December 2023 • PharmaTimes Magazine • 36-37
// YOUR MOVES //
Your Moves
Mover of the Month
Chiesi has appointed Ralph Blom as the General Manager for Chiesi Limited – covering the UK and Ireland – beginning January 2024. Ralph will succeed Tom Delahoyde, who will retire at the end of 2023. Meanwhile, David Garzón Lafuente will also join as the Rare Disease Business Unit Lead in January 2024.
Ralph has held senior positions at Chiesi Group for over 12 years, joining Chiesi Netherlands in 2011 as Special Care Sales & Marketing Manager, and later advancing to Respiratory Business Unit Manager.
In 2016, he was appointed General Manager of Chiesi Netherlands. He is currently serving as the General Manager of Chiesi Benelux, a position he has held since 2022 and in which he has maintained substantial business growth.
David has nearly 20 years' experience in the pharma industry, previously holding senior positions within the Chiesi group including Business Unit Head of Rare Diseases for Chiesi Spain and Portugal.
In 2022, he moved on to become General Manager at Amryt Pharma Iberia and Israel, and – following the Chiesi acquisition of Amryt earlier this year – will rejoin Chiesi as Rare Disease Business Unit Lead covering the UK and Ireland in January next year.
Automata Technologies has appointed Joe Stringer as Executive Chairman and Director of Corporate Development for the UK and EMEA.
Following Automata’s recent $40m fundraise, the appointment comes as it accelerates its growth and presence in the US, UK and EMEA.
Joe joins Automata from Octopus Ventures where he was most recently Head of Healthtech Investments. He brings a long track record in the fields of healthcare technology, investments and management consulting.
With career highlights that include leadership roles at Ernst & Young and Google Health, Joe is uniquely positioned to help support the next phase of growth at Automata.
In addition to working with the Board, Joe will be focused on helping deliver Automata’s expansion and commercialisation strategy both in the UK and internationally, building on the demand that the company is already seeing for its automated lab solutions.
Myricx has appointed Dr Chris Martin as independent Chairman to its Board of Directors.
Chris was instrumental in co-founding ADC Therapeutics in 2012 and served as its CEO until May 2022. Under his leadership, it grew from a private biotech start-up to a New York Stock Exchange listed company.
He previously co-founded and led two other biotech companies – Spirogen Ltd, an innovator of ADC payload technology, which was acquired by MedImmune, now part of AstraZeneca, and Sciona, a provider of personalised gene-based health and nutrition analyses.
Alongside his role as Chairman of Myricx, he is also Chairman of the Board at Tokamak Energy, and Tagworks Pharmaceuticals BV, and a Director on the Board at Osivax SAS.
NanoSyrinx has appointed Anthony Johnson to its board as Non-Executive Director. Tony’s appointment forms part of the company’s ongoing strategy to expand and strengthen its leadership team as the Company prepares for the next stage in its development.
Most recently, Tony held the position of Chief Executive Officer at Goldfinch Bio and is Chair of the Board of Directors at Outrun Therapeutics.
He is a qualified physician with over 20 years of experience in senior and executive positions for early-stage biotech and pharma companies, including Senior Vice President of Early Clinical Development at AstraZeneca and similar roles at Bristol-Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline.
Tony brings extensive and broad expertise to NanoSyrinx, particularly in drug discovery and early clinical development.
His appointment will support the executive team in driving further development of the Company’s technology platform, to realise its full potential in advancing intracellular medicine.
TrakCel has appointed Dr Akshay Peer as the Senior Vice President, Product. Akshay, a co-founder of TrakCel, returns to from Bluecrux, having gained nearly three years of insight into the challenges facing the cell and gene therapy (CGT) industry.
His knowledge of cell orchestration is combined with first-hand recent experience of meeting CGT manufacturing challenges globally. He has also developed a world-leading chain of custody and chain of identity expertise.
Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies has made Jackie Kunzler Head of Research and Development. She joins the company from Baxter Healthcare.
Throughout her career, she has held successive leadership roles in healthcare, including as Baxter’s Senior Vice President for Quality and Regulatory and Head of Global Life Sciences.
