Diem Nguyen tapped to lead ‘point of inflection’ at Xalud Therapeutics; Diana Escolar dances her way to Avrobio CMO – Endpoints News

Diem Nguyen

Diem Nguyen con­sid­ers her­self a “point of in­flec­tion seer.”

Help­ing busi­ness­es strate­gize and scale up is “where my sweet spot is,” the Pfiz­er vet­er­an said. So when she was tapped to take the helm at gene ther­a­py-fo­cused Xalud Ther­a­peu­tics, she knew it would be a great fit.

Xalud, found­ed in 2009 and head­quar­tered in New York City, is work­ing on non-vi­ral gene ther­a­pies to treat patho­log­ic in­flam­ma­tion. The com­pa­ny’s lead can­di­date, XT-150, is a lo­cal­ly in­jectable plas­mid DNA gene ther­a­py ex­press­ing In­ter­leukin 10 (IL-10) — an up­stream mod­u­la­tor for many pro-in­flam­ma­to­ry and an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry me­di­a­tors.

Nguyen said IL-10 has evad­ed drug de­vel­op­ment for “quite a long time.” And as the com­pa­ny’s new CEO, she’s ready to “crack that chal­lenge.”

XT-150 is cur­rent­ly in a Phase II/III tri­al for os­teoarthri­tis, and Nguyen ex­pects to read out topline Phase IIb da­ta in Q4. Xalud is al­so look­ing to test its plat­form in a va­ri­ety of oth­er ar­eas, from oph­thal­mol­o­gy to neu­rol­o­gy.

“This gene ther­a­py plat­form is not for a niche pop­u­la­tion. It is ac­tu­al­ly meant for, what we like to call … gene ther­a­py for the mass­es,” Nguyen said, adding that hun­dreds of mil­lions of pa­tients could po­ten­tial­ly ben­e­fit.

Xalud hails from PPD, a con­tract re­search or­ga­ni­za­tion where she served as ex­ec­u­tive VP. But a ma­jor­i­ty of her ca­reer (10 years of it) was spent at Pfiz­er, where she built the biosim­i­lars busi­ness unit from the ground up. Af­ter con­vinc­ing ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship and the board to in­vest in the unit Nguyen helped iden­ti­fy five mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies, cre­ate cell lines, then move in­to clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and ul­ti­mate­ly com­mer­cial­iza­tion. Biosim­i­lars is now one of Pfiz­er’s high­est growth ar­eas, she said.

From there, Nguyen took on a num­ber of dif­fer­ent com­mer­cial roles across bi­o­log­ics, sol­id oral dose, ster­ile in­jecta­bles, and de­vices across mul­ti­ple ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas. Her last role was glob­al pres­i­dent of the US, Latin Amer­i­ca and Cana­da and glob­al ster­ile in­jecta­bles for Pfiz­er Es­sen­tial Health.

Nguyen said all that ex­pe­ri­ence makes her well equipped to see and build on Xalud’s po­ten­tial.

“We have been work­ing on re­al­ly try­ing to bring this great sci­ence to a de­gree that I think it de­serves for pa­tients that are suf­fer­ing,” she said. —Nicole De­Feud­is 

Di­ana Es­co­lar

Avro­bio an­nounced a key new hire in nam­ing Di­ana Es­co­lar as chief med­ical of­fi­cer this past Tues­day. But many years ago, Es­co­lar had imag­ined her­self in a dif­fer­ent ca­reer en­tire­ly.

Es­co­lar spent much of her child­hood and young adult life as a bal­le­ri­na, and by age 22 had reached what she con­sid­ered the pin­na­cle of her danc­ing pas­sion — per­form­ing in a show of the Bal­lad of Don Quixote in San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co. Ul­ti­mate­ly, she was of­fered a po­si­tion as a pro­fes­sion­al dancer in one of the world’s pre­miere bal­let com­pa­nies.

Hav­ing reached all she set out to do in bal­let, she in­stead went in­to med­i­cine, look­ing for a new chal­lenge.

“I love chal­lenges, I love to achieve things,” Es­co­lar told End­points News. “When I get to the top, I en­joy it for a lit­tle while and then go ‘what’s next?’ That’s sort of what hap­pened. I was a gift­ed bal­le­ri­na, I worked very hard to get where I was, it was a love and pas­sion.”

