How family and science moved Exelixis’ new CMO to work on oncology blockbusters; While John Maraganore racks up the prizes, his old crew at Alnylam selects president

Af­ter 18 years at the FDA and climb­ing the cor­po­rate lad­der in bio­phar­ma, Vic­ki Good­man is now in the biotech C-suite for the first time. The new CMO and ex­ec­u­tive VP of prod­uct de­vel­op­ment for Ex­elix­is start­ed on Dec. 4, fly­ing out to the biotech’s head­quar­ters just out­side sun­ny San Fran­cis­co be­fore re­turn­ing home and fly­ing all the way back to Philly, where she is based.

Good­man got her pas­sion for med­i­cine as a young child — it didn’t sur­prise any­one that she ma­jored in bio­chem­istry be­fore go­ing through med­ical school and res­i­den­cy, fin­ish­ing up in the ear­ly 2000s with an em­pha­sis in in­ter­nal med­i­cine, med­ical on­col­o­gy and hema­tol­ogy. But for her, there was an un­der­ly­ing de­sire to use sci­ence to help peo­ple and work on prob­lems that im­pact peo­ple’s health.

Part of that de­sire came from per­son­al tragedy: Good­man lost her moth­er to breast can­cer right as Good­man fin­ished med­ical school. She de­cid­ed to fo­cus her ca­reer in on­col­o­gy.

It was a a piv­otal time in the field. Sci­ence was chang­ing — par­tic­u­lar­ly doc­tors’ un­der­stand­ing of bi­ol­o­gy and can­cer.

‘It was be­com­ing very clear that our un­der­stand­ing of hu­man bi­ol­o­gy — and in­creas­ing un­der­stand­ing of some of the mol­e­c­u­lar ge­net­ic un­der­pin­nings of can­cer — could re­al­ly have the po­ten­tial to rev­o­lu­tion­ize treat­ment of pa­tients with can­cer,’ Good­man told End­points News.

She not­ed No­var­tis’ ty­ro­sine ki­nase in­hibitor Gleevec for chron­ic myeloid leukeima was ap­proved in 2001, near the end of her res­i­den­cy. The first-of-its-kind tar­get ther­a­py fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­formed treat­ment of that type of can­cer, and pushed her to­wards drug de­vel­op­ment.

‘We re­al­ly watched how that treat­ment — which was mol­e­c­u­lar­ly tar­get­ed — trans­formed the treat­ment of that dis­ease from one that in­ex­orably pro­gressed,’ Good­man said. ‘We didn’t have drugs that re­al­ly af­fect­ed the un­der­ly­ing dis­ease. And ul­ti­mate­ly, you know, pa­tients would have a blast cri­sis and die of the dis­ease. You were see­ing with treat­ment with Gleevec, the tu­mors, can­cer cells just melt­ed away, the leukemic cells just dis­ap­peared.’

And go­ing in­to drug de­vel­op­ment she did. Af­ter spend­ing some time at the FDA, got hired at Glax­o­SmithK­line, where she spent 8 years work­ing in clin­i­cal and med­i­cine de­vel­op­ment be­fore go­ing over to Bris­tol My­ers Squibb in 2015. While at Bris­tol My­ers, Good­man worked as a VP, de­vel­op­ment lead be­fore mov­ing in­to the on­col­o­gy se­nior lead­er­ship team there, ul­ti­mate­ly work­ing on block­buster PD-(L)1 in­hibitor Op­di­vo.

That’s when Good­man first got ac­quaint­ed with Ex­elix­is — she helped lead the part­ner­ship be­tween BMS and Ex­elix­is on the Check­mate -9ER tri­al, which com­bined Op­di­vo with Ex­elix­is’ lead can­di­date, the now-ap­proved drug Cabome­tyx for re­nal cell car­ci­no­ma.

Af­ter leav­ing BMS in 2020, she went to Mer­ck, where she worked on PD-(L)1 block­buster Keytru­da and oth­er Mer­ck can­di­dates in in­di­ca­tions such as tho­racic ma­lig­nan­cies, head and neck can­cers, breast and gy­ne­co­log­ic can­cers, and hema­tol­ogy.

