Pierre Beaurang hits the ground running at his 3rd startup; Mike Grey poaches Astellas dealmaker to head protein degradation player

As Ni­trome Bio­sciences — a biotech found­ed in 2017 to fo­cus on a class of en­zymes called ni­trases — re­brands to Ni­trase Ther­a­peu­tics, the com­pa­ny is al­so bring­ing on a new CEO: Pierre Beau­rang.

In Ni­trase’s state­ment ear­li­er this week an­nounc­ing its new CEO, the biotech said that the founder and now-for­mer CEO — Irene Gris­wold-Pren­ner — will stay on with Ni­trase as the new CSO. And this new ap­point­ment comes in tan­dem with the biotech’s Se­ries A ex­pan­sion, where Bris­tol My­ers Squibb be­came an in­vestor along­side Ab­b­Vie and Sofinno­va Part­ners, bring­ing the to­tal amount raised to $45 mil­lion.

If you rec­og­nize Beau­rang’s name, you may re­mem­ber him as the for­mer CBO at Nurix — and as one of the found­ing team mem­bers at Five Prime Ther­a­peu­tics two decades ago. Beau­rang first start­ed in the bio sphere at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, where he grad­u­at­ed with his bach­e­lor’s and mas­ter’s in bi­ol­o­gy and biotech­nol­o­gy — be­fore mov­ing to UC-Berke­ley to earn a PhD in mol­e­c­u­lar and cell bi­ol­o­gy.

Af­ter Berke­ley, he was a part of the team that found­ed Five Prime back in 2001 — where he spent the next 16 years work­ing up to ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment. And he was on­ly in that po­si­tion for less than a year be­fore go­ing over to Nurix.

When we spoke with Beau­rang, he told us that he took the po­si­tion at Ni­trase for three rea­sons: be­cause of the op­por­tu­ni­ty it pro­vid­ed; be­cause it fit his 3 per­son­al ‘Ps’ that he looks for in op­por­tu­ni­ties — peo­ple, plat­form, and pipeline; and be­cause it felt like Nurix and Five Prime.

‘One of the feel­ings I felt when I was ap­proached about this op­por­tu­ni­ty is that it re­mind­ed me very much of what Nurix was when I joined that com­pa­ny sev­en years ago. At Ni­trase, to say we’re the lead­ers in ni­trase ther­a­peu­tics? That’s — that’s true. When I joined Nurix, at that time, we were say­ing we were the lead­ers in lig­ase ther­a­peu­tics, and that was true at that time,’ Beau­rang said.

‘And we want­ed to own that space, just like we are own­ing the space in net­works or build­ings. And so there were a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties there. And again, the same thing — the peo­ple, the plat­form, the ear­ly pipelines — all those things were kind of aligned with them­selves,’ Beau­rang added. ‘And that takes me back to what we did at Five Prime in the very ear­ly days, again, hav­ing the right peo­ple, build­ing a plat­form that can fill the pipeline, those three el­e­ments.’

Since Beau­rang came on board at Ni­trase two months ago, he has had a few ob­jec­tives to kick off his time as CEO — from ex­pand­ing Ni­trase’s R&D in dif­fer­ent ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas to hir­ing on more em­ploy­ees and po­si­tion­ing the com­pa­ny for po­ten­tial part­ner­ships.

The San Fran­cis­co biotech has a lead pro­gram po­ten­tial­ly for Parkin­son’s dis­ease, tar­get­ing a ni­trase for the pop­u­lar synu­cle­in tar­get — which, ac­cord­ing to Beau­rang, formed the ba­sis of Ni­trase’s plat­form. The team is al­so look­ing at di­ver­si­fy­ing its pipeline in­to on­col­o­gy, fi­brot­ic dis­eases and im­munol­o­gy.

And since the com­pa­ny has on­ly 17 or so em­ploy­ees, the num­ber of em­ploy­ees will change, de­pend­ing on what part­ner­ships or oth­er projects Ni­trase takes on. As for more specifics? You’ll have to wait for those.

