Voyager names new business chief amid ‘significant interest’ from partners; Oncopeptides faces another CEO, CFO reset

Beth Shafer was taught to leave a place better than she found it. As Voyager Therapeutics’ new chief business officer, that’s exactly what she intends to do.

Voyager announced Monday that it tapped the Takeda veteran to its C-suite. Shafer will lead the business strategy as the company says its AAV capsid platform and neurology programs “continue to attract significant interest from third parties.”

“Voyager is focused on bringing life changing medicines to patients, and as I’ve learned from my previous experience, in some cases the most effective way to do that may be through a partnership,” Shafer told Endpoints News via email.

Voyagers pipeline covers a variety of brain conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease and ALS. The company touts a suite of partnerships including one with Neurocrine in Parkinson’s disease, and earlier this year licensed next-generation AAV capsids to Novartis for gene therapy programs targeting neurologic diseases.

“I have firsthand experience witnessing the impact that corporate development can have on advancing a therapeutic landscape, having had the privilege to work on seminal deals at Roche, Novartis, and Takeda, including partnerships that resulted in the approval of life-changing medicines,” Shafer said.

Before Voyager, Shafer was in charge of business development efforts in neuroscience, gastroenterology, drug discovery sciences and R&D pipeline externalizations at Takeda. She has a PhD in neuroscience, and has also worked at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research and Roche.

“What gets me up in the morning is coming to work with brilliant colleagues and having fun while doing it,” she said. “Our industry is an ever-evolving landscape; being part of a passionate team dedicated to moving innovation forward, to building pipelines to improve patient lives, while also having fun, is inspiring, rewarding, and, frankly, infectious.”

— Nicole DeFeudis

Sofia Heigis

→ The revolving door continues to spin at Oncopeptides, where Sofia Heigis has been promoted to CEO and Monica Shaw is “leaving to take up a senior executive role at a large pharmaceutical company,” according to her statement in the release. Here’s a quick rundown of chief executives at the Swedish biotech since 2020: Jakob Lindberg, Marty Duvall, Lindberg again, Shaw, and now Heigis, a longtime AstraZeneca vet who was elevated to chief commercial officer last fall. Shaw and CFO Holger Lembrér joined Oncopeptides in January, and Heigis is wasting no time finding Lembrér’s successor, recruiting Henrik Bergentoft for the position. Bergentoft will get started sometime “during the fourth quarter,” a separate release states. Lindberg, the current CSO, was arrested earlier this year for allegedly passing along insider information in October 2021. But Swedish authorities ended the investigation over a lack of evidence.

Deanna Petersen

→ Co-founded by MIT’s Feng Zhang, Vertex gene editing partner Arbor Biotechnologies has welcomed Shire vet Deanna Petersen as CBO. Petersen had a seven-year run as business chief of Avrobio, leading the biotech to its $115 million IPO in 2018, but the gene therapy developer is in dire straits after stopping all development last month and cutting its workforce in half. Arbor loaded up on cash in November 2021 with a $215 million Series B.

David Meek

→ Less than two years into his tenure at Mirati, David Meek is walking away and handing back the CEO duties to founder and president Charles Baum. Under Meek’s leadership, Mirati emerged as Amgen’s biggest competitor in the KRAS space when Krazati was approved in December for non-small cell lung cancer with a KRAS G12C mutation. Mirati was a fresh start for Meek after the demise of FerGene, which received a CRL in 2020 for Adstiladrin — a bladder cancer drug that coincidentally was approved in the same week as Krazati. Baum had planned to retire in Q2 but will fill in as interim chief until a successor is named. Kyle LaHucik has more on Meek’s departure and Mirati’s upsized offering.

Roger Waltzman

→ Last week, Peer Review told you about the leadership makeover at Molecular Templates, where Roger Waltzman spent four years as CMO until his resignation on Aug. 4. Waltzman has now landed at New York-based Indaptus Therapeutics as medical chief after Gabriela Gruia took over as interim CMO of Molecular Templates. He’s also had the same role at Rgenix, now named Inspirna, and he was global program head for tropical medicines at the end of his nine years with Novartis.

Christopher Silber

→ Nocion Therapeutics has lost two execs: First, Vigil Neuroscience has plucked Nocion CMO Christopher Silber for the same position, a key piece to the team after the FDA lifted a partial hold on Vigil’s leukoencephalopathy drug VGL101 in late March. Silber was a VP at Lundbeck for seven years and led clinical development at Sage before jumping on board at Nocion in the summer of 2020. Pearl Huang’s Dunad Therapeutics has also dipped into Nocion’s talent pool, appointing Jon Garen as CBO. Garen, the business chief at Nocion for nearly two years, held this title at CSL Behring’s Hemgenix partner uniQure from 2016-21. Nocion is targeting chronic cough with its lead program, but it’s keeping things hush-hush: It hasn’t put out a press release since August 2021.

Alfonso Quintás-Cardama

→ Foghorn Therapeutics CMO Sam Agresta is retiring on Sept. 11, and CEO Adrian Gottschalk has already lined up TCR² Therapeutics medical chief Alfonso Quintás-Cardama to replace him. Quintás-Cardama also has cell therapy experience with Novartis as global clinical leader for Kymriah and briefly with GSK. Agresta has been CMO since August 2019 and plans to advise on a consultancy basis until January at Foghorn, which recently shut down its study of FHD-286 in metastatic uveal melanoma.

