New faces at Merus, Rubius Therapeutics and Titan Pharmaceuticals

Merus

Merus has announced that Sven (Bill) Ante Lundberg (pictured) will become the company’s new chief executive officer.

He takes over the role from Ton Logtenberg, who stepped down from the CEO role on 21 December.

Lundberg most recently served as chief scientific officer of CRISPR Therapeutics, where he lead the development of the company’s first clinical trial application.

Prior to CRISPR, he worked as head of translational medicine at Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and also served as chief medical officer of Taligen Therapeutics.

He initially joined Merus’ board of directors back in June 2019, bringing more than 15 years of experience managing and leading biotechnology research and development.

Rubius Therapeutics

Rubius Therapeutics has appointed Christina Coughlin (pictured) as its new chief medical officer.

Coughlin is a trained oncologist and immunologist with seasoned experience in developing oncology therapeutics. She joins from Tmunity Therapeutics, where she also served as chief medical officer.

At Tmunity, she was responsible for the development of the company’s CAR-T and TCR-T cellular therapy pipeline across preclinical, regulatory and clinical development activities.

She also served as chief medical officer at Immunocore, and prior to that she held positions at several major pharmaceutical companies.

This includes serving as executive director of oncology clinical development at Novartis, and asset team leader in early clinical development at Pfizer’s Oncology Business Unit.

“Christina brings extensive experience leading clinical development and translational medicine teams and has a track record of building successful drug development organisations, with a particular focus in cellular therapy and oncology,” said Pablo J. Cagnoni, chief executive officer of Rubius.

Titan Pharmaceuticals

Kate DeVarney has joined Titan Pharmaceuticals’ board of directors, where she currently serves as executive vice president and chief scientific officer.

DeVarney joined Titan over ten years ago, and has lead the development of its opioid addiction treatment Probuphine.

Prior to joining Titan, she served as senior director at Corcept Therapeutics, and as senior medical director for neurosciences within World Wide Human Health at Merck & Co.

She has also previously held positions within the neurosciences research and development and medical affairs orginisations of GlaxoSmithKline and its predecessor company SmithKline Beecham.