Dr. Paul McKenzie has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Managing Director of CSL, and will take on the role in March.
Dr. McKenzie will succeed Paul Perreault, who will retire after 10 years in the role and more than 25 years with the company.
Currently serving as CSL’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), Dr McKenzie will immediately join the Board of Directors as an Executive Director and will become CEO and Managing Director on March 6, 2023.
Perreault will step down as CEO and from the CSL Board of Directors on the same date; but remain with the company as strategic advisor to assist in the transition until September.
Dr McKenzie has more than 30 years of leadership experience in the global biotechnology industry, including managing complex organisations through compelling growth and transformation.
Since joining CSL as COO in 2019, Dr McKenzie has been accountable for optimising CSL’s operations as well as growing the CSL Seqirus, CSL Plasma, and CSL Vifor businesses. He transformed CSL’s global end-to-end operations, advanced CSL Seqirus’ differentiated portfolio strategy, and led CSL Plasma through COVID-19 challenges while surpassing plasma collection volumes beyond pre-pandemic levels.
Prior to joining CSL, Dr McKenzie was Executive Vice President of Pharmaceutical Operations & Technology at Biogen. He also served in a range of progressively senior level roles in R&D and manufacturing at Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck.
He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2020. He has served on numerous professional and academic boards, most recently the Board of Trustees on the Illinois Institute of Technology and the Society for Biological Engineering. Paul holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
CSL – which includes three businesses, CSL Behring, CSL Seqirus and CSL Vifor – provides products to patients in more than 100 countries and employs 30,000 people.
Bill Anderson, CEO Roche Pharmaceuticals and member of the Corporate Executive Committee, has decided to pursue opportunities outside of Roche after 16 years with the company.
Roche says a successor will be appointed by March 2023.
In 2006, Bill Anderson joined Genentech as Senior Vice President of the Immunology and Ophthalmology Business Unit in South San Francisco (SSF), California, before leading the BioOncology Business Unit. He moved to Basel and became Head of Global Product Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer for the Pharma business in 2013.
By 2016, Anderson returned to San Francisco to lead the North American Operations of Genentech and, shortly thereafter, he was appointed CEO of Genentech before taking over his current role in 2019. Prior to joining Roche, he began his career in engineering and quickly assumed business leadership roles with increasing scope in the biotech industry.
Anderson completed his Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas in Austin.
In July, Roche announced that CEO Severin Schwan would depart in March, with Thomas Schinecker becoming the ad interim CEO starting 1 January 2023, when he hands over the CEO Roche Diagnostics role to Matt Sause.
Vaxxas, a clinical-stage biotech commercializing a novel vaccination platform, has appointed Doug Cubbin as Chief Financial Officer.
Cubbin joins Vaxxas as the Brisbane, Australia headquartered company experiences ‘significant growth and advances’ toward commercialization of its high-density microarray patch (HD-MAP) vaccine delivery technology: most recently with the completion of a financing round raising US $23m and the Phase 1 trial of its COVID-19 patch. The company, which currently employs over 110 people, will move into a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility being built by the Queensland Government in Brisbane in early 2023.
Cubbin has more than 30 years’ experience in finance, M&A, and business development. Most recently, he was the Group Chief Financial Officer at Telix Pharmaceuticals Limited, a global biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of diagnostic and therapeutic products.
During his tenure at Telix, Cubbin helped grow the market capitalization of the business to AU$2.3bn (US$1.6bn) and built a global finance team. He was also a key member of the team who successfully completed the Telix IPO, and subsequent capital raises, with a total of AU$270m (US$180m) raised. During his time with Telix, the company made four acquisitions.
Prior to Telix, Cubbin held roles of Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at ANSTO, Executive Chairman of ANSTO Nuclear Medicine, and Chief Financial Officer at DHL Oceania and South Pacific.
Cubbin’s appointment follows the recruitment to Vaxxas of Scott Fry as Chief Operating Officer and Daniel Devine as Chief Business Officer and General Counsel.
Vaxess Technologies, a Cambridge, Massachusetts life sciences company developing a shelf-stable, sustained-release vaccine patch, has announced that Fenel Eloi has joined its board of directors.
Fenel Eloi brings to Vaxess more than 30 years experience as a leader in the life sciences industry. He is currently managing partner of P&M capital partners, a private angel investment firm. Previously, Eloi was the Chief Financial Officer and then Chief Operating Officer of Cell Signaling Technology, a privately held life sciences company, where he oversaw significant growth of the business over a period of 12 years and provided leadership in the transformation of the company to a global operation.
Prior to that, Eloi was the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Interleukin Genetics, Inc., a formerly NASDAQ-listed diagnostic company. Additional positions included Chief Financial Officer at LifeCell Corp and Genome Therapeutics Corp, both formerly NASDAQ-listed companies.
In addition to his board role with Vaxess, Eloi currently serves on the board of directors of MitoTherapeutix, a privately held drug development biotech company; Ultivue, Inc., a biotechnology company that specializes in tissue imaging, diagnostics, and multiplexing; 908 Devices, Inc., a publicly-traded mass spectrometry device company; and VIC, a technology venture development company for high impact life science ventures. Eloi previously served on the board of Cell Signaling Technology, Inc., a reagents company, and BioHelix Corporation, a diagnostics company.
