Relay Therapeutics (Cambridge, MA, USA) has named Sanjiv K. Patel (right) as president and CEO, succeeding interim CEO Alexis Borisy, a partner at Third Rock Ventures, who is assuming the position of chairman of the company's board of directors. Patel brings to Relay over 20 years of life sciences industry experience, most recently serving as chief strategy officer at Allergan. Previously, he was a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group in London.

“This is a rare opportunity to join a team that is fully dedicated to treating diseases where today, no truly effective therapy exists,” said Patel. “Relay is uniquely positioned to design innovative drugs by visualizing protein motion through integrating emerging computational and experimental methods. I look forward to working with the team to build a pipeline of groundbreaking therapies with an initial focus in oncology.” In addition, Relay announced the additions of Laura Shawver and Markus Warmuth to its board of directors. Shawver is CEO of Cleave Biosciences and was previously entrepreneur in residence for 5AM Ventures, CEO of Phenomix, and president of SUGEN. Warmuth currently serves as president and CEO of H3 Biomedicine.

Juno Therapeutics (Seattle) has named Sunil Agarwal as president of R&D. Agarwal was formerly at Genentech, where he worked on infectious diseases, metabolism, ophthalmology and neuroscience. In addition, Juno appointed to its board of directors Rupert Vessey, president of research and early development at Celgene.

Agendia (Irvine, CA, USA, and Amsterdam) has appointed Patrick J. Balthrop, Sr. as non-executive chairman. Currently a director at Oxford Immunotec Global, Personalis and Concert Genetics, he was previously CEO, president and a director at Luminex.

Eric Bjerkholt has been named CFO of Aimmune Therapeutics (Brisbane, CA, USA). He joins Aimmune from Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, where he served in the same capacity.

Recursion Pharmaceuticals (Salt Lake City, UT, USA) has named Yolanda Chong as vice president of biology. She joins the company from Johnson & Johnson in Belgium, where she was a principal scientist focused on applying high-dimensional biological approaches to the small-molecule lead discovery pipeline.

Merrimack Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge, MA, USA) has appointed Daryl Drummond head of research. Drummond has held various leadership roles at Merrimack, including most recently as vice president of discovery and team leader for the company's early-stage pipeline. Prior to joining Merrimack, he was director of liposome R&D at Hermes BioSciences.

Axovant Sciences (Basel, Switzerland) has appointed David Hung as CEO. Hung was a founder and CEO of Medivation, and left in September 2016 after steering the company into a $14-billion takeover by Pfizer.

Reinhard Kandera has joined Hookipa Biotech (Vienna) as CFO. He has over 20 years of experience in the finance and healthcare industries, most recently as a member of the management board and CFO of Valneva. Previously, he was CFO and member of the management board of Intercell, which merged with Vivalis to become Valneva in 2013.

Cancer immunotherapy developer Advaxis (Princeton, NJ, USA) has named 30-year industry veteran Anthony A. Lombardo as chief business officer. He was most recently a partner at the Channel Group, and was previously president and CEO of E-Z-EM and COO of Bracco Diagnostics.

Joan Mannick (right) has been named chief medical officer at resTORbio, a subsidiary of PureTech (Boston). She joins resTORbio from Novartis, where she led the clinical program that targets pathways regulating aging to treat aging-related conditions. Prior to joining Novartis in 2010, she served as medical director at Genzyme working in multiple therapeutic areas.

CytomX Therapeutics (S. San Francisco, CA, USA) has announced the appointment of Marion McCourt to its board of directors. McCourt has over 20 years of operational and commercial leadership experience in the biopharma industry, most recently serving as COO of Medivation until the company's acquisition by Pfizer in September 2016. Previously, she was vice president of US commercial operations at Amgen. In addition, CytomX announced that Tim Shannon, general partner at Canaan Partners, will leave the board after more than four years of service.

MyoKardia (S. San Francisco, CA, USA) has appointed David Meeker to the company's board of directors. Meeker is executive vice president and head of Sanofi Genzyme. He joined Genzyme in 1994 and held positions of increasing responsibility including vice president, medical affairs, COO, and ultimately president and CEO.

Vencerx Therapeutics (New York) has announced the appointments of Robert H. Ring as CEO and Jeffrey Stevenson as chairman of the board of directors. Ring most recently served as CSO of global nonprofit science foundation Autism Speaks. Prior to that, he headed the autism unit at Pfizer Global Research and Development. Stevenson is managing partner at private equity investment firm VSS.

John M. Sorvillo (right) has been appointed CEO of ReForm Biologics (Cambridge, MA, USA). He was most recently director of business development and licensing at Amgen, and previously served as vice president of business development at Genocea Biosciences and vice president of business development at Altus Pharmaceuticals.