Changing Faces: Digital and supplier, February 2026

This month's appointments in the supplier and digital health space span clinical trial technology, drug discovery AI, genomics, bioelectrical medicine, CDMOs, and non-profits. Here’s the list.

Trial tech veteran joins Inato as CCO. Brad Cottreau was appointed chief commercial officer at Inato, a tech company building an AI platform for managing clinical trials. He arrives with more than 20 years of sales experience and deep expertise in the clinical research landscape, having most recently scaled trial tech companies including Advarra and Endpoint Clinical.

Rentschler taps biopharma vet to lead ops. Rentschler Biopharma, the German CDMO with offices in Massachusetts and Stevenage, UK, brought Veit Bergendahl onboard as chief operating officer. He brings more than 20 years of international experience in biopharmaceutical development, production, and CMC to the role.

Novo Nordisk discovery leader heads to Valo. In the chief scientific officer role, Karin Conde-Knape will join Valo Health, a drug discovery and development company leveraging AI-enabled human causal biology and closed-loop chemistry platforms. The appointment follows an extensive career for Conde-Knape at Novo Nordisk, where she held several senior positions including SVP of early development and global drug discovery.

Two biotechs make VP hires. Rounding out the news, a couple of VP postings:

• Claire Smith joined Amber Therapeutics, a medical technology company developing next-generation bioelectrical therapies for patients with functional disorders of the peripheral nervous system, as VP commercial. She arrives from Nevro, where she led the launch of multiple innovative products.
• At Ultima Genomics, the developer of an innovative ultra-high-throughput sequencing architecture, Elena Helman was named VP oncology solutions. She brings more than 15 years of experience spanning cancer genomics, clinical diagnostics, and translational bioinformatics, having most recently served as VP of technology at Xilis and, before that, director of bioinformatics at Guardant Health.

Three research groups make leadership hires. Several disease-specific research groups and non-profits made appointments this month as well.

• The Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, named David Walsey as executive director. He brings more than 25 years of experience leading communications, strategy, and investor relations for public biotechnology companies, and has a personal connection to the Foundation's mission, having dealt with Lyme disease within his own family.
• The Parker Institute of Cancer Immunotherapy, a non-profit focused on accelerating the development of breakthrough immune therapies, appointed Bob Purcell as chief communications officer. Purcell previously served as head of communications and events at Verily, where he led strategic communications supporting the company's healthcare innovation programmes and corporate growth, and spent more than a decade at Genentech and Roche before that.
• Dr Frank Smith was appointed president of the XenoSTART Preclinical Research Unit at the START Center for Cancer Research, the world's largest community-based network specialising in early-phase oncology trials. His career spans leadership roles at Charles River, GSK, and Champions Oncology, where he helped build and grow complex preclinical organisations serving global biopharma customers.

That wraps up digital and supplier hires, but stay tuned for our agency and Boards round-ups and remember, you can send your own hires to editorial@pharmaphorum.com for inclusion in this column.