One other piece of news: Although Keith Green will no longer be director of finance, the full-time staffer at Scancell since 2016 will stay on as company secretary.

Megan Filoon

→ Elicio Therapeutics, a cancer biotech from Boston that reverse merged with Angion Biomedica at the start of this year, has welcomed Megan Filoon as general counsel and Thian Kheoh as SVP of biometrics. Filoon is the latest Molecular Templates vet to find a new home after another round of job cuts this summer at the Texas biotech; she became part of the team in 2018 and was promoted to general counsel in February 2022. Meanwhile, Kheoh had been VP of biometrics at Mirati, which is searching for a new CEO and CFO.

Jessica Carmen

→ Kincell Bio CEO Bruce Thompson tells Endpoints that Lonza alum Jessica Carmen has signed on as VP, business development. Over the past few years, Carmen has been a business development advisor for Oxford Biomedica, and from 2016-18 she worked for MaxCyte as director of business development, cellular therapies. Kincell Bio, a CDMO out of Gainesville, FL, launched in late July with a $36 million financing round.

Fiona du Monceau

→ Belgian biotech ExeVir, which hit the pause button on its llama-derived Covid antibody back in 2022, has made some changes to its exec team. Current COO and CFO Fiona du Monceau is out, now joining the company’s board of directors. In her place, the company has made Viki Bockstal CSO, Caroline Sagaert head of operations and Jean-Philippe Bultot head of finance. All three were internal promotions: Bockstal previously served as ExeVir’s head of preclinical development, Sagaert as head of global value strategy and Bultot as controller & financial operations.

→ Bristol Myers’ deubiquitinase (DUB) partner Ubiquigent has selected nine-year GSK vet Rishi Shah as head of chemistry. Shah was recently the UK pharma giant’s development leader for its protein degradation program; GSK notably showed its interest in protein degraders when it teamed up with Kymera in 2018.

Tomasz Kostrzewski

→ CN Bio has promoted Tomasz Kostrzewski to CSO after having previously served as the company’s VP of science and technology. Prior to joining CN Bio in 2015, Kostrzewski was with the Imperial College London in the department of life sciences and GSK.

→  French biotech Poxel, which is looking to hunt for a treatment for NASH, announced that its SVP, investor relations & communications, Elizabeth Woo, hit the exit to pursue other opportunities at the end of June. Woo had been with the company since August 2021 and before that was a biotech consultant at Kendall Investor Relations. Woo’s earlier stints include roles at Flex Pharma, Cubist, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals and an 11-year gig at Biogen.

→ Woburn, MA-based Biofrontera has recruited Samantha Widdicombe as senior director, strategic accounts and communications. Before this, Widdicombe was head of strategic communications at EPI Health/Novan and was executive director at Almirall. Widdicombe started her career at Allergan.

Dieter Weinand

→ Another week, another Dieter Weinand sighting in Peer Review: The ex-Bayer chief is now chairman of Confo Therapeutics, the Belgian biotech that inked deals with Eli Lilly (for the non-opioid pain candidate CFTX-1554) and Daiichi Sankyo (for CNS diseases) in a four-week span in March. Weinand appeared in last week’s edition when he joined the board at Coya Therapeutics.

→ Flagship growth partner and ex-Aprea Therapeutics CEO Christian Schade has replaced Noubar Afeyan as chairman of Omega Therapeutics, which is developing its epigenomic controller OTX-2002 in hepatocellular carcinoma. Omega has also carved out space for Alltrna CEO Michelle Werner on the board.

Hans-Peter Gerber

→ Genentech and Pfizer alum Hans-Peter Gerber, the CSO of ADC upstart Codeable Therapeutics, has been named chairman of the board at German CAR-T cell therapy shop T-CURX. Another addition to the board is longtime Novartis leader Bernd Eschgfäller, who had been the Swiss pharma’s head of customer operations, cell & gene therapy in Europe.

→ Aaron Davis is calling it quits after four years on the board of directors at Tango Therapeutics as John Ketchum takes a seat. Ketchum’s career at Novartis spanned more than 20 years and is now on a board that includes former EQRx CEO Alexis Borisy, ex-MorphoSys R&D chief Malte Peters and retired Pfizer medical chief Mace Rothenberg.

→ Last week RayzeBio penciled in IPO plans, and now, the San Diego-based company has brought on Christy Oliger to its board of directors. Oliger has spent her career in a variety of roles, including at Genentech and Roche. Oliger currently sits on the boards of Reata Pharmaceuticals, Replimune, Karyopharm and Lava Therapeutics.

→ Allakos, which works on allergies and inflammation-related diseases, has welcomed Neil Graham to its board of directors. Graham is the CMO of Tizania Life Sciences and currently sits on the board of Aslan Pharmaceuticals, Pharmaxis and Zura Bio. Graham previously served as VP of strategic program direction, immunology and inflammation at Regeneron.

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