Which brought her back to Ex­elix­is. Good­man heard that the CMO po­si­tion was open, and when they reached out to her, she didn’t want to let go of an op­por­tu­ni­ty, so she went for it.

So what’s next for Good­man and Ex­elix­is? In Good­man’s own words, ‘There’s a lot to do,’ es­pe­cial­ly on the da­ta side of things. There’s ex­pect­ed read­outs for Cabome­tyx for this year — some of them in Phase III tri­als for even more in­di­ca­tions for the drug. There’s al­so pipeline ex­pan­sion and set­ting up a reg­is­tra­tional tri­al this year for XL092, the com­pa­ny’s new TKI in­hibitor, and down the road for XL102, their new CDK7 in­hibitor.

‘The oth­er key fo­cus for me is re­al­ly on the peo­ple and teams and mak­ing sure that we have the right ca­pa­bil­i­ties in place,’ Good­man said.

And it plays right in­to one of the things on her lead­er­ship to-do list: start build­ing a de­vel­op­ment team out on the East Coast — which in Good­man’s view, is a cru­cial step for fu­ture suc­cess.

— Paul Schloess­er Hap­py 2022, Peer Re­view read­ers! The new year has start­ed with an un­par­al­leled del­uge of ap­point­ments, so buck­le up: → A new era at Al­ny­lam be­gins now with Yvonne Green­street as CEO, a new siR­NA deal with No­var­tis, and a pro­mo­tion: Ak­shay Vaish­naw has been el­e­vat­ed to pres­i­dent af­ter near­ly four years as pres­i­dent of R&D with the RNAi pi­o­neer. Vaish­naw has been an Al­ny­lam ex­ec since 2006, leav­ing Bio­gen to take a job as VP of clin­i­cal re­search, and he’s been steadi­ly ris­ing in the com­pa­ny ever since.

As for Al­ny­lam’s for­mer CEO, the beat goes on with John Maraganore’s mis­sion to ‘be a grand­dad’ for oth­er com­pa­nies — Peer Re­view may as well in­sti­tute a Maraganore Me­ter to track all the gigs he ac­cu­mu­lates. What’s on tap for him now? First, he be­came an ex­ec­u­tive part­ner at RTW, as de­tailed by our Paul Schloess­er; At­las Ven­ture tweet­ed this week that Maraganore will lend his ex­per­tise as a ven­ture ad­vi­sor; next, Maraganore has been named chair­man of the board at Hemab, a Dan­ish blood dis­or­der biotech helmed by for­mer Co­di­ak ex­ec Ben­ny Sorensen; SQZ Biotech­nolo­gies al­so came call­ing this week, tap­ping Maraganore as a strate­gic ad­vi­sor; and fi­nal­ly, he will be chair of the ad­vi­so­ry coun­cil at Stan­ley Crooke’s non-prof­it n-Lorem Foun­da­tion. → Last year, Blue­print Med­i­cines earned its fourth ap­proval by cross­ing the goal line with Ay­vak­it for ad­vanced sys­temic mas­to­cy­to­sis, and joined the M&A par­ty by pur­chas­ing Lengo Ther­a­peu­tics for $250 mil­lion up­front. On April 4, Blue­print will have a change at the top as CEO Jeff Al­bers pass­es the ba­ton to Kate Hav­i­land, who was hired as CBO in 2016 and has been COO since 2019. Hav­i­land ven­tured off to Blue­print af­ter her tenure as VP, rare dis­eases and on­col­o­gy pro­gram lead­er­ship at Idera; she’s al­so led com­mer­cial de­vel­op­ment Sarep­ta and PTC Ther­a­peu­tics. Al­bers will be ex­ec­u­tive chair­man un­til the end of the year, at which time he will con­tin­ue as chair­man.

