Soon after media storm fades, Chimerix CEO Moch is out the door

Kenneth Moch

Just weeks after enduring a storm of controversy triggered by his initial refusal to provide a potent but experimental antiviral to a dying child under a compassionate use program, Chimerix CEO Ken Moch is out. The company announced that Moch had resigned--completely unexpectedly--to "pursue other interests" as the board introduced a new CEO to run the company.

Moch was credited with executing a successful IPO last year, one of the first offerings to demonstrate renewed optimism for biotech stocks. And he's been an outspoken champion of their experimental antiviral brincidofovir.

Chimerix ($CMRX) and Moch, though, found themselves at the center of a media hurricane as cable news shows turned up to question the company's decision to refuse a compassionate use demand from the desperate parents of 7-year-old Josh Hardy, who was at death's door following cancer treatments that had devastated his immune system. Moch initially said the biotech couldn't afford to handle all of the compassionate use requests it receives, but then relented in Hardy's case, compromising with a pilot study that enrolled the boy as its first patient.

By all accounts, young Hardy has since been on the mend.

M. Michelle Berrey

The board is moving up Moch's chief medical officer, M. Michelle Berrey, to fill the executive suite at the Durham, NC-based biotech. Berrey had earlier been CMO at Pharmasset before Gilead ($GILD) scooped up the company and a hep C drug now known as Sovaldi for the princely sum of $11 billion.

Berrey will now have broader responsibilities for steering brincidofovir through clinical trials and on to regulators.

The antiviral is a lipid-conjugated version of cidofovir--one of Gilead's antivirals--that's specifically designed to amp up the antiviral impact with a pill while sparing kidneys from a toxic threat. Its ability to get into cells more effectively than cidofovir has vastly improved its punch against all 5 DNA viral infections but has also raised questions about whether it could prove a threat to all rapidly growing cells, including cells in the bone marrow.

"We are now entering a critical stage of the clinical development of brincidofovir. Our goal is to complete the requirements for regulatory approval of brincidofovir as rapidly as possible and we believe Dr. Berrey has the qualifications and expertise in abundance to accomplish that objective," said Ernest Mario, the chairman of the board at Chimerix. 

- here's the release

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