This month’s news on hires, promotions, acquisitions, expansions, and funding includes items about Syneos Health, ProSciento, Phastar, CPhI, Immunai, and other key industry players.
This month’s news on hires, promotions, acquisitions, expansions, and funding includes items about Syneos Health, ProSciento, Phastar, CPhI, Immunai, and other key industry players.
Metabolic disease CRO ProSciento has appointed Julio Gutierrez vice president of clinical research and clinical science. Gutierrez—a board-certified physician in obesity medicine, transplant hepatology, and gastroenterology—will lead the firm’s clinical science team.
“With his deep knowledge of medical research, therapeutic development, and treatment modalities for metabolic diseases, as well as his work for ProSciento as a scientific consultant and principal investigator in early phase NASH clinical trials, he is already making key contributions within our expanding clinical science team,” said Marcus Hompesch, CEO and chair of the board. “In addition to his experience and scientific acumen, Julio has an extraordinary ability to articulate science, whether speaking with our clients, peers in the field, or with patients newly diagnosed.”
WuXi STA has wrapped its acquisition of a drug product manufacturing facility in Couvet, Switzerland. The tablet and capsule manufacturing and packaging facility is WuXi STA’s first facility in Europe.
Minzhang Chen, co-CEO of parent company WuXi AppTec, said, “Through combining resources of the Couvet site with our other facilities, we continue strengthening and broadening our capacity and capabilities to better support our global customers in delivering innovative medicines to patients in need.”
Global CRO Phastar has named Chuck Gelb as its new chief commercial officer. With advanced degrees in pharmaceutical management and biotechnology, Gelb offers more than two decades of experience working with pharmaceutical companies and CROs.
“Chuck brings a significant level of experience and an astute knowledge of the commercial aspects of this industry to Phastar,” said Kevin Kane, Phastar CEO and founder. “His appointment will further bolster our success as we enter in our next phase of growth, continuing to offer our quality, specialized services worldwide and elevating Phastar to one of the world’s leading biometrics service providers.”
Life-sciences strategy specialist Ashfield Engage has announced its investment in data solutions provider Propensity4. The move is designed to solidify a strategic partnership to deliver omnichannel outreach and customer engagement throughout North America via the integration of data, analytics and insights.
Jason Erickson, leading Ashfield Engage’s Customer Experience function for North America, noted, “Ashfield Engage delivers expert engagement throughout the continuum of healthcare outreach to provide customers with the knowledge and medicines they need. In working with PROPENSITY4, we are elevating our engagement models by strategically quantifying the approach and channels to deliver the best customer experience, while optimizing ROI for our clients.”
CTI Clinical Trial and Consulting Services (CTI), a global CRO, has acquired European CRO Dynakin. The acquiring company plans to merge Dynakin’s CRO services into CTI’s European clinical team.
Timothy Schroeder, CTI’s chairman and CEO, said, “Dynakin and CTI share common philosophies and cultures, with a focus on teamwork, employee retention and career development. We are passionate about continued growth and expansion for the continued success of the company, so this acquisition is a great fit for the next phase of growth at CTI.”
CPhI has announced entries for its 18th Annual CPhI Pharma Awards recognition program are now open. The awards, designed to hail innovation and thought leadership in pharma and biopharma, will be awarded during CPhI Worldwide scheduled November 9-11 in Milan, Italy).
Tara Dougal, head of content and insights for Informa Markets, said, “After a challenging year, the industry has been more committed than ever to advancing health and improving patient outcomes. We are incredibly impressed by everything that has been achieved in the 12 months and, consequently, we expect many outstanding entries this year; it’s been a year in which we have seen the very best of pharma, with a record pace of innovation, discovery and commercialization.”
Integrated CRO Syneos Health has named Michael Brooks to the newly created role of chief development officer. Brooks is charged with heading the company’s growth strategy, building a broader, proactive go-to-market ecosystem.
Syneos Health CEO Alistair Macdonald said, “COVID-19 has forever changed the way we work with customers and colleagues, and how we effectively engage with patients and health care providers; it’s more important than ever that we drive innovation and find new ways to deliver exceptional customer experiences across the product development lifecycle. Michael is a top industry talent with a bold vision for how we can use the breadth of our best-in-class capabilities to solve customer problems.”
Decentralized trial tech provider Hawthorne Effect has announced two appointments to its leadership team: Abhishek Sengupta, chief commercial officer; and Rick Stewart, chief financial officer. The hires come shortly after the startup company’s recent raise of $20m USD in Series A funding.
“Abhishek and Rick are both accomplished industry experts whose broad and deep knowledge and experience will drive Hawthorne Effect’s innovative and patient-first approach to clinical trials even further,” said Jodi Akin, CEO and founder. “With their diverse backgrounds, Abhishek and Rick will be instrumental in nurturing the company’s growth and helping us make an impact in the industry.”
Rare-cancer research company RareCan has named Anita Cooper non-executive director. She brings to the company more than 30 years of diverse scientific and pharmaceutical experience, with stints at Simbec-Orion and Parexel.
Cooper said, “I see a huge opportunity to increase the potential for better patient outcomes, by connecting people diagnosed with rare cancers with passionate researchers and facilitating data exchange to enable, enhance and speed research to support diagnostic and therapeutic advances. I will work with the RareCan team to contribute to this important endeavor.”
Biotech company Immunai has acquired Nebion, a bioinformatics firm. Additionally, Immunai has made a number of executive appointments, including Jacques Banchereau as chief sience officer, and Mark Jacobstein as chief business officer.
“As with other machine learning endeavors like autonomous driving or NLP, having the right data is key,” said Noam Solomon, Immunai CEO and co-founder. “We’re thrilled to bring on the Nebion team and their platform to enhance our target discovery and validation capabilities.”
Clinical research service firm CTMA has named Arnaud Marcel chief technology. He brings to the company an extensive background in medical device integration, clinical surveillance, patient monitoring solutions, and software developments.
Pierre Pellier, CEO of CTMA, said, “We are pleased to welcome Arnaud to CTMA at a particularly important time for the company. His vast experience and deep technical knowledge will help to advance CTMA - its investigators’ app, CT-SCOUT, and its future patients’ app, Totem4Me - with the goal of addressing the patient detection problem for clinical trials. Arnaud is a great addition to a dedicated leadership team.”
Patient-centric technology company Medable has kicked off its planned European expansion plan with a new EMEA headquarters in Dublin. The location will act as hub for the company to expand the reach of its decentralized trial solutions.
“Medable has played a valuable role in making clinical trials more accessible and inclusive for diverse patient populations, and we’re excited to deepen our roots in Europe,” said Michelle Longmire, CEO and co-founder. “Our vision for the future of clinical research is based on consumer-scale technology that serves billions of patients through mobile applications and connected devices.”
