Lonza, Gilead Sciences and Syncona are among the companies welcoming new faces to top jobs this month.
Jennifer Cannon, Ph.D., has been named the Senior Vice President and Global Head of Lonza’s Mammalian Biologics Business Unit.
In her role, Jennifer will oversee the strategy and growth of the business unit.
Cannon has more than 18 years of business leadership and market development experience in the biopharma and life science industries. She was previously Vice President, Operations Commercial Development at AbbVie: where she developed and executed the growth strategy for a broad range of Abbvie’s CMO services and technologies, including mammalian biologics, fill finish, ADC, microbial fermentation, and oral solid dose.
Prior to Abbvie, Cannon was Vice President of Commercial Operations for Ajinomoto’s contract manufacturing organization where she led the Commercial Development and Sales organizations driving strategic growth for their biologics drug substance, fill finish, and API manufacturing divisions. Prior to Ajinomoto, Jennifer was Business Director of Protein Production and Analysis at Thermo Fisher Scientific, where she led product and service management business teams.
Cannon received her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, a M.S. in Molecular Biology from the Salk Institute and a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego. She attained her post-doctoral training at Genentech in the Department of Oncology.
Flavius Martin, MD, is joining Gilead Sciences as Executive Vice President, Research; also becoming a member of the company’s senior leadership team.
Dr. Martin brings significant experience overseeing industry-leading research, with particular expertise in oncology and inflammation. He joins Gilead from Amgen, Inc., where he most recently served as Vice President, Research Biology, leading discovery for Oncology, Inflammation and Cardiometabolic Research. He was also the site-head for Amgen South San Francisco.
Prior to Amgen, Dr. Martin worked as a scientist and leader at Genentech, Inc.
Dr. Martin received his MD at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy Timisoara, Romania. He completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the Division of Developmental and Clinical Immunology. He has published numerous papers on the role of immune cells in driving inflammatory diseases and cancer, and holds a number of patents related to his discoveries.
Dr. Martin takes over the role from William (Bill) Lee, PhD, who is retiring after 30 years with Gilead. Since joining in 1991, he has overseen research programs across multiple therapeutic areas and led the advancement of numerous therapies from early-stage research into clinical developments.
California-headquartered Vera Therapeutics has appointed Dr. Celia Lin as Chief Medicial Officer.
Vera Therapeutics, a clinical stage biotech focused on developing and commercializing treatments for immunological diseases. Its lead program is atacicept, a fusion protein that is in development for IgA nephropathy.
The company welcomes Dr. Lin’s extensive clinical and industry experience in orphan diseases and multiple therapeutic areas, including nephrology and inflammation.
Dr. Lin’s previous role was as a Senior Medical Director at Genentech, where she was responsible for Phase III global study execution and regulatory filing in an orphan disease. She also was the global development lead for a small molecule in multiple sclerosis and led other projects, including monoclonal antibodies, bispecifics, and complement inhibition assets in various therapeutic areas such as respiratory, allergy, nephrology, infectious disease, and inflammation.
Prior to Genentech, she was a medical director in clinical development and medical affairs at Amgen: where she led teams and activities related to the approval and commercialization of two osteoporosis therapies.
Dr. Lin is board certified in internal medicine and rheumatology. Prior to joining industry, she was on faculty at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) seeing patients at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Health Care System. She received her MD from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and a BS from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She trained in internal medicine at Boston Medical Center and in rheumatology at UCLA and Washington University in St. Louis where she also was a post-doctoral fellow.
In addition, Vera Therapeutics has appointed Tad Thomas, PhD, as Senior Vice President (SVP) and Head of Product Development and Manufacturing; and Joseph Young, MBA, as SVP of Finance.
Teressa Therapeutics has announced a trio of senior appointments: with David Davidson, M.D. as Chief Medical and Development Officer, Hari Pujar, Ph.D. as Chief Operating Officer, and Lin Guey, Ph.D. as Senior Vice President of Rare Diseases Program Strategy and Operations.
The new appointments come two months after the company announced $230m in Series B fundraising and will help advance the company’s gene writing platform and accelerate the development of multiple therapeutic programs.
Dr. Davidson brings over 20 years of expertise in clinical drug development focused on rare diseases and gene therapy to his new role as Tessera’s Chief Medical and Development Officer. For nearly a decade, Dr. Davidson served as Chief Medical Officer of bluebird bio, where he helped advance a broad genetic medicine pipeline across blood disorders, rare diseases and oncology, leading numerous genetic medicine programs into the clinic and delivering multiple first-in-class approvals for genetic medicines in the US and Europe.
