Changing Faces: Biopharma hires from February 2023

February may be the shortest month, but for pharma hires and appointments it was a big one, with multiple high-level shake-ups at Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer, and more.

Some of these were big enough that we wrote them up as they broke; others may be news to you. Read on for all the pharma personnel news we heard about this month.

New boss at Bayer, Roche Pharmaceuticals. Bayer announced that Bill Anderson, formerly of Roche Pharmaceuticals, will take over as CEO in June, replacing Werner Baumann, whom investors have reportedly been gunning for. Just a week before Bayer’s announcement, Anderson’s previous employers announced his replacement: Teresa Graham, a veteran of Roche's Genentech unit in the US.

John Reed out at Sanofi, in at J&J. As we reported around Valentine’s Day, Dr John Reed left Sanofi after five years as global head of R&D. That position will be covered in an interim capacity by Dr Dietmar Berger. Reed’s plans, meanwhile, were revealed just a day later when Johnson & Johnson announced he had been hired as executive vice president of pharmaceuticals R&D, replacing Mathai Mammen who left last summer.

Leadership shake-up at Astellas. Kenji Yasukawa is stepping down as chief executive of Japanese pharma group Astellas, to be succeeded by Naoki Okamura – currently chief strategy officer – on 1st April. Okamura is a long-time company man at Astellas, having originally started there in 2005.

Boehringer Ingelheim makes leadership hire in UK. Boehringer Ingelheim UK & Ireland announced that Vani Manja will take over as country managing director and head of human pharma. In her 11 years with Boehringer, she has previously held leadership roles Germany, the United States, and India, and prior to that she served in leadership at Becton Dickinson and McKinsey.

Four new chief medical officers. Moving on to some smaller pharma and biotech shops, several companies announced new CMOs in February:

Enthera Pharmaceuticals, an Italian biotech focused on autoimmune diseases, brought onboard Dr Filppo Canducci, who claims Roche as the latest stop in his 20-year career in medicine.
Abivax, a French biotech developing treatments for chronic inflammatory conditions, appointed Dr Sheldon Sloan, a 25-year pharma vet who has worked at J&J and Pfizer, to their top medical post.
Continuing our European tour, Germany’s Ariceum Therapeutics, which is developing radiotherapies in the oncology space, hired Dr Germo Gerike, who most recently worked at Advanced Accelerator Applications, a Novartis company.
Also in Germany, vascular-integrity-focused biopharma Adrenomed announced the appointment of Dr Stephan Witte, another 20-year industry vet whose prior employers include Atriva Therapeutics and Inotrem.

More C-Suite appointments. Only about half the month’s C-suite hires were chief medical officers; here are the rest:

Relation Therapeutics, a London biotech leveraging computational and experimental techniques, hired Dr Edith M Hessel, a former R&D exec at GSK, as its new chief science officer.
Cantagria, a biotech focused on antibody-based treatments for cancer and inflammatory diseases, appointed Patrick Renblad, previously of LEO Pharma and AstraZeneca, as chief financial officer.
Asgard Therapeutics, which is working on in vivo direct reprogramming approaches to cancer immunotherapy, announced that Dr Alan Griffith has joined as chief development officer.
Lyra Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech with a particular focus on chronic rhinosinusitis, has appointed Dr John Bishop as chief technology officer. He will lead the commercial scale-up of the company’s late-stage product candidates.
RNA therapeutics company Avidity announced that it has promoted W. Michael Flanagan from chief technical officer to chief scientific and technical officer. Their previous CSO, Arthur A. Levin, moves into a role on the board of directors.

Director and VP hires. We heard about a handful of hires outside the C-Suite as well:

Dermatology-focused LEO pharma has tapped Kasper Künzel to lead its UK operations as interim vice president and general manager, UK and Ireland. A 17-year pharma vet, Künzel will lead the unit until a permanent VP is found.
Microbiome-focused Cambridge, Massachusetts firm Concerto Biosciences appointed Didier Vingadassalom to the post of senior director, business development. Vingadassalom brings experience from SQZ Biotechnologies and Sanofi Pasteur to the role.
Over-the-counter health and wellness specialist Perrigo announced two new hires: Tobias Geiger, general manager of the Perrigo DACH Cluster (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), and Ronald van Workum, sales director for Germany, customer strategy, and implementation for the DACH cluster.
NRG Therapeutics, a UK outfit working on mitochondrial therapeutics for neurodegenerative disorders, has appointed Dr Gilles Ouvry as VP of chemistry. He comes into the newly created position with a 20-year background that includes stints at Galderma, AstraZeneca, and SCYNEXIS.

Director and advisory boards. Last but not least, we saw a slew of board announcements as usual, both for boards of directors and scientific advisory boards. Here’s the bullet points:

Osivax (whom we recently caught up with at JP Morgan) added Dr Chris Martin, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded ADC Therapeutics and Spirogen, to its board of directors.
Ratio Therapeutics (who was also featured in a recent pharmaphorum video) tapped Dr Susan Whoriskey, who was on the founding executive team of Vera Therapeutics, Moderna, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, and Cubist Pharmaceuticals, as a board member and strategic advisor.
Immunotherapy maker Scancell Holdings has appointed Dr Jean-Michel Cosséry as non-executive chairman of the board, following the previously announced departure of Dr John Chiplin. Cosséry led North American oncology at Eli Lilly prior to his retirement in 2018.
Colm Leonard joins the board of Infex Therapeutics, which addresses infectious diseases, as a non-executive board member. Leonard comes from UK government, where he has served as an advisor to NICE and the NHS.
RQ Bio, a UK company working on stronger immunisation against COVID and other infectious diseases, made two adds to its non-executive board: Dr W Ripley Ballow, previous VP at GSK Global Vaccines, and Dr Jacques Cholat, previous president at Merck Vaccines.
Telum Therapeutics, which makes antimicrobial drugs for infectious disease treatment, named Vincent A. Fischetti, head of the Laboratory of Bacterial Pathogenesis and Immunology at the Rockefeller University in New York, chairman of its scientific advisory board.