An­oth­er piece of Blue­print news: Al­so ef­fec­tive April 4, Christi­na Rossi, the com­pa­ny’s chief com­mer­cial of­fi­cer since 2018, will re­place Hav­i­land as COO. → Mike Grey’s days are up as in­ter­im CEO of Spruce Bio­sciences af­ter pinch-hit­ting for the re­tired Richard King, now en­trust­ing the com­pa­ny to Javier Szwar­cberg. Fol­low­ing a short stay as VP of R&D and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment at Hori­zon, Szwar­cberg piv­ot­ed to Ul­tragenyx, be­com­ing SVP, head of pro­gram and port­fo­lio man­age­ment. Since Feb­ru­ary 2020, Szwar­cberg had been group VP and head of pro­gram and port­fo­lio de­vel­op­ment for JJ Bi­en­aimé at Bio­Marin. An­oth­er Spruce note: Samir Gharib has been el­e­vat­ed to pres­i­dent and will re­tain his du­ties as CFO. → There will be a new sher­iff in town at can­cer bis­pecifics biotech Zymeworks as Ken­neth Gal­braith re­places CEO Ali Tehrani ‘on or be­fore’ Feb. 1. Tehrani spent 18+ years at the helm and he’ll stick around as an ad­vi­sor dur­ing the tran­si­tion pe­ri­od. Gal­braith has fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the com­pa­ny al­ready as a for­mer board mem­ber from 2009-13, and the ex-CEO of Lim­i­nal Bio­Sciences and Fairhaven Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has been an en­tre­pre­neur-in-res­i­dence with Syn­cona since last April. There’s one more bit of C-suite ac­tiv­i­ty to sort out — CFO and 15-year Zymeworks vet Neil Klom­pas has tacked on the role of COO with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. → While we were on a break (apolo­gies to Ross from ‘Friends’), Hu­bert Chen re­signed as CMO of Metacrine ef­fec­tive New Year’s Eve, leav­ing CEO Pre­ston Klassen to fill the va­can­cy. Chen found an­oth­er CMO gig at ADARx Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, an RNA edit­ing start­up that raised the cur­tain on a $75 mil­lion Se­ries B co-led by Or­biMed and SR One in Sep­tem­ber 2021. Chen joined Metacrine in Au­gust 2018 af­ter four years with Pfenex — first as CMO, then as chief sci­en­tif­ic and med­ical of­fi­cer — and has pre­vi­ous­ly been VP of clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment at Aileron Ther­a­peu­tics. Like many com­pa­nies, Metacrine ran in­to a brick wall with NASH, throw­ing in the tow­el with its pro­gram in Oc­to­ber and in­stead con­cen­trat­ing on a Phase II for in­flam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease with MET642. → The Grass is al­ways green­er: Joshua Grass has suc­ceed­ed the re­tir­ing Alain Baron as CEO of San Diego-based up­start Escient Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, with Baron stay­ing on as a strate­gic ad­vi­sor through Q1. Af­ter 15 years at Bio­Marin, where he was SVP, busi­ness and cor­po­rate de­vel­op­ment, Grass launched the rare dis­ease play Modis Ther­a­peu­tics in 2018 while he was an en­tre­pre­neur-in-res­i­dence at F-Prime Cap­i­tal. The next year, Zo­genix scooped up Modis for $250 mil­lion up­front.