— Paul Schloess­er → Back in Jan­u­ary, Plex­i­um put more cash in the hop­per with a $35 mil­lion Se­ries B and made ex-Am­plyx CEO Mike Grey chair­man. The San Diego pro­tein degra­da­tion biotech has poached Per­ci­val Bar­ret­to-Ko from Astel­las to be pres­i­dent and CEO, suc­ceed­ing Swamy Vi­jayan and end­ing a 16-year run at the Japan­ese phar­ma. A mere nine months ago, Bar­ret­to-Ko took the CBO job at Astel­las af­ter three years as pres­i­dent of Astel­las US. This marks the sec­ond straight week that a pro­tein degra­da­tion com­pa­ny based in San Diego has named a chief ex­ec­u­tive fol­low­ing the ap­point­ment of Bio­Th­eryX CEO Philippe Drou­et. → Paul Hoelsch­er has an­nounced his re­tire­ment as CFO of Hori­zon Ther­a­peu­tics, which is turn­ing to one of their own to suc­ceed him. Hoelsch­er steps aside on May 16, 2022, in fa­vor of Aaron Cox, a Hori­zon staffer since 2016 who earns the ti­tle of EVP, fi­nance un­til he takes over. A for­mer ex­ec at BMO Cap­i­tal Mar­kets, Cox had been SVP of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment the last four years at the Dublin-based biotech that bought As­traZeneca spin­off Viela Bio and its neu­romyelitis op­ti­ca spec­trum dis­or­der (NMOSD) drug Up­liz­na for $3 bil­lion in Feb­ru­ary. Hoelsch­er will re­main with Hori­zon in an ad­vi­so­ry role un­til May 2023. → On the sub­ject of CFO re­tire­ments, there’s an­oth­er one tak­ing place at Proven­tion Bio as An­drew Drech­sler has de­cid­ed to hang up the cleats af­ter four years on the job and al­most 30 years in the busi­ness over­all. Proven­tion Bio has al­ready lined up Alex­ion’s Thier­ry Chauche to take over as fi­nance chief on Dec. 1, and Drech­sler will stay un­til mid-2002 as a spe­cial ad­vi­sor to CEO Ash­leigh Palmer. Chauche was pre­vi­ous­ly the head of strate­gic fi­nan­cial plan­ning and analy­sis at Alex­ion, which is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a con­sis­tent drain in tal­ent fol­low­ing the sale to As­traZeneca. Ear­li­er, Chauche was VP of FP&A at In­ter­cept and has a Big Phar­ma back­ground at No­var­tis and Bris­tol My­ers Squibb. → Fabi­an Tenen­baum has in­formed Peer Re­view that he has been ap­point­ed CEO of Is­raeli im­muno-on­col­o­gy start­up Nectin Ther­a­peu­tics as it de­vel­ops a pipeline that in­cludes AD­Cs, CAR-T and CAR-NK cell ther­a­pies. Tenen­baum, the for­mer CEO of Bellerophon Ther­a­peu­tics, has al­so been CBO and CFO of An­te­rios Ther­a­peu­tics, which was sold to Al­ler­gan for $90 mil­lion up­front at the start of 2016. → It hasn’t been peach­es and cream at all for On­copep­tides late­ly — a cou­ple weeks ago its mul­ti­ple myelo­ma drug Pepax­to got yanked from the US mar­ket, which in turn pum­meled the stock. A week ear­li­er, CFO An­ders Mar­tin-Löf re­signed for per­son­al rea­sons af­ter three years on the job, and the Stock­holm biotech has turned to An­ni­ka Muskan­tor to suc­ceed him in an in­ter­im ca­pac­i­ty be­gin­ning Mon­day. Muskan­tor, most re­cent­ly the fi­nance chief at Stock­holm-based Frisq, has been an in­ter­im group CFO be­fore at Sci­en­ta Omi­cron and So­bi, among oth­er com­pa­nies. → Last week Ipsen CBO Philippe Lopes-Fer­nan­des gave our Nicole De­Feud­is an in­side look at the com­pa­ny in the year since he took the job, and now Ipsen has giv­en Stew­art Camp­bell a dif­fer­ent role: EVP and pres­i­dent of North Amer­i­ca. Just this year, Camp­bell joined CEO David Loew’s squad as SVP and fran­chise head of on­col­o­gy fol­low­ing a 15-year run at Roche/Genen­tech that saw him take on a col­lage of roles work­ing with such block­busters as Rit­ux­an and Kad­cy­la, end­ing with his time as life­cy­cle leader, glob­al prod­uct strat­e­gy. → Swiss-based San­thera has been rid­ing the strug­gle bus for awhile, punc­tu­at­ed by a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in its staff af­ter scrap­ping a Duchenne mus­cu­lar dy­s­tro­phy pro­gram in Oc­to­ber 2020. But hit­ting the pri­ma­ry end­point with an­oth­er Duchenne drug, va­morolone, in a Phase IIb study has giv­en San­thera rea­son for op­ti­mism, and Stephanie Brown will be pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­ca start­ing Dec. 1. Brown’s ca­reer is a ver­i­ta­ble Big Phar­ma sam­pler, tak­ing on lead­er­ship po­si­tions at Take­da, Bio­gen, Mer­ck and Genen­tech. She will jump to San­thera next month af­ter clos­ing out her tenure as Ipsen’s SVP and head of the rare dis­eases fran­chise, North Amer­i­ca. → Ac­cord­ing to an SEC fil­ing Mon­day, both COO Daniel Fa­ga and CMO Joseph Lev­eque are out at Mi­rati, while chief ac­count­ing of­fi­cer Vick­ie Reed has stepped in­to the role of CFO. Af­ter his Fer­Gene flame­out, David Meek will now re­tool his lead­er­ship a month and a half in­to his tenure as CEO, shep­herd­ing Mi­rati through an NDA slat­ed for Q4 with a KRAS in­hibitor that it hopes can put a dent in Am­gen’s Lumakras in non-small cell lung can­cer. Mi­rati al­so took the wraps off pos­i­tive colon can­cer da­ta for that same drug, ada­gra­sib, in Sep­tem­ber.