Es­co­lar said there wasn’t a spe­cif­ic mo­ment where she re­al­ized she wants to change ca­reer paths. It was more of a grad­ual re­al­iza­tion, with the un­der­stand­ing that danc­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly ul­ti­mate­ly re­sults in a short ca­reer, and most end up as danc­ing teach­ers or chore­o­g­ra­phers. That’s where she’d be at this point in her life had she gone in the oth­er di­rec­tion, she says.

While grow­ing up, Es­co­lar had her hands in many ac­tiv­i­ties as a stu­dent. She took bi­ol­o­gy and chem­istry class­es, hav­ing al­ways been in­ter­est­ed in the sci­ences. She stud­ied Eng­lish, Ger­man and French, none of which were her na­tive lan­guage. She even played gui­tar and was in a band.

In med school, Es­co­lar set­tled on neu­ro­sciences be­cause “it was one of the few things that didn’t make me fall asleep.” She en­joyed learn­ing how CNS dis­eases could af­fect the whole body and man­i­fest in dif­fer­ent ways, set­ting a new goal to help pa­tients in these ar­eas and en­sure that care could be ad­min­is­tered eq­ui­tably around the world.

That even­tu­al­ly led to co-found­ing the Co­op­er­a­tive In­ter­na­tion­al Neu­ro­mus­cu­lar Re­search Group in 1999, which cre­at­ed a cen­tral in­fra­struc­ture for sci­en­tif­ic, trans­la­tion­al, and clin­i­cal re­search in neu­ro­mus­cu­lar dis­eases. Es­co­lar con­sid­ers this her Quixote per­for­mance in the in­dus­try.

“That com­plete­ly changed the land­scape of drug tri­als and ad­vance­ment of treat­ment for all the neu­ro­mus­cu­lar and neu­ro­ge­net­ic dis­or­ders,” Es­co­lar said. “There’s been a lot of the in­dus­try that fol­lowed that, and the Eu­ro­peans cre­at­ed a sim­i­lar net­work that end­ed up part­ner­ing with CIN­RG, so it be­came a glob­al net­work.”

In the ear­ly 2010s, she then went in­to the pri­vate sec­tor, most re­cent­ly serv­ing as CMO at the now-for­mer mi­Ra­gen Ther­a­peu­tics. — Max Gel­man

Jonathan Vi­o­lin

→ Virid­i­an Ther­a­peu­tics was bought out in Oc­to­ber by mi­rA­gen, and now the lat­ter has de­cid­ed to change its name to Virid­i­an — and change its top ex­ec. Virid­i­an co-founder Jonathan Vi­o­lin, who had been pres­i­dent and COO, will rosin up the bow as pres­i­dent and CEO af­ter his pre­de­ces­sor’s very brief tenure. Lee Rauch had been named CEO of Boul­der, CO-based mi­rA­gen in Sep­tem­ber af­ter ini­tial­ly com­ing on board in June as COO, and she will now be a strate­gic ad­vi­sor. Vi­o­lin co-found­ed Treve­na and served in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties there, in­clud­ing SVP, sci­en­tif­ic af­fairs and in­vestor re­la­tions of­fi­cer.

Virid­i­an is al­so boost­ing the lead­er­ship team with Bar­rett Katz as CMO. Katz was with two sub­sidiaries at Bridge­Bio: pres­i­dent and CMO of Reti­na­genix and CEO of For­ti­fy Ther­a­peu­tics. Pri­or to that, he was CMO at Gen­Sight Bi­o­log­ics.

→ Just a cou­ple weeks af­ter its lead drug IMR-687 failed to im­press in a Phase IIa tri­al for sick­le cell dis­ease — send­ing shares tum­bling — Imara has re­cruit­ed Ken­neth At­tie as CMO. At­tie, who cut his teeth as a clin­i­cal sci­en­tist at Genen­tech, was pre­vi­ous­ly Ac­celeron’s VP of med­ical re­search for more than 11 years, steer­ing glob­al clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of such drugs as Re­blozyl (lus­pa­ter­cept), which could have block­buster po­ten­tial.