Noah Beerman

→ AI Proteins has promoted Noah Beerman to CEO and locked in ex-Celgene CEO Mark Alles as chairman of the board. Beerman had held the COO post at the de novo protein maker since April and succeeds Drew Dennison, who will keep his seat on the board. Before he joined AI Proteins, Beerman was EVP, business development and president, US operations during his eight years at Poxel. AI Proteins first popped up in Peer Review when Ipsen alum Wendy Dwyer took the CBO job in December.

César Nieto

→ César Nieto has been bumped up to general manager and head of human pharma for Boehringer Ingelheim in the Southern Africa region. Nieto has taken on various roles at Boehringer Ingelheim since 2009, including regional cardiovascular therapeutic area head in the IMETA (India, Middle East, Turkey & Africa) region.

Ajim Tamboli

→ Ajim Tamboli has resigned as CFO of Monte Rosa Therapeutics, an announcement that was tucked into the molecular glue biotech’s Q2 report on Thursday. Tamboli left Rodin Therapeutics when it was consumed by Alkermes, and he pivoted to Monte Rosa in 2020.

→ X4 Pharmaceuticals has picked up Big Pharma alum Christophe Arbet-Engels as its permanent CMO. Ex-Rhythm Pharmaceuticals medical chief and current X4 board member Murray Stewart had been filling in on an interim basis at the Boston biotech, which unveiled positive Phase III results in May for its WHIM syndrome drug mavorixafor. Arbet-Engels worked at Merck, Roche, Boehringer Ingelheim and Biogen before his previous CMO gigs at Poxel, Millendo Therapeutics and Neurogastrx.

Victoria Richon

→ Catching the wave of machine learning to develop cancer treatments, Auron Therapeutics has installed Christopher Guiffre as president and COO. Guiffre had been CFO and COO of Pear Therapeutics before heading off to Auron, which pulled together a $48 million Series A in July 2022. One more note here: Current Entact Bio CEO and ex-Ribon Therapeutics chief Victoria Richon is the newest member of Auron’s board of directors. It’s chaired by Briggs Morrison, the one-time Syndax CEO who now runs Crossbow Therapeutics.

Howard Lazarus

→ Howard Lazarus has been named CMO of Seattle pulmonary disease biotech Avalyn Pharma. Lazarus and Avalyn CEO Lyn Baranowski worked together at Altavant Sciences when he was medical chief and Baranowski ran operations. Avalyn is studying an inhaled version of pirfenidone (AP01) for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and Lazarus has had leadership roles in the IPF space at Gilead and Boehringer Ingelheim.

Darrel Cohen

→ Testing its lead asset Nana-val (nanatinostat + valganciclovir) in patients with Epstein-Barr virus-positive lymphoma, Viracta Therapeutics has tapped Darrel Cohen as CMO. Cohen recently had short stints as CMO, cell therapy at Athenex and CMO of Biosight, and he’s a 12-year Pfizer vet who worked on the pharma giant’s oncology portfolio, notably Sutent, Xalkori and Ibrance.

Robert Tighe

→ Cancer-focused Ankyra Therapeutics has selected Robert Tighe as CSO. Tighe comes to Ankyra from TCR² Therapeutics, where he was VP of research after starting out as VP of translational research in 2019. Following a decade at EMD Serono, Tighe moved to Compass Therapeutics and vaulted to VP, translational immunology & immunopharmacology.

→ James Fairbairn has officially returned as CFO of Calgary kidney disease biotech XORTX Therapeutics, removing the interim label from his title. Fairbairn was finance chief of XORTX from 2018-21 and is back on board after the departure of his original successor, Amar Keshri.

Albert Collinson

→ Fresh off his retirement as CEO of TheracosBio, Albert Collinson has joined the board of directors at Moderna’s antibody discovery partner Harbour BioMed. Collinson finished his 14 years at TheracosBio with a flourish, receiving an FDA nod for the type 2 diabetes drug Brenzavvy and striking a commercialization deal with the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company. Brian Connelly took over as TheracosBio’s chief executive last week.

Elizabeth O’Farrell

→ Former NCI director Ned Sharpless is now a board member at SoftBank-backed liquid biopsy company Karius. Elizabeth O’Farrell, the ex-chair of PDL BioPharma who had a 24-year career at Eli Lilly, is another new addition to Karius’ board. She also has board seats at Geron and Genmab.

→ Ex-Promethera Biosciences CEO John Tchelingerian has succeeded Boudewijn van Vliet as chairman of Geneva-based Antion Biosciences. Antion and Allogene teamed up on a CAR-T deal in early 2022; Allogene’s corporate & business development leader Daniel Hunt is a member of Antion’s board.

→ Canadian neuro biotech Xenon Pharmaceuticals has added Gillian Cannon and Justin Gover to the board of directors. Cannon is a 15-year Merck vet who’s been head of commercial innovation for Roivant, while Gover ran GW Pharmaceuticals until the cannabinoid specialist was purchased by Jazz Pharmaceuticals two years ago.

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