Prior to bluebird, Dr. Davidson led clinical research for a wide range of therapeutic programs at Genzyme and GelTex, spanning biologics, polymers, and gene therapy.
Dr. Pujar, an Operating Partner at Flagship Pioneering (which founded Tessera Therapeutics), will also serve as Tessera’s Chief Operating Officer. Dr. Pujar brings more than 20 years of drug development, manufacturing and commercialization experience spanning AAV gene therapy, mRNA vaccines and therapeutics, and traditional vaccines and biologics.
Most recently, Dr. Pujar served as Chief Technology Officer at Spark Therapeutics, a pioneer in AAV gene therapy, and Head of Technical Development and Manufacturing at Moderna, where he led mRNA and lipid nanoparticle development and manufacturing. Dr. Pujar previously spent 18 years at Merck & Co., developing and commercializing vaccines and biologics.
Dr. Guey, Tessera’s new SVP of Rare Diseases Program Strategy and Operations, will oversee the execution of the company's genetic medicine programs in rare diseases. Dr. Guey brings over 13 years of drug development experience in program leadership, research and nonclinical development, pharmacogenomics and epidemiology. Prior to joining Tessera, she served in senior leadership roles for Moderna, Xilio Therapeutics, Shire, and Pfizer.
Syncona Ltd. Has announced the appointment of Kenneth Galbraith as Executive in Residence.
Ken brings over 30 years of experience in biotechnology and venture capital and will support Syncona’s portfolio companies as they scale and develop.
Ken has worked as a life sciences executive, director, investor and advisor across North America in the growth of both private and NASDAQ-listed companies from an early-stage through commercialisation.
He began his career in 1987 as Chief Financial Officer at QLT, Canada’s first biotechnology company, where he was instrumental in growing the company to over 500 employees, gaining market approvals for several new medicines and achieving peak market capitalisation of $5bn at the time of his departure in 2000.
Ken also has almost a decade of experience in the management of venture capital funds and new company formation. During his career, he has played a pivotal role in the development of many successful biotechnology companies, including AnorMED where, as Executive Chair, he steered the company to a $584m buyout by Genzyme. Ken has also worked with Macrogenics (MGNX), Alder Pharmaceuticals (sold to Lundbeck), Celator Pharmaceuticals (sold to Jazz Pharma), Novadaq (sold to Stryker), Profound Medical (PROF), Fairhaven Pharmaceuticals (sold to Liminal Bio), Tekmira (merged with OnCore), Angiotech (ANPI), and Aquinox (AQXP) among others.
As a FTSE 250 healthcare company, Syncona’s portfolio of businesses includes gene therapy, cell therapy, small molecule and biologics.
Novavax has announced three senior level changes this month. Gale E. Smith, Ph.D., has been promoted to Senior Vice President, Discovery and Pre-Clinical Research and Chief Scientist; while Troy Morgan has been named as Senior Vice President, Chief Compliance Officer.
Meanwhile, Greg Covino, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) will step down from his role and take on a new position as executive adviser to the company.
Described as a pioneer in vaccine research, Dr. Smith is the senior inventor of the insect cell technology that serves as the basis of Novavax' scientific platform and is used broadly by the pharmaceutical industry, as well as on the company's vaccine patents for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), ebola, influenza and coronavirus vaccines, including COVID-19.
He is widely published and holds numerous patents for the baculovirus-insect cell expression system as well as seasonal influenza vaccines and adjuvants. Since joining Novavax in January 2004, he has overseen discovery and pre-clinical research and leads vaccine technology development.
"This well-deserved promotion reflects not only his major contributions in creating our COVID-19 vaccine candidate, but well over a decade of dedication to improving our technology platform,” said Gregory M. Glenn, M.D., president of research and development at Novavax.
Meanwhile, Troy Morgan will oversee Novavax’s strategic direction of the company’s compliance program in the newly created role of Chief Compliance Officer. He joins Novavax from EMD Serono, Inc., where he was Chief Compliance Officer, responsible for building a global corporate compliance program supporting a range of therapies.
Prior to this, he held senior leadership roles at Merck KGaA, Sanofi, and Biogen. At the Biogen spinout Bioverativ, he was responsible for the development, implementation and management of the global compliance program. He holds a Master of Laws from Pepperdine University, Juris Doctorate from Jones School of Law, Faulkner University and a Bachelor of Science from Troy State University.