Frank Neu­mann

→ In a sur­pris­ing about-face, Frank Neu­mann has stepped away as Ve­rastem’s CMO af­ter on­ly two blink-and-you-miss-it weeks on the job, prompt­ing their stock $VSTM to slide 10% on Wednes­day af­ter the an­nounce­ment. Neu­mann was just in last week’s Peer Re­view af­ter tak­ing the Ve­rastem job and leav­ing his po­si­tion as VP, head of on­col­o­gy clin­i­cal re­search at blue­bird bio. Ve­rastem can on­ly say that Neu­mann “ac­cept­ed a role at a cell ther­a­py com­pa­ny to con­tin­ue work in that space.”

Amir Re­ich­man

→ Biond­Vax’s com­plete mis­fire in a Phase III study of its uni­ver­sal flu vac­cine sent in­vestors to the hills — and sig­naled a chang­ing of the guard at CEO. With Ron Babecoff no longer at the helm of the place he co-found­ed, Amir Re­ich­man steps in ef­fec­tive March 2, while Babecoff tran­si­tions to a se­nior ad­vi­so­ry role. In the mean­time, Re­ich­man will wrap up his run as GSK’s head of glob­al vac­cines en­gi­neer­ing core tech­nolo­gies and as­set man­age­ment. Re­ich­man’s tenure pre­dates the 2015 ac­qui­si­tion of No­var­tis Vac­cines, where he held posts in the glob­al vac­cines sup­ply chain man­age­ment or­ga­ni­za­tion.

Anil Sing­hal

→ Tizona spin­out Tr­ishu­la Ther­a­peu­tics, which is part­ner­ing with Ab­b­Vie on their an­ti-CD39 an­ti­body TTX-030, has se­lect­ed Anil Sing­hal as CEO. Tizona CEO Scott Clarke had been in­ter­im CEO of Tr­ishu­la, which launched last Au­gust. It’s a fa­mil­iar face to their part­ner: Sing­hal was once Ab­b­Vie’s VP of ear­ly on­col­o­gy de­vel­op­ment and head of the phar­ma gi­ant’s site in Red­wood City, CA. He was CEO of Adicet Bio for two years un­til it merged with No­var­tis spin­out reSTOR­bio last spring, leav­ing its CEO Chen Schor to take the helm at Adicet.

→ Big Phar­ma vet Michael Flana­gan has been in­stalled as chief tech­ni­cal of­fi­cer at an­ti­body oligonu­cleotide con­ju­gate out­fit Avid­i­ty Bio­sciences, part­ner­ing with CSO Art Levin “to deep­en the pipeline and broad­en the AOC plat­form,” pres­i­dent and CEO Sarah Boyce said in a state­ment. Flana­gan had pre­vi­ous­ly been Genen­tech’s se­nior di­rec­tor and project team leader, on­col­o­gy and im­munol­o­gy, and be­fore that, he was se­nior di­rec­tor of RNA sci­ences at Mer­ck. In the 1990s, Flana­gan was a se­nior sci­en­tist at Gilead.

Thomas Soloway

→ Ver­sant-backed T cell ther­a­py play­er T-knife, which pulled in a Se­ries A worth more than $78 mil­lion in the dog days of last sum­mer, is re­fash­ion­ing its C-suite with Thomas Soloway as CEO and Camille Lan­dis as CBO and CFO. Soloway, who re­places Elisa Kieback, had logged five years at Au­dentes as their EVP, COO and had a brief run as CFO at As­cendis Phar­ma AS from 2014-15. Lan­dis heads to T-knife from Uni­ty Biotech­nol­o­gy, where she was SVP, cor­po­rate de­vel­op­ment, and she’s al­so been CBO at Ei­dos.

→ In ad­di­tion to Lan­dis at T-knife, the ex­o­dus from Uni­ty Biotech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues af­ter deep job cuts and the loss of their lead pro­gram cast a pall on their 2020. Dou­glas Rich has be­come chief tech­ni­cal of­fi­cer at Ap­plied Mol­e­c­u­lar Trans­port, a South San Fran­cis­co biotech which raised a shade more than $177 mil­lion in a June IPO. Rich had been with Uni­ty since 2017 as SVP, op­er­a­tions, and has ex­pe­ri­ence from Kythera Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals (SVP, op­er­a­tions), Boehringer In­gel­heim (VP, qual­i­ty) and Am­gen in sev­er­al op­er­a­tions roles spread over 18 years.

