This month’s roundup includes the first CFO for CytoReason, a new CEO at Certara and Factory-CRO, as well as an expanded leadership team at BioDuro, among other people on the move in May.
Click through the following slides to see who went where in May.
This month’s roundup includes the first CFO for Cytoreason, a new CEO at Certara and Factory-CRO, as well as an expanded leadership team at BioDuro, among other people on the move in May.
Click through the following slides to see who went where in May.
CytoReason has made a series of recent hires following signed deals with three of the top eight global pharma companies.
The company, which provides machine learning for drug discovery and development, has more than doubled the size of its team and increased revenues by 1,000% over the last 12 months.
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Among the new hires includes the company’s first chief financial officer, Nurit Reder, who was most recently CFO of Glilot Capital Partners and vice president of operations at Wix.
Professor Gilad Silberberg, an expert in systems biology, also has joined CytoReason to lead bioinformatics for the company’s largest collaboration. He previously led bioinformatics and data analysis at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet Department of Medicine Rheumatology Unit.
Leading strategic product development and innovation is Dr. Chanan Rubin, a US National Cancer Institute post-doc fellow. Chanan was previously core technologies director at Evogene and is a board member of the Israeli Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.
Dr. Eitan Winter also has joined CytoReason as a senior bioinformatician scientist for major collaborations. Winter is a former research fellow at Cancer Research UK.
The Spanish contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) named Daniel Rivero as its director of operations.
"I am excited for the new challenges at Idifarma. I have joined at a pivotal time for the company, as we look to become more aligned with regulatory agencies across the world,” he told us.
“Idifarma’s ethos to continuously improve in the pursuit of excellence attracted me to the role. I am looking forward to achieving this within my role and across departments as we support our customers and their projects."
Most recently at 3P Biopharmaceuticals, where he was plant director for nearly a decade, Rivero has more than 15 years of experience in strategic operations within the pharmaceutical industry.
The drug discovery and development services organization added four to its senior leadership team: David Hedden, PhD, as chief scientific officer, Brett Truitt, MS, MBA, as vice president, cGMP operations, Mohan Thiruvazhi, PhD, as vice president, business development, and Raymond Li, CPA, MBA, as vice president, finance.
Hedden, with 32 years of industry experience, will lead the formulation and analytical development team. He has worked at Pfizer, UPM, Ironwood, Searle/Pharmacia, Sandoz, Dupont, and Adagio.
Truitt joins BioDuro from Patheon where he was the director of pharmaceutics and process technology. He has 20 years of experience and has held roles at Flatley Discovery Labs, Shire, Pfizer, Proctor and Gamble, among other companies.
In his new role, Thiruvazhi will be responsible for global business development efforts in North America, South America, and Europe. He previously worked at GVK BIO and Syngene International and ran chemistry operations for six years at ChemBridge Research Labs.
Li was most recently the vice president of finance and operations at Amrx. He has held senior positions at publicly traded, fortune 500 companies, including K2 and Emerson Electric.
Stephan Winckels, MD, PhD, was promoted to chief medical officer (CMO) after joining the CRO three years ago as the head of the medical affairs department.
Winckels has more than ten years of experience in cancer research working at big pharma as well as CROs, including Wyeth (now Pfizer), Boehringer Ingelheim, and Julius Clinical.
“I am thrilled to continue my work in this new position at SMS-oncology,” Winckels told us. “With my expertise in clinical oncology trials and our bright, oncology focused team we are able to execute complex trials of innovative oncology products for our biotech clients.
“I look forward to leading our company in bringing safe and effective therapies to cancer patients and make a meaningful impact on their lives.”
Formed by combining Boston Biomedical Associates, Clinical Device Group, Factory-CRO, Five Corners, and MileStone Research Organization, the Factory-CRO Group has named a new president and CEO with the appointment of Sapna Hornyak.
The company also has added Nick Thorton, co-founder of a private equity firm, as a chairman on its board of directors.
Hornyak previously led the device and diagnostics practice for a top 10 CRO and brings more than 20 years of leadership experience to the company.
According to the company, Factory-CRO Group founders will remain actively involved in the organization.
Clinipace in May hired four operational, therapeutic, and medical experts, including Leslie Wetherell, Niamh Bresnihan, Gonzalo Rubio, MD, and Heidi Mitchell, MD.
Wetherell joins with more than 22 years’ experience in rare disease and oncology trials. Bringing his therapeutic expertise in dermatology, Bresnihan, has held roles at pharma and other CROs. Rubio and Mitchell will expand Clinipace’s medical team.
“Our new team members have numerous relationships across the industry that they will leverage on behalf of our clients globally,” said Jason Monteleone, MBA, Clinipace CEO. “Clients will see direct benefits from their focused and personalized expertise, demonstrating again our continued commitment to providing the industry’s best clinical development solutions and services.”
