August 16, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Cambridge, Massachusetts - Agios Pharmaceuticals announced today that Andrew Hirsch is joining the company as chief financial officer on September 19. He will be replacing Glenn Goddard, senior vice president of finance, who is leaving Agios at the end of September.
Agios focuses on developing drugs for cancer and rare genetic metabolic disorders. It has a number of products in early stage and late stage clinical development for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), solid tumors, and PK deficiency.
Prior to joining Agios, Hirsch was president and chief executive officer of Bind Therapeutics . BIND declared bankruptcy in May when Hercules Technology, a Palo Alto, California-based venture debt firm, demanded full payment of the $13.2 million balance on its load, including $1.2 million in fees.
Pfizer agreed to act as the stalking horse bidder of the company’s assets with a floor bid of $20 million in cash, as well as taking on various contractual liabilities. Two other companies joined in the auction, but were not identified. Late in July, BIND announced that Pfizer was the auction with a bid of $40 million.
Before working at BIND, Hirsch was chief financial officer at Avila Therapeutics until it was acquired by Celgene . He also spent 10 years at Biogen , including vice president of Corporate Strategy and M&A, and was program executive for Biogen’s Tecfidera development team.
“I am thrilled to welcome Andrew to the Agios team at this pivotal time as we advance programs across our IDH and PKR portfolios and get closer to making our first medicines available to patients,” said David Schenkein, Agios’ chief executive officer, in a statement. “Andrew’s leaderhsip experience and work across a wide range of areas of the business will be instrumental as we build for the future and work to achieve our vision of building a sustainable multi-product biopharmaceutical company.”
At its recent second-quarter financial reporting, Agios indicated it has $512,295 in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities as of June 30, and had received a $200 million upfront payment from Celgene for its immuno-oncology collaboration. It expects to wrap up the year with more than $390 million in cash.
“Second quarter achievements marked tremendous progress towards our 2016 goals across our research and development programs,” Schenkein said in a statement. “At EHA, we established clear proof-of-concept for AG-348 in pyruvate kinase deficiency, validating our novel approach to treat rare genetic metabolic disorders by correcting the underlying enzymatic defect and potentially establishing the first treatment for patients with this serious disease. This milestone sets the stage for pivotal development of our PKR activator program. In addition, our new strategic collaboration with Celgene enables Agios to expand into the emerging field of metabolic immuno-oncology, an important new field of cancer research.”
For his part, Hirsch said in a statement, “I look forward to joining Agios at this exciting time and helping the team deliver on its vision for the future. It’s rare to see the research and development productivity that Agios has delivered in such a short period of time and I am excited about the potential to advance those scientific breakthroughs to benefit patients.”