Jim Caggiano

→ Just a short time ago, Jim Caggiano took the CEO reins at Targazyme. Now he’s ready for an­oth­er CEO chal­lenge at Evolve Bi­o­log­ics, an out­fit from On­tario fo­cused on plas­ma-de­rived ther­a­peu­tics. Caggiano helmed Den­dreon and was pres­i­dent of Valeant Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, which sold Den­dreon to San­pow­er Group in ear­ly 2017. He’s al­so been a sales and mar­ket­ing ex­ec at Al­ler­gan and Ab­bott.

→ With its sights set on an $86 mil­lion IPO, Nex­Im­mune hired Jerome Zeld­is as their new R&D chief ear­li­er this month, and a fel­low Cel­gene alum will join him as CMO. Robert Knight spent 16 years as a VP in clin­i­cal re­search at Cel­gene and then took charge of the Yescar­ta clin­i­cal pro­gram at Kite. Be­fore these stops, Knight was Sor­ren­to’s head of clin­i­cal re­search. Phase I/II tri­als are on­go­ing for Nex­Im­mune’s lead can­di­dates NEXI-001 and NEXI-002.

Else­where at Nex­Im­mune, Grant Ver­standig has been elect­ed to the Gaithers­burg, MD biotech’s board of di­rec­tors. Ver­standig is the chief dig­i­tal of­fi­cer at Unit­ed­Health Group, which ac­quired his com­pa­ny Ral­ly Health in 2017.

Hen­ri­et­ta Uk­wu

→ Mean­while, at an­oth­er promi­nent Gaithers­burg biotech, No­vavax keeps on adding new folks as they push for­ward in a piv­otal Phase III with their Covid-19 vac­cine. This time it’s Hen­ri­et­ta Uk­wu mak­ing her way to No­vavax as chief reg­u­la­to­ry and qual­i­ty of­fi­cer. A Mer­ck and Pfiz­er vet in reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs, Uk­wu de­vot­ed eight years to Ot­su­ka Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, where she was most re­cent­ly chief reg­u­la­to­ry of­fi­cer and glob­al head of qual­i­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry.

→ Christo­pher Mox­ham logged al­most 20 years in two sep­a­rate stints in drug dis­cov­ery at Eli Lil­ly de­vel­op­ing the phar­ma gi­ant’s on­col­o­gy pipeline be­fore swing­ing to Ful­crum Ther­a­peu­tics two years ago as SVP, dis­cov­ery re­search. Now Ful­crum, which saw its Phase II study fal­ter with old GSK drug losmapi­mod last sum­mer, has pro­mot­ed Mox­ham to CSO. He re­places fel­low Eli Lil­ly alum Owen Wal­lace, who was Ful­crum’s chief sci­en­tist since 2017.

Kel­ly Mac­Don­ald

→ Michael Os­tra­ch an­nounced his re­tire­ment last fall as CFO of Dy­navax, and this week the hep B vac­cine mak­er named Kel­ly Mac­Don­ald as his suc­ces­sor. Mac­Don­ald hails from Iron­wood Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, where she held a va­ri­ety of ti­tles, be­gin­ning as a se­nior man­ag­er, tech­ni­cal ac­count­ing and ex­ter­nal re­port­ing and cap­ping her time as chief ac­count­ing of­fi­cer and VP, fi­nance.

→ John Doyle has been ap­point­ed CFO at Chi­as­ma, which won FDA ap­proval back in June for its acromegaly drug My­capssa. He suc­ceeds Mark Fitz­patrick, who will stick around as a con­sul­tant un­til June 30. Doyle ar­rives at Chi­as­ma from a near­ly three-year stint at Ve­rastem, even­tu­al­ly be­com­ing the can­cer biotech’s VP of fi­nance and in­vestor re­la­tions.

Matthew Plun­kett

→ Snap­ping up $80 mil­lion in Se­ries C fi­nanc­ing in No­vem­ber — with a hint of prep­ping an IPO some­time this year — South San Fran­cis­co blood can­cer biotech Ima­go Bio­Sciences has pegged Matthew Plun­kett as CFO. Plun­kett is com­ing off a two-year run as CFO for Nkar­ta Ther­a­peu­tics, and he’s al­so been chief fi­nan­cial and busi­ness of­fi­cer at Mede­or Ther­a­peu­tics.