Drawing on his expertise in cognition, clinical neuroscience, and symptom assessment, William Horan, PhD, is the new vice president of clinical science, a role in which he will provide scientific and operational support for clinical trials in psychiatric disorders.
Horan was previously professor-in-residence in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA and chief of the psychosis section at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.
He also on the editorial boards of Schizophrenia Bulletin, Schizophrenia Research: Cognition, and Journal of Abnormal Psychology (Associate Editor).
Joining from Catalent Pharma Solutions, where he worked for more than nine years on the leadership team, Sridhar Krishnan was named senior vice president, global operations, of Frontage Laboratories.
“I look forward to leading our operations with a focus on sustainability, compliance and execution excellence. Operational excellence combined with scientific and commercial excellence will strengthen our ability to serve our customers' and patients' needs with speed and quality," said Krishnan.
Krishnan also worked for 14 years at GE Healthcare and held several leadership positions in global supply chain operations and quality.
As part of a £1.3m ($1.64m) expansion plan, CatSci has named Dr. Jenny Wallis and Dr. João Madeira to the newly-created roles of business development managers. Both will focus on developing long-term relationships with current and prospective clients.
As part of the expansion plan – a three year plan halfway completed – the company also is recruiting 16 new staff members to support expanded laboratory facilities.
The data-focused CRO has added Dr. Mike Poole, MD, FACP, to its board of scientific advisors, a role in which he will advise the company on the design, conduct, and reporting of Phase II-IV clinical trials.
Currently a venture partner at Biomatics Capital, Poole most recently led external investments in the Office of the President for Global Health at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Additionally, Poole has served as vice president and head of neuroscience innovation at AstraZeneca as well as chief medical officer for Link Medicine and Hypnion. He also was vice president of neuroscience development at Wyeth and Pfizer.
Gaurav Sharma, M.Pharm, PMP, C.Sci, FIBMS, MICR, has joined the company as senior vice president, therapeutic area leader, rare disease and oncology.
Sharma was previously senior vice president and head of global project management at Premier Research and has held senior roles with Icon, Takeda, and Parexel.
“I’m honored to join Worldwide, an organization that is well positioned to transform biopharmaceutical development and commercialization for early phase oncology – where we are seeing a paradigm shift with promising new strategies to treat cancer,” said Sharma.
The company also in May named Joy Clark as the new chief human resources officer, a role in which she will lead talent acquisition and development, global HR services, as well as employee engagement initiatives.
She joins the company from Valassis Digital (formerly Maxpoint). Clark said, “I cannot wait to help fuel Worldwide’s differentiation in the market by reimagining our employee experience. Our focus will be on empowering our team to remain top of the industry in expertise and ensuring they have the tools and technology to reshape the way they live and work.”
Serving as Certara CEO since June 2014, Dr. Edmundo Muniz has stepped down, as the company in May announced Dr. William F. Feehery as its new CEO and a member of the Certara Board of Directors.
Muniz will become a member of the Certara Board of Directors and Chair of the Board’s newly-formed Science Committee.
Feehery joins Certara from DuPont, where was president of DuPont Industrial Biosciences since 2013.
Prior to DuPont in 2002, he worked in venture capital and as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group. He also is a board member for West Pharmaceutical Services.
The consultancy has named Claire Scruton as the new senior manager of CMC regulatory affairs.
She will in this role provide strategic regulatory CMC advice and operational support across a range of therapeutic areas and development stages for ATMPs, biologics, and new chemical entities, according to the company.
Scruton has more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with a background in biological and inhalation product development, and joins Boyds from Mundipharma, before which she was at Pfizer for 13 years.
After a long-standing alliance, Sygnature Group acquired the service provider RenaSci in July 2018.
According to Paul Clewlow, senior VP of business development at Syngature discovery, the acquisition enables the company to provide customers with a “cross-pollination” of service offerings, which Moore will be responsible for promoting.
“Renasci perfectly complements Sygnature’s offerings and our co-location at BioCity Nottingham, UK enables the seamless integration of capabilities within drug discovery and pre-clinical development and affords clients of both companies with the opportunity to augment the technologies and services that can be accessed during drug research and development,” said Clewlow.
RenaSci focuses on the development of therapeutics for the central nervous system (CNS), metabolic disorders, kidney disease, and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
Sygnature Discovery appointed Nick Moore as senior director of business development in an aim to promote RenaSci’s in vivo pharmacology and consulting services.
Moore previously worked at Eli Lilly where he played a key role in the development of the blockbuster drug Zyprexa (olanzapine). He also has worked at Lundbeck Research, and Albany Molecular Research (AMRI) and held business development positions at Brains On-Line and Charles River Laboratories.
Clewlow said that the addition of the role is two-fold, “firstly, it is an interactive role that ensures that customers of both Sygnature Discovery and Renasci are aware of, and can fully benefit from, the wider set of services of the group. Secondly, this is about growth; this position is the frontline of the expansion of our in vivo pharmacology services and the reach into new segments of the pre-clinical drug discovery market.”