→ Peer Re­view re­ceived a state­ment on be­half of Spark that Joseph La Barge has stepped down ‘to be­gin fo­cus­ing on his next chap­ter in biotech.’ La Barge jumped on board at Spark in 2013 as chief le­gal of­fi­cer and had served as CBO for al­most two years, play­ing a piv­otal role in the ac­qui­si­tion by Roche. → Si­mon Allen will be CEO of Aneb­u­lo Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, which seeks to turn the ta­bles on cannabi­noid over­dose and sub­stance abuse. He will re­place Daniel Schnee­berg­er, who an­nounced his res­ig­na­tion ef­fec­tive Feb. 1. Allen re­turned for a sec­ond tour of du­ty as CBO for Am­brx in March 2019 af­ter hold­ing the same po­si­tion at the Cal­i­for­nia biotech from 2010-15. Austin-based Aneb­u­lo, whose lead can­di­date ANEB-001 is in a Phase II proof-of-con­cept study for acute cannabi­noid in­tox­i­ca­tion, has al­so brought in Scott An­der­son as head of in­vestor re­la­tions and pub­lic re­la­tions. → At Paris-based biotech Onx­eo, Julien Mi­ara has re­placed CEO Ju­dith Gre­ci­et on an in­ter­im ba­sis start­ing this week. A mem­ber of Onx­eo’s board since Sep­tem­ber 2020, Mi­ara’s run at In­vus be­gan more than a decade ago, earn­ing a pro­mo­tion in 2018 to lead its Eu­ro­pean team. Gre­ci­et was named CEO of Onx­eo in 2011, back when the com­pa­ny was known as BioAl­liance Phar­ma un­til it merged with Topotar­get and was re­brand­ed. The DNA dam­age re­sponse biotech is now chaired by Epizyme chief med­ical and de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer She­fali Agar­w­al. → Er­ic Hobbs will be re­as­signed from CEO ‘to pres­i­dent of the An­ti­body Ther­a­peu­tics busi­ness line’ at dig­i­tal cell bi­ol­o­gy play­er Berke­ley Lights when his re­place­ment is found. Hobbs first came to Berke­ley Lights in 2013 as se­nior di­rec­tor of R&D and was pro­mot­ed to CEO in March 2017. Berke­ley Lights struck while the IPO iron was hot in the sum­mer of 2020, blow­ing by the stan­dard $100 mil­lion they ini­tial­ly pen­ciled in with a $205 mil­lion up­sized of­fer­ing. → Fran­cis Sare­na has signed on to be COO of Apex­i­gen, whose CD40 ag­o­nist soti­gal­imab is in Phase II stud­ies in a num­ber of can­cer in­di­ca­tions, name­ly melanoma. From 2011-21, Sare­na was an ex­ec with Five Prime, serv­ing as chief strat­e­gy of­fi­cer from 2016 un­til Am­gen padded its on­col­o­gy pipeline by pur­chas­ing the com­pa­ny for $2 bil­lion. This is Apex­i­gen’s sec­ond ma­jor ex­ec­u­tive ap­point­ment in the last sev­er­al months af­ter bring­ing in CMO Frank Hsu from Onc­ter­nal Ther­a­peu­tics.

→ Michael Skyn­ner has ped­aled in­to a new post this week at Bi­cy­cle Ther­a­peu­tics, shift­ing from COO to chief tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cer for CEO Kevin Lee’s squad while VP, hu­man re­sources and com­mu­ni­ca­tions Al­is­tair Milnes steps in­to the COO slot. Skyn­ner, Bi­cy­cle’s COO since 2018, first ar­rived in 2016 as VP, op­er­a­tions and dis­cov­ery af­ter his days as head of ex­ter­nal al­liances, rare dis­ease re­search unit with Pfiz­er. Bi­cy­cle put a lit­tle air in Io­n­is’ tires in Ju­ly 2021 with an oligonu­cleotide deal that saw Io­n­is fork over $45 mil­lion up­front. → Stephen Squin­to’s nu­cle­ic acid gene ther­a­py biotech Gen­nao Bio has pegged Joseph McIn­tosh as CMO and Anuj Goswa­mi as gen­er­al coun­sel. McIn­tosh was in this space a mere eight months ago when he took the CMO job at Jaguar Gene Ther­a­py, spend­ing the pre­vi­ous year as the med­ical chief of Aru­vant. This is Goswa­mi’s first for­ay in­to biotech af­ter a 21-year ca­reer in pri­vate prac­tice with Philade­phia-based Bal­lard Spahr. → Rare dis­ease play­er Ful­crum Ther­a­peu­tics has found a new CFO in Es­ther Ra­javelu, who most re­cent­ly served as a se­nior eq­ui­ties re­search an­a­lyst at UBS. Ra­javelu’s ex­pe­ri­ence al­so in­cludes stints at Deutsche Bank and Op­pen­heimer & Co. Ful­crum’s stock price went through the roof last sum­mer on the strength of da­ta for its sick­le cell drug FTX-6058.

→ New York’s In­dap­tus Ther­a­peu­tics has tapped Boy­an Litchev as CMO, the lat­est move in a whirl­wind of stops the last five years. Let’s break it all down: Litchev had on­ly led glob­al clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment at Shore­line Bio­sciences since the sum­mer of 2021, and as we told you then, he spent his pre­vi­ous 16 months as head of clin­i­cal de­vel­op
https://endpts.com/how-family-and-science-moved-exelixis-new-cmo-to-work-on-oncology-blockbusters-while-john-maraganore-racks-up-the-prizes-his-old-crew-at-alnylam-selects-president