Laurent Audoly, president and CEO of Kymera Therapeutics, is leaving “to pursue new entrepreneurial opportunities,” the Cambridge, MA, company announced Monday. Co-founder and chief scientific officer Nello Mainolfi has been appointed president, overseeing all company operations. He will also continue as CSO. Kymera said a search for a new CEO is underway. In other moves, […]

Mark Litton has been appointed chief operating officer of Seattle-based Athira Pharma. Litton is the co-founder of Alder BioPharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALDR), and was chief business officer at that company until last July. Athira, previously known as M3 Biotechnology, is developing treatments for neurodegenerative disorders. The company is currently enrolling patients in a Phase 1b study […]

The life science and healthcare worlds are vast. We often talk about impact in terms of millions of patients and billions of dollars. But these worlds can be small, too. It seems at times we’re never far removed from any one person, through their published papers, social media connections, friends, colleagues, or people they’ve mentored. […]

A record $300 million was invested in Wisconsin ventures last year, as maturing businesses pulled in larger funding rounds. But a continued decrease in the number of firms raising their first outside capital could signal trouble for the state’s pipeline of budding startups. Those are some of the key takeaways from the latest Wisconsin Portfolio, […]

In May, Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) revealed intriguing data from the first-ever human trial of a drug that targets tumors with a specific mutation to the gene KRAS, which occurs in about one-quarter of all cancers. Amgen showed 30 percent of lung cancer patients with the mutation saw their tumors shrink. Even though the data were […]

[Updated 7/8/19, 9:22 am. See below.] Gene therapy for hemophilia is as close as it’s ever been to market. And the race to get there got more heated this past weekend at a medical meeting in Australia. At the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis meeting in Melbourne, Sangamo Therapeutics (NASDAQ: SGMO) and partner Pfizer […]

As we pause to celebrate the 4th of July, another birthday is top of mind: A third baby whose embryonic DNA was edited by Chinese scientist He Jiankui. As Xconomy reported in November, He hinted about a second pregnancy after his infamous revelation of twins altered with CRISPR gene editing tools. That second pregnancy—a third […]

BioAtla, which is developing antibody drugs, has hired Eric Sievers as its chief medical officer. He was most recently CMO at Toronto’s Trillium Therapeutics (NASDAQ: TRIL), according to a news release from BioAtla. Prior, Sievers spent nine years at Seattle Genetics (NASDAQ: SGEN), where he was involved in the development and approval of brentuximab vedotin […]