→ On Dec. 3, Er­ic Mur­phy will walk away as CSO of Ni­ma Farzan’s can­cer biotech Kin­nate Bio­phar­ma ‘to pur­sue a new op­por­tu­ni­ty.’ This isn’t good­bye com­plete­ly for Mur­phy, who stays on as a mem­ber of the sci­en­tif­ic ad­vi­so­ry board at the Cal­i­for­nia-based de­vel­op­er of small mol­e­cule ki­nase in­hibitors. Af­ter a whop­ping $276 mil­lion IPO at the tail end of the 2020 gold rush, Kin­nate es­tab­lished a sub­sidiary in Shang­hai with the as­sis­tance of Or­biMed and Fore­site Cap­i­tal in May. → Fresh off a new al­liance with Sinopharm, Shang­hai-based I-Mab has shift­ed CFO Jielun Zhu to chief strat­e­gy of­fi­cer and named John Long as fi­nance lead in his stead. Zhu, the CFO since Au­gust 2018, steered I-Mab to an IPO that cracked the $100 mil­lion mark in Jan­u­ary 2020, the first Chi­nese biotech to hit Nas­daq since Saman­tha Du’s Zai Lab in 2017. Long will be­come part of I-Mab’s board of di­rec­tors and has pre­vi­ous­ly been SVP of fi­nance at WuXi AppTec.

