The last month of summer saw several hires, including a lead for Worldwide Clinical Trials’ Japan operations, CEO appointments at CordenPharma and LabConnect, and Altasciences’ new CSO, who joins the company from Syneos.
Click through the following slides to hear what this month's new hires hope to achieve in their new roles.
The last month of summer saw several hires, including a lead for Worldwide Clinical Trials’ Japan operations, CEO appointments at CordenPharma and LabConnect, and Altasciences’ new CSO, who joins the company from Syneos.
Click through the following slides to hear what this month's new hires hope to achieve in their new roles.
Formerly CRF Health and Bracket, Signant Health has appointed Anthony Todd Everhart, MD, FACP to the Signant Health Science and Medicine Team as clinical vice president, internal medicine. In this role, Everhart will report the chief medical officer, Dr. David Daniel.
Everhart is Board-certified in internal medicine and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He has more than 23 years of experience practicing medicine and over 12 in clinical development.
Previously, Everhart held positions of vice president, medical affairs and vice president, medical informatics at Chiltern and Covance. More recently, he was an independent consultant.
“My goal is to bring Signant’s rater training quality assurance and blinded data analytics into new therapeutic areas such as dermatology, immune-mediated diseases, and cardiorespiratory diseases,” Everhart told us.
“There is also an increasing emphasis on patient-centered outcomes in oncology trials and the application of these methodologies to oncology outcome measures beyond tumor response and survival is mostly unexplored.
“It will be exciting to lead Signant in identifying new applications for our endpoint reliability solutions in these new therapy areas, as well as the challenging and rapidly growing oncology field.”
Dr. Michael Quirmbach has succeeded Dr. Riku Rautsola as CEO and president. Rautsola will transition to the role of a senior advisor to the executive leadership team.
Quirmbach has been with CordenPharma since 2014 as the chief business officer. Prior to this, he held several positions in the industry at companies including Siegfried, Dr. Reddy’s, and Solvias.
“In my new role as CEO and president, I plan to continue the growth of CordenPharma as a trusted, reliable and highly-respected CDMO by focusing on our Integrated supply chain solution, supported with a clear, profitable growth strategy defined by our technology platforms,” said Quirmbach.
“Operational excellence, transparent, and effective cost management and customer centricity will determine the foundation of our performance, while accelerated growth and sustained profit remain our ongoing objectives,” he told us. “I look forward to this challenge and anticipate a promising future for CordenPharma in the years to come.”
Velocity Clinical Research this month expanded its senior management team with the addition of Melissa Holbrook as vice president, operations, a role in which she will be responsible for clinical operations at all of Velocity’s sites.
Holbrook joins Velocity after 13 years at Iqvia, where she was most recently vice president, design and delivery innovation.
Jeff Jensen previously held the position being filled by Holbrook, but is now the senior vice president of corporate development and will focus on the company’s acquisition activity.
According to the company, Velocity is actively pursuing ‘a number’ of acquisition targets and expects to ‘significantly’ increase in size by the end of the year.
In line with this, the company also has hired a new director of human resources and expanded its finance team. Velocity also has partnered with an IT provider that will be responsible for onboarding new sites onto the company’s centralized IT framework.
Said Holbrooke, “I’m thrilled to join Velocity Clinical at an exciting time for the company. As a clinician, I have seen the impact that new and novel therapies can have in improving a patient’s life. Without clinical trials these new therapies would not be possible. I’m very excited to work with these prestigious sites to continue to meet the needs of our patients, our customers, and the communities we serve.”
The clinical trial laboratory services organization has named Dr. Bob Bailer as head of the vaccines business unit.
In this role, Bailer will lead lab services to support vaccine immunogenicity and efficacy studies, viral and bacterial neutralization assays across multiple platforms, custom PCR development as well as immunoassay development in ELISA and Luminex platforms.
Bailer joins the company from the National Institute of Health (NIH) where he was the director of the vaccine immunogenicity testing program. Before the NIH, Bailer held roles across pharma and US government agencies.
“I am excited to be joining the Q2 Solutions vaccine group,” said Bailer. “It is a privilege to be joining this renowned group of scientists with decades of experience of support for vaccine clinal trial testing.”
Bailer told us he will be focusing his efforts on building the strategy and tactics to enable the team to “expand upon the strong foundation while pursuing investment and innovation.”
“I see two areas of focus in the coming months,” he explained. “First, to enhance the customer experience we will be closely evaluating our business processes and systems with a keen eye for how we can better meet our customer’s evolving needs.
“Additionally, we will continue investments in talent and resources to drive a scientific leadership position by expanding our testing portfolio to meet the growing and changing needs of the vaccine clinal testing marketplace.”
Professor Steve Howell has joined Arcis as a non-executive chairman on the company’s board of directors.
Howell founded Innova Partnerships in 2006 and has held positions at Unilever, Alere, and Unipath.
In his new role, Howell told us he’d like to help support the company as it extends its commercial traction worldwide.
“The company has a great opportunity to reduce the time taken and cost incurred in preparing clinical samples for further analysis in a variety of areas,” he said.
“With large markets in the US, Europe and Asia we can really make a positive impact on patient lives. Initially, I would like to focus on growing our presence in the US.”
Beatrice Setnik, PhD, joined Altasciences in August from Syneos Health.
In her new role, Setnik will support early drug development clients as the chief scientific officer. Prior to Syneos, she worked at Pfizer, King Pharmaceuticals, and Ventana Clinical Research.
Setnik also is an adjunct professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Toronto.
“I am grateful to be joining an organization with such passion and dedication to early phase drug development. In my new role, I plan to support the innovation and expertise that Altasciences brings to preclinical and phase I research,” she told us.
