Welcome to this week's Chutes & Ladders, our roundup of hirings, firings and retirings throughout the industry. Please send the good word—or the bad—from your shop to Fraiser Kansteiner, and we will feature it here at the end of each week.
Bristol Myers hematology chief Ahmed's out the door amid CAR-T missteps
Bristol Myers Squibb
Nadim Ahmed is departing Friday.
Ahmed, Bristol Myers’ current EVP and president of hematology, is leaving the company Friday to pursue other opportunities, a BMS spokesperson said. Chief Commercial Officer Chris Boerner will pick up Ahmed’s hematology duties, which will be folded into his larger commercial responsibilities. Ahmed joined BMS in late 2019 at his current position, previously joining Celgene in 2010, where he became president of hematology and oncology in 2017. In 2020, he helped navigate the virtual launches of Reblozyl, Onureg and Inrebic. The timing of the news is “very interesting,” one Mizuho analyst said: Ahmed’s departure comes after the company failed to get its CAR-T hopeful liso-cel approved before the end of 2020, dashing investors’ hopes of a CVR payout tied to Bristol Myers’ Celgene merger. Fierce Pharma
Moderna poaches Amgen vet as CCO, jump-starting commercial team as it rolls out COVID-19 vaccine
Moderna Therapeutics
Corinne Le Goff will come on board as chief commercial officer.
Le Goff will jump to Moderna on Jan. 19. A six-year Amgen vet, she joins from her role as senior VP and president of the company’s U.S. business. While there, Le Goff presided over Amgen’s Otezla integration, helped increase sales of its cholesterol drug Repatha and oversaw the launch of migraine med Aimovig. Before that, Le Goff held leadership roles at Roche, Sanofi, Merck & Co. and Pfizer. She joins amid the launch of Moderna’s mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine—the second to market in the U.S., but the biotech’s first-ever rollout. Fierce Pharma
Fierce 15 winner Amylyx names Frates CFO
Amylyx Pharmaceuticals
James Frates will join as chief financial officer.
Frates joins Fierce 15 winner Amylyx as chief financial officer on Jan. 25, coming off more than two decades as CFO at Alkermes. He is the cousin of the late Pete Frates, a driving force behind the viral Ice Bucket Challenge, who helped raised more than $100 million to fight amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). In fact, Amylyx used money raised from challenge—alongside support from the ALS Association and ALS Finding a Cure—to back a phase 2/3 study of its lead candidate, AMX0035. The company’s approach recently showed it could slow the decline of patients with ALS by about 25%. Meanwhile, Amylyx is expecting preliminary results from a separate study in Alzheimer’s disease before April. Release
> Gaithersburg, Maryland’s NexImmune tapped Jerome Zeldis, M.D., Ph.D., as executive vice president of research & development. The company also named Jeffrey Weber, M.D., Ph.D., as chief scientific adviser and scientific advisory board chair. Zeldis joins from Celgene, where he was chief medical officer and head of clinical research, medical affairs and drug safety, as well as CEO of Celgene Global Health. Weber, who becomes NexImmune’s first chief scientific adviser, is deputy director of the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health, where he co-directs its melanoma research program. Release
> Innocoll’s current president, Louis Pascarella, is taking up the CEO mantle. Pascarella, who’ll retain his role as president, succeeds Rich Fante, who will step down and serve as an adviser to the company’s board for at least the next year. Pascarella joined Innocoll at his current position in October 2020. Before that, he was the U.S. head of commercial operations at Novo Nordisk. Release
> Vaccine specialist Valneva named Perry Celentano as interim chief operating officer to support the expansion of the company’s manufacturing sites in Livingston, Scotland and Solna, Sweden. Meanwhile, chief financial officer David Lawrence, set to retire at the end of 2020, has been re-appointed as acting CFO, potentially until mid-2021. Celentano previously held roles at Merck, Novartis and Dynavax. Release
> San Diego-based eFFECTOR Therapeutics has tapped Mike Byrnes as chief financial officer. Alana McNulty, chief financial officer and chief business officer at the company since 2019, will keep her role as chief business officer. Byrnes was previously senior vice president of finance at Principia Biopharma, bought out by French pharma Sanofi in September 2020. Release
> Eleusis has brought on David Nichols, Ph.D., as its director of molecular pharmacology. Nichols is an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he will continue his research. Release
> Sanofi named Karl Rotthier as future chief executive officer of its to-be-spun-off API business, which it recently christened EUROAPI. Rotthier was most recently CEO of Rotterdam’s Centrient Pharmaceuticals. Release