→ San Diego-based Aca­dia — forced by the FDA to re­assess its sN­DA for Nu­plazid af­ter the agency sad­dled the neu­ro biotech with a CRL in April — has pro­mot­ed Bren­dan Tee­han to EVP, COO, head of com­mer­cial. Tee­han has swift­ly climbed the lad­der here af­ter join­ing Aca­dia in 2018 as VP, com­mer­cial in­sights, an­a­lyt­ics & op­er­a­tions; since Jan­u­ary he had held the ti­tle of chief in­sights and an­a­lyt­ics of­fi­cer. The J&J and Am­gen vet al­so logged two years as VP, provider so­lu­tions at Tesaro. → Tan­go in the night: Un­der the lead­er­ship of Bar­bara We­ber, pre­ci­sion on­col­o­gy play­er Tan­go Ther­a­peu­tics found a dance part­ner to light up the biotech ball­room in April, re­verse merg­ing with Box­er Cap­i­tal’s blank-check com­pa­ny BCTG Ac­qui­si­tion Corp. Tan­go has now tapped Marc Rudoltz as CMO and Doug Bar­ry as gen­er­al coun­sel to shore up the lead­er­ship. Rudoltz is a No­var­tis vet in clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment (with Gleevec and Tasigna) who has held the CMO job on an in­ter­im ba­sis at Wind­MIL Ther­a­peu­tics, De­ci­phera Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and Con­stel­la­tion Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. Bar­ry was pre­vi­ous­ly VP of cor­po­rate law at Alex­ion. → As ra­dio­phar­ma con­tin­ues to siz­zle, Fu­sion Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals — a Cana­di­an biotech in the space that burst on­to Nas­daq with a $212.5 mil­lion IPO last sum­mer — has se­lect­ed Christo­pher Lea­mon as CSO. Lea­mon was VP of re­search and lat­er pres­i­dent of En­do­cyte, the ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal play­er No­var­tis bought in 2018 for $2.1 bil­lion. And just be­fore he took this gig at Fu­sion, Lea­mon served as No­var­tis’ ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, ra­di­oli­gand drug dis­cov­ery. Er­ic Bu­rak, Fu­sion’s on­ly oth­er chief sci­en­tist since its launch, will now shift to chief tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cer. → Roche im­munol­o­gy and neu­rol­o­gy part­ner Jnana Ther­a­peu­tics has bumped up its co-founder Joel Bar­rish to pres­i­dent and CSO. A 27-year vet­er­an of Bris­tol My­ers, Bar­rish helped found Jnana af­ter a short stay as CSO of Achillion, and he’s al­so on the sci­en­tif­ic ad­vi­so­ry board at Ko­jin Ther­a­peu­tics, led by new CEO Lu­ba Green­wood. The Stu­art Schreiber-found­ed Jnana, fo­cused on solute car­ri­er (SLC) trans­porters, en­joyed a $50 mil­lion Se­ries B haul in Au­gust that was head­lined by RA Cap­i­tal. → Boston hear­ing loss biotech Ak­ou­os has named Sta­cy Price as chief tech­ni­cal of­fi­cer, its first ma­jor hire since ex-Spark CMO Kathy Reape joined Man­ny Si­mons’ team in ear­ly May as chief de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer. Price es­capes the dra­ma at Zio­pharm On­col­o­gy — now un­der new man­age­ment af­ter the ac­tivist at­tack brouha­ha — where she was SVP of tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tions. While with Shire, Price led phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal de­vel­op­ment op­er­a­tions and was in charge of CMC pro­gram man­age­ment.

→ Blend­ing to­geth­er with K5 Ther­a­peu­tics and gath­er­ing up a Se­ries A in Ju­ly co-led by No­vo Hold­ings and Sofinno­va Part­ners, Dan­ish neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­ease com­pa­ny Mu­na Ther­a­peu­tics has pegged Niels Plath as CSO. Plath had been a main­stay at a fa­mil­iar Dan­ish name, clos­ing out 16 years at Lund­beck as act­ing head of glob­al re­search and VP for neu­ro­science. Mu­na has its sights set on small mol­e­cule drugs for such dis­eases as Alzheimer’s, fron­totem­po­ral de­men­tia and Parkin­son’s. → It didn’t take long for Los An­ge­les-based can­cer out­fit Aa­di Bio­science to resur­face in Peer Re­view, nam­ing Scott Gi­a­co­bel­lo CFO af­ter the ap­point­ment of CMO Loret­ta Itri last week. A for­mer fi­nance ex­ec for sev­en years at Al­ler­gan, Gi­a­co­bel­lo spent the last four years as CFO of GW Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, the mak­er of the cannabi­noid Epid­i­
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