Moderna, Novavax and Biogen are among the companies welcoming new faces to top jobs this month.
Moderna, Novavax and Biogen are among the companies welcoming new faces to top jobs this month.
Vaccine company Novavax announces that John C Jacobs will succeed Stanley C Erck as President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors: effective as of January 23.
Jacobs brings more than 25 years of commercial, operations, business and leadership experience across multiple therapeutic areas. He will join Novavax from Harmony Biosciences, where he has served as President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors since June 2018, and Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer from October 2017 to June 2018. Notably, Jacobs led the company through a successful IPO and led its first product through FDA review, approval and commercialization.
Prior to joining Harmony, Jacobs held leadership roles at Teva Pharmaceuticals beginning in 2014, including Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Respiratory Business Unit, Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations in North America and General Manager of Teva in Canada.
Jacobs has also held positions of increasing scope and responsibility at major pharmaceutical companies including Cephalon, Wyeth and Pfizer. He received a B.S. in business from State University of New York College at Plattsburgh and an M.B.A. from The State University of New York at Binghamton.
Outgoing CEO Erck will serve as an advisor to the company for the next fifteen months. Erck was named President and CEO in April 2011 and was responsible for bringing the company's COVID-19 vaccine, its first commercial product, to market in over 40 countries around the world and for achieving Emergency Use Listing with the World Health Organization. Under his leadership, Novavax created a manufacturing and supply network to support global distribution of its COVID-19 vaccine and advanced its late-stage pipeline with both stand-alone influenza and COVID-19-influenza combination vaccine candidates.
Novavax credits his effort as ‘transforming the company into a truly global organization with a footprint in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific regions’.
Aptamer Group, a developer of novel Optimer binders, has appointed Derek Smith as Interim Chief Commercial Officer.
Smith joined the company in 2018 as Director of Global Sales and has since overseen the development and implementation of the its global sales strategy, securing contracts across all three business divisions, including with a number of major pharmaceutical companies. Prior to joining Aptamer Group, he held senior sales positions at various UK healthcare companies.
Headquartered in York, UK, Aptamer Group develops custom affinity binders through its proprietary Optimer platform to enable new approaches in therapeutics, diagnostics and research applications.
Optimer binders are oligonucleotide affinity ligands that can function as an antibody alternative. They are engineered to address many of the issues found with alternative affinity molecules, such as antibodies, and offer new solutions to bioprocessing, diagnostic and pharmaceutical scientists.
mRNA specialist Moderna has appointed Chantal Friebertshäuser into the newly created role of Senior Vice President, Commercial, Europe, Middle East and Canada, effective January 1, 2023.
Friebertshäuser will be responsible for commercial efforts in Europe, Middle East and Canada, reporting to Arpa Garay, Moderna's Chief Commercial Officer. Moderna says her experience in leading global teams and scaling commercial organizations regionally will be instrumental as the company enters new markets and advances its portfolio.
Friebertshäuser joins Moderna from Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD), where she served in a variety of in-market and global commercial leadership roles across 15 years, including her most recent position of Human Health Senior Vice President and Managing Director at MSD Germany. In this role, she was responsible for the company's Human Health Organization and also led the MSD Country Council which convened leaders from the organization's Human Health, Animal Health, Research and Manufacturing sites.
Other prior roles include German Business Unit Leader, Global Market Access Leader, Managing Director of Austria and Global Commercial Lead for the company's HPV vaccine franchise. Prior to MSD, Friebertshäuser spent 10 years in various roles at Eli Lilly.
Friebertshäuser holds a Master of Arts in International Business from the School of Business ESC in Rennes, France. She will be based in Switzerland.
Rockville, Maryland-headquartered Clinical Research Organization Emmes has appointed Matt Honan as vice president and global head of corporate development.
In this newly created position, Honan will lead the company in identifying and executing acquisitions that complement Emmes' existing federal government client base, expand its biopharma portfolio, enhance its technology offerings, and broaden its global reach.
Honan served most recently as senior director, M&A and business development, at Quest Diagnostics. There, he led cross-functional teams through the entire M&A lifecycle, executing more than 20 transactions valued at more than $1bn. Prior to assuming that role, he held various M&A and finance positions of increasing responsibility.
As a Presidential Scholar, Matt graduated from George Washington University with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and began his career as an engineer at Stähli USA, Inc. He then attended Rutgers University and obtained his MBA in finance before starting at Quest.
Biogen has promoted Priya Singhal - currently Head of Global Safety and Regulatory Sciences and Interim Head of Research & Development (R&D) – to Executive Vice President, Head of Development.
This follows the company’s decision to separate Research and Development into two distinct functions that will both report directly to the CEO.
In addition, Biogen has initiated a search for a new Executive Vice President, Head of Research. Dr. Singhal will serve as interim head of Research until a new leader is named.
Priya Singhal, MD, MPH most recently served as Senior Vice President and Head of Global Safety and Regulatory Sciences and Interim Head of R&D at Biogen. She also had oversight of Japan and China R&D. Dr. Singhal rejoined Biogen in 2020, having previously led Biogen’s Global Safety and Benefit Risk Management as the interim co-lead and Senior Vice President of Global Development. In this role she managed the worldwide benefit-risk strategy for the portfolio as well as for the filings and approvals of six products.
She joined Biogen in late 2012 as Vice President Clinical Trials and Benefit-Risk Management.
Prior to her return to Biogen, Dr Singhal served as Head of R&D and Manufacturing at Zafgen Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company leveraging its proprietary knowledge of MetAP2 systems biology to develop novel therapies for patients affected by a range of metabolic diseases. From 2008-2012 she was at Vertex Pharmaceuticals where she served as the Vice President, Medical Affairs and held roles of increasing seniority in Global Patient Safety. She began her drug-development career at Millennium Pharmaceuticals where she led benefit-risk for Velcade and two compounds in the development portfolio.
Preceding her career in the biotechnology industry, Dr Singhal completed her MPH in International Health at Harvard School of Public Health and obtained her training in Internal Medicine in Mumbai, India.
Biotechnology and enzyme expert Brain Biotech has announced appointments for two key leadership positions at its corporate site in Zwingenberg, headquarters and core biotechnology R&D campus of the international Brain Group.
Following the announcement in October 2022, to establish an independent division for Brain Biotech AG’s proprietary CRISPR technology, the company has now announced that Dr Alexander Pelzer will succeed Dr Michael Krohn as Head of Research & Development. Dr Krohn will now fully focus on his new leadership role with Akribion Genomics.
Dr Pelzer was previously Unit Head Enzymes & Biocatalysts at the company and has been with BRAIN Biotech for almost nine years. Dr Pelzer enjoyed a broad education in biocatalysis, microbiology and molecular biology at the Research Centre Juelich with a focus on industrial enzyme technology. In addition to his experience in relevant fields, he demonstrated strong leadership skills along his whole career path.
In addition, Dr Martin Langer will expand his current business development responsibilities and will be appointed Managing Director and Executive Vice President of the BioScience segment at the Zwingenberg site. Dr Langer was one of the first employees at Brain Biotech and accordingly has several decades of corporate experience. Alexander Pelzer and Martin Langer will take joint responsibility for further developing the R&D center in Zwingenberg into a customer-preferred provider for integrated biotechnology solutions.