Eloi is joining Vaxess’ Board of Directors during a time of ‘significant growth’ for the company and its Mimix vaccine patch. Recently, Vaxess announced $27 million in Series B funding, launched a phase 1 trial for the H1 influenza vaccine delivered by VX-103 (a MIMIX Array Patch System), and announced a series of leadership additions.
Vaxess has received grant and venture capital funding from groups such as RA Capital, The Engine, BARDA, DARPA, NIH, NSF and the Gates Foundation.
The PhRMA Foundation has announced the appointment to its Board of Directors of Aida Habtezion, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Pfizer, Maha Radhakrishnan, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Biogen, George Addona, PhD, Senior Vice President and Head of Discovery, Preclinical and Translational Medicine at Merck Research Laboratories, and Lori Reilly, Esq, Chief Operating Officer at PhRMA.
The PhRMA Foundation is a 57-year-old US non-profit that fosters biopharmaceutical innovation and value-driven health care by investing in the frontiers of research. It helps the careers of researchers through competitive, peer-reviewed grants and fellowships: since its founding in 1965, the Foundation has awarded more than $110m to over 2,700 researchers.
As chief medical officer, Dr. Habtezion leads Pfizer's Worldwide Medical & Safety organization responsible for ensuring that patients, physicians, and regulatory agencies are provided with information on the safe and appropriate use of Pfizer medications. Prior to joining Pfizer, she was a practicing physician and scientist at Stanford University's School of Medicine, where she led a large translation research lab focused on understanding disease mechanisms and identifying potential immune-based therapeutic targets for pancreatic and intestinal inflammatory diseases and their long-term complications such as cancer.
Biogen's Dr. Radhakrishnan is one of the foremost experts on medical affairs strategy and health outcomes research currently serving as chief medical officer. She brings extensive experience in overseeing external engagement approaches with academic institutions, key opinion leaders, patient advocacy groups, payers, and regulators. Prior to joining Biogen, Dr. Radhakrishnan held leadership roles at Sanofi, Bioverativ, Bristol Myers Squibb, United Health Group, and Cephalon.
Dr. Addona has worked at Merck since 2008 and currently oversees early-stage pipeline, early human studies, and biomarker development. Previously, he was Vice President of Quantitative Biosciences, playing a critical role in Merck's drug discovery organization by leading a multidisciplinary team focused on preclinical programs across all the company's therapeutic areas. Prior to joining Merck, he held roles with Novartis and Praecis Pharmaceuticals.
Due to a change in the Foundation bylaws, Ms. Reilly joins the Foundation's Board as PhMRA's ex officio representative. A longtime leader in developing and advocating for practical policy solutions that bring medicines to patients, Ms. Reilly oversees PhRMA's advocacy activities and alliance development work and provides strategic leadership to the organization and its members. Prior to her 20 years of service at PhRMA, she served as counsel to the U.S. House Committee on Commerce and to a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Genezen, a US-based cell and gene therapy Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) specializing in lentiviral and retroviral vector manufacturing, continues to scale and expand its commercial operations with the appointment of Jeff Whitmore as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO).
With a career in biotechnology spanning over 25 years, Whitmore joins Genezen from mRNA Therapeutic CDMO, TriLink BioTechnologies, part of Maravai LifeSciences, where he most recently served as Vice President of Commercial Operations and had responsibility for commercial expansion and strategy (During his time at TriLink, he helped guide the firm through a rapid increase in demand for mRNA production during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic). Prior to this, he held leadership positions at biostability technology company, Biomatrica, and immunodiagnostics maker, Singulex.
Looking to bolster the buildout of Genezen’s commercial presence, Whitmore will maximize growth opportunities at the organization’s recently expanded viral vector process development and cGMP production facility in Fishers, Indiana (US).
Aurion Biotech, a clinical-stage biotech with a mission to restore vision for patients via regenerative therapies, has appointed Dr. Jonathan Sparks as chief legal officer.
With offices in Seattle, Boston and Tokyo, Aurion Biotech’s first candidate is for the treatment of corneal edema secondary to endothelial dysfunction, and is one of the first clinically validated cell therapies for corneal care.
In addition to his role at Aurion, Dr. Jonathan Sparks is also a partner and chair of the Intellectual Property practice at McCarter & English, LLP. He has over 20 years of experience as a legal professional representing life science companies, both as outside counsel and as an executive at companies.
In his private practice, Dr. Sparks counsels clients on general intellectual property matters, including patent prosecution, domestic and foreign patent strategy, due diligence, and patent lifecycle management. He also has extensive experience with patentability, infringement, validity, and freedom-to-operate analysis.
Dr. Sparks has previously served as general counsel, chief Intellectual property counsel and chief compliance officer for Ocular Therapeutix, Inc., and general counsel for Applied Genetic Technologies Corporation.
Prior to starting his legal career, Dr. Sparks conducted research in the areas of physical biochemistry and molecular biology while obtaining his PhD at Texas A&M University. In addition to his PhD, Dr. Sparks holds a JD from Suffolk University Law School and a BA in Biochemistry from Ithaca College.
Dr. Sparks is a member of the Massachusetts Bar, the US Patent & Trademark Office, the American Intellectual Property Law Association, the Boston Patent Law Association and the Boston Bar Association.