→ Fred­er­ic Fasano has been named pres­i­dent and COO of Que­bec-based Va­leo Phar­ma, cen­tered on com­mer­cial­iz­ing pre­scrip­tion prod­ucts in Cana­da. Fasano, a long­time Servi­er vet who even­tu­al­ly climbed his way to CEO of Servi­er Cana­da from 2011-20, will al­so be a mem­ber of Va­leo’s board of di­rec­tors. At the same time, Va­leo CEO Steve Sav­iuk will slide in­to the role of vice-chair­man of the board.

→ Amit Mun­shi’s neu­ro sub­sidiary Long­board Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has a new CFO with the ar­rival of Bran­di Roberts. Roberts hails from Lin­eage Cell Ther­a­peu­tics, hold­ing the CFO post for two years un­til re­sign­ing last week. Lin­eage CEO Bri­an Cul­ley will be in­ter­im CFO there un­til a re­place­ment is found.

Else­where at Long­board, for­mer Are­na board mem­ber and ex-Idec Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals CFO Phillip Schnei­der, along with eGe­n­e­sis CEO Paul Sekhri, have jumped on to the board of di­rec­tors.

Con­nie Chang

→ Reti­nal dis­ease-fo­cused ONL Ther­a­peu­tics from Ann Ar­bor, MI has wel­comed Con­nie Chang as their new COO. A Pfiz­er vet in mar­ket­ing, Chang was pre­vi­ous­ly VP of cor­po­rate af­fairs at Mil­len­do Ther­a­peu­tics, which is be­ing forced to re-eval­u­ate where they are as a com­pa­ny by slash­ing their staff and clos­ing up shop on NK3R an­tag­o­nist MLE-301 ear­li­er this month.

→ Bel­gian phar­ma Ox­u­ri­on NV, fo­cused on eye dis­eases con­nect­ed with di­a­betes, chose a new CFO and CMO last year, and they’ve reached in­to acad­e­mia to tap Alan Stitt as CSO. Stitt has been the chair of ex­per­i­men­tal oph­thal­mol­o­gy at Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty Belfast since 2001 and has spe­cial­ized in re­search­ing reti­nal dis­eases. Stitt suc­ceeds the re­tir­ing Jean Feyen, who had been Ox­u­ri­on’s CSO since 2013.

Quentin Mc­Cub­bin

→ With its lead drug FX-322 tar­get­ing sen­sorineur­al hear­ing loss, Fre­quen­cy Ther­a­peu­tics has in­stalled Quentin Mc­Cub­bin as chief man­u­fac­tur­ing of­fi­cer, a month and a half af­ter Pe­ter Pfre­und­schuh was ap­point­ed CFO. Mc­Cub­bin hails from Tony Coles’ team at Cerev­el, where he led their tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tions. He al­so had a 19-year tenure with Take­da/Mil­len­ni­um, with the last three-and-a-half years as VP, glob­al head of chem­i­cal de­vel­op­ment lab­o­ra­to­ries.

→ Dutch biotech Sapreme, fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing macro­mol­e­cule ther­a­peu­tics, has cor­ralled Hen­rik Luessen as CBO. Luessen has pre­vi­ous­ly been CBO at Bel­gian cell ther­a­py de­vel­op­er Promethera Bio­sciences and start­ed life sci­ence ad­vi­so­ry group Ty­to­nis BV, serv­ing as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor.

Car­la Poul­son

→ Car­la Poul­son’s re­cent stop at Akcea was a brief one as she moves on to an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate (ADC) play­er Mer­sana Ther­a­peu­tics as chief hu­man re­sources of­fi­cer. As Peer Re­view told you, Poul­son left Ver­tex last May to join Akcea in the same role she now fills at Mer­sana. In Poul­son’s near­ly decade-long stay at Ver­tex, she was head of in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man re­sources and was lat­er pro­mot­ed to VP, hu­man re­sources.

Richard Wood­man

→ Ei­sai has named Richard Wood­man as chief clin­i­cal of­fi­cer of its on­col­o­gy busi­ness group. Most re­cent­ly, Wood­man was CMO and head of re­search and de­vel­op­ment at On­cono­va Ther­a­peu­tics. Pri­or to that, Wood­man had a 12-year stint at No­var­tis, serv­ing as fran­chise head for hema­tol­ogy in glob­al med­ical af­fairs. Wood­man jumped in­to the in­dus­try as se­nior med­ical di­rec­tor at J&J.

