Pharma companies add new members to executive ranks and boards of directors.
Adaptimmune – Elliot Norry was named senior vice president and chief medical officer of Adaptimmune Therapeutics plc. Norry has served as head of the company’s Clinical Safety and Pharmacovigilance and leader of the ADP-A2AFP program since 2015. He has been acting CMO since August 2019. Prior to joining Adaptimmune, he served as Safety Development Leader and was Chair of the Hepatic Safety Panel at GlaxoSmithKline. Prior to his work in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, Norry practiced adult internal medicine at Abington Memorial Hospital in Abington, Penn. for 13 years. In addition to formalizing Norry as CMO, the company also made some other changes to its R&D team. Mark Dudley was named head of Early Stage Development. Late Stage Development will be led by Dennis Williams. Joanna Brewer has been promoted to head of Allogeneic Research and will continue leading the allogeneic discovery work. And the Pipeline Research team will continue to be led by Karen Miller.
BioNTech – Ryan Richardson was named chief strategy officer and managing director of Germany-based BioNTech SE. In his new role, he will support and contribute to the creation and implementation of the company’s long-term growth strategy in collaboration with the management team. Richardson joined the company as head of Corporate Development & Strategy. As CSO, he will be responsible for evaluating new business opportunities and developing BioNTech’s portfolio management function. Prior to joining BioNTech, Richardson was an executive director in the Global Healthcare Investment Banking team at J.P. Morgan in London.
Alydia Health – California-based Alydia Health announced that Erica Rogers has been appointed to the company’s board of directors as a strategic advisor. Rogers is currently president and chief executive officer of Silk Road Medical. She most recently led Silk Road Medical through FDA approval of the company’s TransCarotid Artery Revascularization devices for the treatment of carotid artery disease. Prior to her role at Silk Road Medical, Rogers was the chief operating officer of Medicines360. She was previously the founder and CEO of Allux Medical, as well as the co-founder of Visiogen, an ophthalmic medical device company acquired by Abbott in 2009.
Disarm Therapeutics – Scott Holmes was named chief financial officer at Cambridge, Mass.-based Disarm Therapeutics, a company focused on developing treatments for axonal degeneration. Holmes comes to Disarm from Kiadis Pharma, where he served as CFO. Holmes was responsible for all financial operations at Kiadis Pharma, including leading the company’s acquisition of CytoSen Therapeutics, Inc. Previously, he spent four years as CFO of Keryx Biopharmaceuticals,
Dyne Therapeutics – Molly White was tapped as vice president of Medical Communications and Advocacy at Dyne Therapeutics. Prior to joining Dyne, White served as CEO of Myotonic, an organization dedicated to advancing research and enhancing the quality of life of people living with myotonic dystrophy.
Casma Therapeutics -- Christian Grimm, and Martin Kampmann, have joined the scientific advisory board of Cambridge, Mass.-based Casma Therapeutics. Grimm is a professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Medical Faculty, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany. Kampmann is an Associate Professor at the University of California at San Francisco, and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator.
Sofinnova Partners – Paris-based Sofinnova, a European venture capital firm, promoted Michael Krel to partner of the Industrial Biotechnology team. Krel previously served as principal on the team, where he focused on early-stage deals in Europe and North America. Krel joined Sofinnova Partners as a Senior Associate in 2013. Krel is an observer on the board of Comet Bio and a board member of EnobraQ and Afyren. Prior to joining Sofinnova, he spent six years in industrial biotech start-ups, holding business development positions.
Cambia – Oregon-based Cambia Health Solutions hired Oliver Kim as its director of Federal Policy. Kim joins Cambia’s Public Affairs and Policy team based in Washington, D.C. and will spearhead policy and regulatory initiatives aimed at helping improve health care for people and their families. He served in the U.S. Senate as a senior advisor to Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and later as deputy director for the Special Committee on Aging. Additionally, he served as legislative director for Planned Parenthood, providing guidance on implementing the Affordable Care Act.
AAAC – Janet B. Kreizman will retire in the second quarter of 2020 from her role as CEO of The American Association for Clinical Chemistry. AACC’s Board of Directors is organizing the search process for a new CEO. Under her leadership, the association built an influential, proactive advocacy program and has achieved significant policy victories, including report language supporting the improvement of pediatric reference intervals, the incorporation of major provisions of the LAB Act, and dedicated yearly funding for critical harmonization efforts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the organization said.
BioCryst – N.C.-based BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. named Charles Gayer as CCO and Allen Hodge as vice president and general manager for the United States. Gayer joined BioCryst in 2015 as vice president of global strategic marketing. Since July 2019 he has served as interim CCO, playing a key role in defining the strategy, and building the commercial operations, to support the launch of berotralstat, BioCryst’s oral kallikrein inhibitor for hereditary angioedema (HAE). Prior to joining BioCryst, Gayer held several U.S. and global commercial leadership roles in highly competitive rare disease categories at Grifols and Talecris Biotherapeutics from 2007 through 2015. He spent six years at GlaxoSmithKline in a range of marketing and sales roles. Hodge joins BioCryst from Array Biopharma, where he helped to build the commercial organization that successfully launched Braftovi and Mektovi. From 2012 through 2015 he was a sales director at ViroPharma. He began his career at Pfizer, where he spent nine years in increasingly responsible sales roles.
Akouos – Boston’s Akouos, a precision genetic medicine company, announced two key senior leadership appointments. Morgan Molloy joins the company as chief corporate development officer, and Karoline Shair, joins the company as senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. Molloy most recently served as CCO at Enzyvant, Inc., where he led all aspects of the commercial strategy for the company’s rare disease portfolio. Prior to Enzyvant, he served as the head of U.S. commercial for Spark Therapeutics. Molloy has also held a variety of operational and commercial roles at Sanofi-Genzyme, including vice president, global disease lead of the Fabry disease franchise. Most recently, Shair was the vice president, head counsel intellectual property program portfolio at Biogen, where she led the company’s global IP portfolio strategy, IP diligence and transactions for business development and M&A opportunities. Prior to Biogen, Shair was chief intellectual property counsel and corporate secretary at FORMA Therapeutics. Shair also held leadership roles at Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
