News - Appointments

Ireland-based SynOx Therapeutics Ltd has appointed a new chief executive and non-executive chairman as it prepares to bring the cancer therapy, emactuzumab, into a registrational trial in the US and EU.

Brian McNamara, a former Novartis executive, has been named chief executive designate of a new consumer healthcare company to be demerged from GlaxoSmithKline Plc in 2022. He is currently head of the predecessor company, a joint venture between GSK and Pfizer Inc.

VarmX BV, which is developing an anticoagulant rescue agent, has appointed Jan Öhrström as chief executive and Alex Gold to its supervisory board. Dr Öhrström, who has been chairman of the company since 2018, has extensive experience in the development of blood coagulation factors.

Megan Baierlein, an experienced biopharma executive, has joined T-knife Therapeutics Inc of Germany as chief operating officer. Headquartered in Berlin with an office in San Francisco, US, T-knife is developing T cell receptor therapies for solid tumours.

UK-based T-Cypher Bio Ltd has appointed Thomas Lars Andresen as chief executive officer effective 1 August, to lead the company’s T cell receptor therapy programmes.

Michael Hayden, a former executive of Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd, has joined the board of Oxford Biomedica Plc as a non-executive director to help guide the company’s cell and gene therapy business.

Clement Tallec, an experienced financial executive, has joined eureKARE SA, a new international investment company, as chief financial officer. He joins from the computer security firm Alsid SAS in France where he was CFO.

Amphista Therapeutics Ltd has expanded its research team with the appointment of Martin O’Rourke as head of drug discovery and James Osborne as director of chemistry. Located in Glasgow, UK, Amphista is developing small molecule drugs for cancer.

Adcendo ApS has appointed Michael Pehl as chief executive to oversee development of its portfolio of antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) for cancers. He joins the Danish company from GEMoaB GmbH of Germany where he also served as CEO.

Anne Leselbaum, an experienced cell therapy developer, is to join Bone Therapeutics SA as chief medical officer on 23 August to help oversee the Belgian company’s lead product for treating osteoarthritic pain in the knee.