Changing Faces: Pharma-adjacent hires in Dec ’22 and Jan ’23

Yesterday, we hit you with a big list of people moves in pharma to catch up on from over the holidays, but December and January also saw numerous personnel announcements in digital health companies and pharm-adjacent industries, including manufacturing, clinical trials, diagnostics, and software. Read on for the full list – we promise it’s not quite as long as yesterday’s.

CN Bio welcomes new CEO. Organ-on-a-chip company CN Bio, which offers a number of microphysiological systems to aid in preclinical development, has hired Dr Paul Brooks as its new CEO. The company says the hire signals a shift in the company’s commercial development as Brooks, formerly CN Bio’s chief business officer, leads the company’s global expansion. Previous CEO Dr David Hughes moves to the company’s scientific advisory board.

New CEO in at CluePoints. Software vendor CluePoints, which supports Risk-Based Quality Management and Data Quality Oversight in clinical trials, also announced a CEO change, with co-founder Francois Torche stepping back into a portfolio strategy role, while Andy Cooper takes the reins as CEO. Cooper boasts roles at Oracle, Medidata, and Clario among his bona fides.

International Society of Pharmacometrics elects new president. Vijay Ivaturi, co-founder and chief science officer of University of Maryland School of Pharmacy spinout Pumas.AI, has been elected president of the International Society of Pharmacometrics. He will serve as president-elect for one year in 2023, then as president for a further two years.

Clinical trial companies focus on operations. Chief Operating Officer was the number one C-Suite title we saw cross the wires in December and January, with four COO appointments among clinical research organisations and clinical trial technology vendors.

• Clinical trial software company Elligo Health Research tapped Dawn Sauro, a veteran with 30+ years of experience across the clinical trial ecosystem, as COO.
• Another clinical trial management software company, UK-based encapsia, hired Francis Destin to put his 20 years of experience in data-related projects to work as COO.
• Signant Health, a Philadelphia-based outfit focused on evidence generation in trials, announced the appointment of Graciela Racaro, a long-time fixture at CRO Parexel, to its top operations job.
• CRO Emmes announced three big hires in the two months, a COO, Wendy Buckland, among them. The company also welcomed Ching Tian, its new chief innovation officer, and Matt Honan, VP and head of corporate development.
• Clinical trial enrolment specialist Massive Bio didn’t hire a COO, but they did make two C-Suite hires and two director-level hires in December. Özgür “Oz” Huner, formerly of Verily Life Sciences, joined as chief product officer; Erkan Terzi secured a promotion to chief marketing officer; and Gretchen O’Neill and David Henka came on as executive director of clinical operations and director of global strategic partnerships, respectively.
• Finally, CRO Worldwide Clinical Trials tapped Pete Duprat as senior vice president, commercial.

Leadership moves in preclinical and diagnostics companies. Digital health companies focused on diagnostics and preclinical development had several announcements in December and January.

• Drug discovery AI company Owkin Health made a high-profile board appointment, bringing Jerome Pesenti, former head of AI at Meta, onboard.
• Another high-profile board appointment came at Swedish home diagnostics firm Capitainer, which tapped Mathias Uhlén, renowned for his work in large-scale quantitative analysis of proteins.
• AI-driven drug discovery and development company insitro brought on Philip Tagari, fresh off a 24-year career in research at Amgen, as chief science officer.
• Yet another AI drug discovery company, Optibrium, is building out its commercial team with a new chief commercial officer, Steve Yemm.
• Parallel Bio, which helps with preclinical development by replicating the human immune system in a petri dish, hired long-time GSK vet Dwight Morrow as VP and head of platform. The company also brought on Darrell Irvine and Nima Aghaeepour as its first scientific advisors.
• CNS biomarker startup Vistim Labs hired Greg Acceturo as head of marketing.
• Elucid, a Boston-based company focused on AI-powered imaging analysis, hired Scott Burger as chief commercial officer.
• Swedish blood-based diagnostics company Immunovia brought on Lara E. Sucheston-Campbell, previously of Roche Molecular Systems, as head of clinical and medical affairs.

New hires signal growth at concierge providers. We saw a couple of digital health hires at tech-enabled concierge provider services. Those include Fountain Life – which hired Helen Messier as chief clinical and scientific officer and Shawn Buchheit as chief operating officer – and Kry, which hired Lukas Didon as vice president of commercial and partnerships. Additionally, behavioural health telemedicine start-up Luna tapped Amber Mauro as head of therapist acquisition.

Miscellaneous hires in manufacturing and retail. Just a few more to close out the roundup.

• Acurabio, a CDMO, hired Carolyn Cheer as VP of business development.
• Green Bioactives, which manufactures plant biomolecules for use in pharma and other industries, tapped Chris Meaney as chief business officer and Andy Hall-Ponselé as head of operations.
• Mission Street, a mixed-use real estate specialist for the life sciences sector, added Monograph Capital partner Tim Funnell to its advisory board.

Stay tuned tomorrow for our final December-January roundup instalment, looking at agency and comms hires.

Image sourced from Pexels.