→ Steven Tuch has been cho­sen as head of cor­po­rate de­vel­op­ment at Rally­bio, which has $145 mil­lion in Se­ries B fi­nanc­ing squared away for pro­grams that in­clude RLYB211 for fe­tal and neona­tal al­loim­mune throm­bo­cy­tope­nia. Tuch leaves his gig at BMO Cap­i­tal Mar­kets as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, head of US eq­ui­ty cap­i­tal mar­kets orig­i­na­tions.

Gwe­nan White

→ Ef­fec­tive in March, Big Phar­ma vet Gwe­nan White will join Ipsen — now helmed by for­mer Sanofi ex­ec David Loew — as EVP, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and pub­lic af­fairs. White, who’s worked in com­mu­ni­ca­tions at GSK, Ab­bott and Ab­b­Vie, is com­ing from No­var­tis, where she was glob­al head of phar­ma com­mu­ni­ca­tions and pa­tient ad­vo­ca­cy.

→ Jean-Pierre Som­ma­dos­si’s crew at Atea Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has added two new ex­ecs, start­ing with SVP of reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs Jayan­thi Wolf. A 19-year Mer­ck alum, Wolf closed her time at the phar­ma gi­ant as ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, glob­al reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs. In ad­di­tion, Atea has se­lect­ed Jon­ae Barnes as SVP of in­vestor re­la­tions and cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Barnes, who got her start at Sepra­cor (now Sunovion) from 1996-2009, had been Pox­el’s SVP, in­vestor re­la­tions, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions & pub­lic re­la­tions.

→ AGC Bi­o­log­ics, the CD­MO that com­mit­ted $194 mil­lion to ex­pand­ing its Copen­hagen site last month, has called up­on David Stew­art to over­see their site in Boul­der, CO. The new gen­er­al man­ag­er/site head comes to AGC with lead­er­ship ex­pe­ri­ence in man­u­fac­tur­ing from Bio­gen and Genen­tech.

Bryan Wahl

→ Tar­sus Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, which is de­vel­op­ing its lead drug for the eye dis­ease De­mod­ex ble­phar­i­tis, has made Bryan Wahl gen­er­al coun­sel, a cou­ple weeks af­ter the ap­point­ment of chief hu­man re­sources of­fi­cer Di­anne Whit­field. Wahl was for­mer­ly a part­ner at Knobbe Martens since 2005.

→ Black Di­a­mond Ther­a­peu­tics has made the ad­di­tion of Kapil Dhin­gra to its board of di­rec­tors. Dhin­gra served as clin­i­cal and strate­gic ad­vi­sor to the com­pa­ny since 2017. Dhin­gra joins with near­ly a decade of ex­pe­ri­ence at Roche, serv­ing in roles such as VP, head of on­col­o­gy dis­ease bi­ol­o­gy lead­er­ship team and head of on­col­o­gy clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment. His ap­point­ment comes months af­ter Black Di­a­mond reeled in ex-GSK CEO Bob In­gram as chair­man for its board.

John McHutchi­son

→ Ox­ford-based ex­o­some play­er Evox Ther­a­peu­tics has re­served a seat for John McHutchi­son on the board of di­rec­tors. Since Au­gust 2019, McHutchi­son has been pres­i­dent and CEO at As­sem­bly Bio­sciences af­ter nine years at Gilead.

→ SOPHiA GE­NET­ICS has nom­i­nat­ed Kathy Hi­bbs to their board of di­rec­tors. Cur­rent­ly, Hi­bbs is chief le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry of­fi­cer at 23andMe. Hi­bbs al­so sits on the boards of Ge­nom­ic Health and Mono­gram Bio­sciences.

Al­i­son Law­ton

→ Launched by Syn­cona, AAV-based gene ther­a­py shop Swan­Bio has wel­comed Al­i­son Law­ton to their board of di­rec­tors fol­low­ing the No­vem­ber ap­point­ments of Pat­ty Allen, Dan­ny Bar-Zo­har and Alex Hamil­ton. The for­mer pres­i­dent and CEO of Kalei­do Bio­sciences, Law­ton al­so joined the board of X4 Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in Oc­to­ber.

→ CMR Sur­gi­cal has tapped Cather­ine Moukheibir as non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor. Moukheibir joins the com­pa­ny with ex­pe­ri­ence as non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Iron­wood Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Kymab and Or­p­hazyme. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Moukheibir was CFO of Movetis NV (ac­quired by Shire in 2010).