Severino takes the helm at Sarepta after turbulent spell

Around five months after its long-serving chief executive Doug Ingram announced he was stepping down, Sarepta Therapeutics has named Michael Severino – who formerly held top roles at AbbVie, Amgen, and Tessera – as his replacement.

Severino takes over the CEO role today, while Ingram – who is retiring due to personal circumstances – will continue in an advisory capacity until the end of the year. It has been revealed that two of Ingram's family members have been diagnosed with myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1), one of Sarepta's therapeutic targets, in what he described as "a shocking and certainly ironic twist of fate."

He has been in charge of Sarepta since 2017, and oversaw the signing of a major alliance with Arrowhead Therapeutics to develop an siRNA-based therapeutic candidate for DM1, along with three drugs for other diseases, in 2024.

Severino's arrival at Sarepta will allow Ingram to bring forward his retirement, which was originally slated for the end of this year.

In a statement, Ingram said that leading Sarepta had been "the honour of my professional career," adding that Severino is inheriting "a great team, a portfolio of life-changing therapies, a pipeline with exceptional potential, and the financial resources to advance that science independently and at scale."

There's no denying, however, that Severino joins Sarepta after a challenging time last year, marked particularly by reports of liver toxicity and some patient deaths linked to Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) gene therapy Elevidys (delandistrogene moxeparvovec).

The company also reported failed trials involving two exon-skipping DMD therapies – Vyondys 53 (golodirsen) and Amondys 45 (casimersen) – that were designed to convert accelerated authorisations by the FDA into full approvals.

Severino comes to Sarepta from Flagship Pioneering's genome engineering biotech Tessera, where he has been CEO for four years, and spent eight years at AbbVie, where he held the roles of vice chairman and president of R&D and chief scientific officer. His CV also includes almost a decade at Amgen, where he rose to the position of head of global development and chief medical officer.

"I could not be more excited to join the team at Sarepta," he said. "The opportunity to turn scientific breakthroughs into real progress for patients has been a driving force throughout my career, and I'm thrilled to be part of an organisation so deeply committed to making a difference for the communities it serves."

He added: "I was very encouraged by the long-term data supporting our approved products, and the pre-clinical and clinical data from the siRNA pipeline programmes and the potential for best-in-class treatments."