New hires at FibroGen, Saniona and Turbine

FibroGen 

FibroGen has appointed Enrique Conterno (pictured below, left) as its chief executive officer, after he recently retired from his role as senior vice president for Eli Lilly and president of Lilly Diabetes and USA.

He assumes the role from interim CEO Jim Schoeneck, who took the helm at the company after its founder and long-term CEO Tom Neff passed away unexpectedly.

Conterno joined Eli Lilly in 1992, and went on to spend two decades working at the company, both in the US and internationally.

He held a number of positions across sales, marketing, finance, business development and generally management at the company.

“I am energised to join a company with such an innovative pipeline, as well as the first-in-class asset roxadustat, which has the potential to change the treatment paradigm in anaemia that has seen little progress in the last 30 years,” said Conterno.

“This is a tremendously exciting time for FibroGen and I am grateful to have the opportunity to work with this team as we continue to apply groundbreaking science with the goal of helping patients around the world,” he added.

Saniona 

Saniona, a clinical stage biotech focused on rare diseases related to eating disorders and the central nervous system, has appointed Rami Levin (pictured below, right) as chief executive officer.

In his new role as CEO, Levin will oversee Saniona’s transition into a fully-fledged biopharmaceutical company.

He is a veteran biotech leader, with over 23 years of experience in rare diseases and CNS.

Most recently, Levin worked as the president of Sobi, where he was responsible for building the organisation and developing the strategic growth pillars of the company.

Prior to Sobi, Levin held commercial leadership roles of increasing strategic importance at Merck Serono across a number of countries, including the US, Sweden, Switzerland and Israel.

He has extensive experience of the regulatory, access, commercial and financial environment for developing orphan drugs in the US – a region which is directly relevant to Saniona’s next phase of development.

Turbine

Turbine has announced the formulation of its scientific advisory board (SAB) with the appointments of Annalisa Jenkins, Mihriban Tuna and Alan Barge.

The first members of the SAB bring 70 years of pharma and biotech leadership expertise and drug development insight combined, with over 20 approved drugs between them.

The three advisors will play a crucial role in Turbine’s aim to redesign anticancer drug discovery and development, by simulating complex biological problems before crucial points at which drug discovery programmes typically fail.

Jenkins is a biopharma thought leader with over 25 years of industry experience, whose leadership roles have included global head of R&D at Merck Serono, and several senior positions at Bristol-Myers Squibb.

She is also a committee member of the Science Board to the US Food & Drug Administration.

Tuna currently serves as chief scientific officer at Adaptate Biotherapeutics, and has over 15 years of experience in biologics drug discovery and development.

Previously, she held the position of senior vice president of drug discovery at F-star, overseeing all internal and collaborative bispecific antibody discovery programmes.

Barge is a partner at Delin Ventures, the leading investors behind Turbine’s recent €3m seed funding round, and has also led pharmaceutical R&D teams for over 30 years.

He was previously VP of clinical development and head of oncology and infection at AstraZeneca where he was responsible for building and managing the company's global oncology portfolio.

In that role, Barge oversaw the company’s acquisition of Kudos, which yielded the drug Lynparza (olaparib).