“My mission is to continue to drive the science behind what we do and to continuously strive to excel and outperform. In the coming months, I will be reinforcing our center of excellence in CNS research and innovator studies, and helping clients find the optimal strategy for their drug development programs.
LabConnect named Tom Sellig as its new chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors.
Sellig was previously the chief commercial officer of ConnectiveRx, before which he was the senior vice president of global sales at Patheon, which was acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2017.
He also held various roles at Covance from 2007 to 2014 and had executive leadership roles at Ventana Clinical – now part of Syneos – and Medical Broadcasting Company.
"My focus at LabConnect will be on driving strategic growth, continuing to strengthen the company’s global network of clinical research labs, and providing innovative labs solutions for complex clinical studies," Sellig told us.
"Given the increase in the industry’s pipeline for advanced therapies including immuno-oncology, cell and gene therapy, and rare diseases, LabConnect is ideally positioned to manage the increased complexity inherent in these clinical programs."
The provider of integrated clinical development analytics products and services this month appointed a new chief commercial officer, Otis Johnson, PhD, MPA.
In this position, Johnson will be responsible for growing Phesi’s offerings, focusing on the commercialization of ClinSite, the company’s recently launched, AI-driven clinical trial investigator site selection tool.
Johnson spent 13 years at Merck in various roles before transitioning to the contract research side, first as the vice president of clinical research at Syneos and then as a vice president at Icon.
“My intention is to make Phesi’s technology and clinical trial services available for routine use in clinical studies in all therapeutic areas,” Johnson told us. “I plan on expanding our customer base by providing biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and CROs access to our vast, automated clinical trial database and AI technology to improve their operations by 25-40%.”
Speaking to the development of ClinSite, Johnson added, “The pharmaceutical industry has struggled to incorporate newer technologies, such as machine learning, into routine clinical development deliverables. This is the case because of poor or incomplete data to train the models. Phesi has developed a predictive algorithm that works despite these typical issues with data sources.”
Jennifer Rogers, PhD, has been appointed head of statistical research at the global CRO, Phastar, where she will help grow the company’s statistical consultancy offerings and provide advice to current and potential customers.
Rogers’ expertise includes survival analysis, the analysis of recurrent events and joint modeling strategies that combine the two focus areas.
“As an academic, I always pursued methodological research driven by applied medical problems and it is my belief that a successful medical statistician should place themselves at the forefront of new statistical innovations that challenge standard practice where it becomes unsuitable,” said Rogers.
Working at Phastar, Rogers will have the opportunity to understand the current statistical challenges faced by the pharmaceutical industry, she said, “meaning that the research output being produced under my leadership will be timely and have the potential to make great improvements in the design, conduct, analysis, and reporting of clinical trials in industry.”
“By working closely with Phastar's clients on consultancy projects, I will be able to manage a research agenda that is driven by real-world problems,” she added.
“Coming from the University of Oxford, I also bring with me to Phastar a network of academic experts in the field of clinical trials and medical statistics, which I am hoping to develop into strategic links between Phastar and leading academic institutions.”
Avomeen has created a new position: Biological chemistry project director. Taking on this role is Khanh Ngo Courtney, who will help grow the company’s large-molecule and protein therapeutics business segment.
She began her career as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and then at the University of California – San Francisco. Since 2016, she had been working as a quality control scientist at BioMarin Pharmaceutical.
As the new biological chemistry project director, Khanh Ngo Courtney said she is looking forward to bringing new technologies and capabilities “to fulfill the current and future needs of the biopharmaceutical industry.”
Said Khanh Ngo Courtney, “My experience in protein biochemistry and cellular biology in both the R&D and CMC settings allows us to effectively partner with our clients and provide support as we navigate through the product development lifecycle together."
The protein engineering company has named Ross Taylor as senior vice president and chief financial officer (CFO), following the retirement of Gordon Sangster.
Taylor was the CFO of Abaxis from 2015 until the company was sold to Zoetis in July 2018.
“I am thrilled to join Codexis at this exciting time as the company pursues growth across its core business and an increasing number of verticals,” Taylor told us. “With its CodeEvolver technology Codexis has attractive opportunities in multiple industrial segments, including pharmaceutical manufacturing, food and beverage, molecular diagnostics, and others.”
“Furthermore, CodeEvolver is fueling the company’s novel biotherapeutic discovery pipeline further demonstrating the value of the technology and significantly enhancing the company’s potential. I look forward to working with John, the entire management team and the board to drive the company’s future success and enhance value for our investors.”
Worldwide Clinical Trials has brought on Hiromi Wakita, PhD, to lead the company’s operations in Japan as vice president of clinical operations.
Wakita began his career in regulatory affairs and has worked at several CROs. Before joining Worldwide, he led Japan-based clinical trial operations for CROs running Phase I-IV trials across various therapeutic areas as the Japan general manager for Clinipace.
He also has held Japan-based leadership roles at Mebix, INC Research, Quintiles Transnational Japan K.K, and Icon.
Wakita told us he is excited to join Worldwide at a 'pivotal moment' for clinical research in Japan.
“While the quality of clinical studies in Japan has always been, and remains, quite high, the traditionally time consuming, costly clinical research environment is changing drastically. Worldwide has comprehensive and strong operational capabilities, which are required as a global CRO, and also has the flexibility and entrepreneurial mindset of a midsized organization," he said.
"These attributes are critical as we establish our own capability and organization in Japan, with an emphasis on prioritizing new stream-lined procedures. We can provide our services for clients within a reasonable cost and timeline, generating the best outcome for patients, so they can receive drugs they need sooner and cheaper.
"I cannot wait to build our dedicated team in Japan swiftly and introduce our capability to customers who have an interest in drug development in Japan.”