Hongene has launched a new advisory board with international experts from academia and industry. This initiative is part of Hongene's commitment to advancing scientific research and accelerating its growth and innovation.
The three new board members bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise in business strategy, nucleic acid chemistry and organic synthesis, as well as diverse perspectives to ensure strong strategic decision-making.
The new appointments are – Dr John Maraganore, a renowned biotech executive who is best known for his role as the founding CEO at Alnylam, a leading global biopharmaceutical company that has brought five RNAi therapeutic medicines to market.
Meanwhile, Dr Phil Baran is Professor of Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute. He is globally known for his pioneering work on developing new methods for synthesising complex organic compounds that are widely used in pharmaceutical, agrochemical and materials science sectors.
Completing the trio, Dr Masad Damha is a Professor of Chemistry at McGill University. He is a leading expert in nucleic acid chemistry and has made significant contributions to the development of new methods for synthesising and modifying nucleic acids.
"We are extremely honoured to have such distinguished professionals form our new advisory board," said Dr Wei Jiang, CEO of Hongene. "Their collective expertise and thought leadership will undoubtedly bolster our innovative efforts and help us achieve our objective of advancing the field for the betterment of humanity."
CN Bio has announced the appointment of Neil Rumbelow as Director of Product Development.
Over the past year, CN Bio has made a series of leadership appointments to support delivery of its ambitious growth strategy across key global markets, in response to rising demand for the Company’s OOC solutions by pharma and biotech companies.
Neil joins the team to drive the scale-up of its R&D activities, where he will work closely with recently appointed Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Tomasz Kostrzewski.
Neil has extensive experience managing R&D programmes, with a demonstrated history across the medical device industry.
He joins CN Bio from Owlstone Medical, the global leader in breath biopsy for applications in early disease detection and precision medicine, where he was Head of Engineering.
Corcept Therapeutics has appointed Monica Tellado as President, Emerging Markets.
The new role will serve as the global commercial planning lead for therapeutics in Metabolism and Neurology. She will also oversee pipeline and portfolio planning activities across the company’s other therapeutic areas.
Monica has more than two decades of experience, including executive roles in finance, commercial operations, marketing and sales, serving as Chief Financial Officer at Heartflow and Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations at Gilead Sciences.
While at Gilead Sciences, she also held the position as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the company’s Liver Disease Business Unit, and Vice President of Commercial Operations, where she led efforts to launch products across HIV, liver diseases, cardiopulmonary diseases and oncology.
Monica was recognised by the San Francisco Business Times as one of the Most Influential Women in Business in 2018.
STORM Therapeutics has announced the appointment of Marguerite Hutchinson as Chief Business Officer.
Marguerite has over ten years’ experience in leading licensing agreements and collaborations with large, high profile healthcare companies as well as experience in legal and strategic operations.
She was previously the Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of Plexxikon – a member of the Daiichi Sankyo Group – establishing and managing collaborations with Roche, Merck, AstraZeneca, Array and Cancer Research UK.
She played a pivotal role in the out-licensing of bezuclastinib to Cogent Biosciences and plixorafenib to Fore Biotherapeutics. Marguerite was also instrumental in the phase 3 development and approval of pexidartinib, a prescription medicine that is the first and only oral therapy for tenosynovial giant cell tumour.
Spexis has announced that the company has appointed Gonçalo Bernardes, as acting Head of Chemical Biology.
Gonçalo is a leader in the fields of chemistry and oncology and currently a Full Professor at the University of Cambridge. He also leads a satellite lab at the Insituto Medicina Molecular in Lisbon. Multiple discoveries made in his lab have been translated into leading biopharmaceutical companies.
“We are thrilled to welcome Gonçalo to Spexis, where we look forward to leveraging his expertise in chemical biology to advance the development of our novel macrocycle pipeline,” said Jeff Wager, Chairman & CEO of Spexis.
“Dr Bernardes will be instrumental in driving value out of our macrocycle platform to produce novel therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and rare diseases. In the coming weeks and months, we will reveal what some of these initiatives are, which are already underway,” he added.