18
May
2023
Anthony Mancini of Genmab on Growing Your Company Together with Partners
Anthony Mancini is the chief operating officer of Denmark-based Genmab, one of the leading innovators of antibody therapies for patients living with cancer and other serious diseases. After many years working as a behind-the-scenes innovator, Genmab is now becoming a significant commercial entity. In 2021, the company began marketing its first commercial product, Tidvak® (tisotumab vedotin) for the treatment of... Read More
30
Mar
2023
Jan Skvarka, former Trillium CEO, on Driving a Turnaround
Jan Skvarka isn’t a household name in biotech. Maybe he should be. Skvarka was previously the CEO of Trillium Therapeutics, where he led a remarkable turnaround of the Canadian small cap biotech into a leading immune oncology player. Trillium had a market capitalization of $16 million when he started. Over the next two years, he led it to a $2.26... Read More
19
Jul
2022
James Mutamba of Arrakis on Negotiating a Big Amgen Deal at Warp Speed
James Mutamba is the chief business officer of Waltham, Mass.-based Arrakis Therapeutics. It’s a biotech developing small molecules against RNA targets. Arrakis struck its first major pharma partnership in 2020 with Roche. During the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference this past January, Arrakis announced another multi-target collaboration with Amgen to discover and develop small molecule RNA degraders, a new drug class... Read More
21
Jun
2022
Why Kymab Agreed to be Acquired by Sanofi
UK-based Kymab made headlines back in January 2021. Sanofi agreed to acquire the antibody drug developer for $1.1 billion upfront, plus $350 million in potential milestones. The main attraction for Sanofi was KY1005, a monoclonal antibody targeting OX40L, a regulator of the immune system. Five months before the deal, Kymab announced it hit both primary endpoints of a Phase 2a... Read More
3
May
2022
Ram Aiyar on Finding Deal Alignment Internally and Externally
Ram Aiyar is currently the CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Korro Bio, a company using RNA editing to treat genetic diseases, including Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency. Before he took that job, he was a founder and executive vice president of corporate and business development at Corvidia Therapeutics. That company was acquired by Novo Nordisk in August 2020 for $725 million upfront, and... Read More
5
Apr
2022
Samantha Truex on How Getting Market Feedback Turned Into M&A for Padlock
Samantha Truex is the CEO of Upstream Bio, a stealthy developer of drugs for inflammatory diseases with $200 million in backing from a syndicate led by OrbiMed. Before her newest venture, Sam had an impressive career as a business development executive, including as the chief business officer of Cambridge, Mass.-based Padlock Therapeutics. That company, a developer of Protein/Peptidyl Arginine Deiminase... Read More
8
Mar
2022
Praveen Tipirneni on Watching Out for Sleeper Deals
[Editor’s Note: this is part of series of interviews with business development executives about some of the surprises, subtleties, and human aspects of biotech dealmaking.] Praveen Tipirneni is a physician by training, but more than anything it was his work in business development that put him in position to become the CEO of a publicly-traded biotech company – Waltham, Mass.-based... Read More
8
Feb
2022
Behind the Scenes of BD: Maude Tessier on a Megamerger Curveball
[Editor’s Note: this is part of a series of interviews with business development executives about some of the surprises, subtleties, and human aspects of biotech dealmaking.] Maude Tessier is the chief business officer of Boston-based Ikena Oncology, a developer of targeted small molecule cancer drugs. Like a lot of people in business development, she considers herself a “recovering scientist.” She... Read More
11
Jan
2022
Brad Prosek on Getting to Know an Unconventional Acquirer
[Editor’s Note: this is the first in a monthly series with business development executives about some of the surprises, subtleties, and human aspects of biotech dealmaking.] Cambridge, Mass.-based Constellation Pharmaceuticals lived through the ups and downs of the epigenetic drug discovery field for a decade, before it exited on a high note last year. The company was acquired by Germany-based... Read More
27
Apr
2021
Building Momentum and Leverage: How Pandion Ended Up Acquired by Merck
The news release crossed the wires 6:45 am Feb. 25. Within minutes, my inbox started filling with some awesome congratulatory notes. In a few of those notes, there were also some questions about how fast it all happened. Pandion Therapeutics, the Watertown, Mass.-based company where I worked as chief business officer for 18 months, had just been acquired by Merck... Read More