Pandion Therapeutics has announced that Rahul Kakkar (photo) has been appointed as CEO and a member of the board of directors, succeeding company cofounder Anthony J. Coyle, who will be leaving the company in the transition. Kakkar most recently served as a founding executive at Corvidia Therapeutics. In addition, Pandion’s chief scientific officer Jo Viney will also take on the title of president, and Vikas Goyal joins the company as senior vice president of business development, bringing expertise in strategy and financing from his previous roles at SR One, Extera Partners and McKinsey & Company.

“Pandion has reached its next stage of growth with an emerging pipeline of novel immune modulators, and Rahul has the strong leadership skills and company-building expertise to guide Pandion as it transitions to a clinical-stage company,” said Alan Crane, entrepreneur partner at Polaris Partners and chairman of the board and founder of Pandion. “I also want to acknowledge and thank Tony Coyle for his many contributions and the progress he has achieved in leading Pandion through its early stages of growth to the cusp of the clinic. We wish him success in his future endeavors.”

Allogene Therapeutics has named Rafael G. Amado executive vice president of research and development and chief medical officer. A 15-year biotech and pharma industry veteran, he joins Allogene from Adaptimmune, where he served as president of R&D after serving as chief medical officer.

Sherlock Biosciences has appointed Don Haut as chief business officer and William J. Blake as chief technology officer. Haut brings more than two decades of healthcare experience to Sherlock. He previously served as chief business officer at Histogenics and before that was vice president for new business and vice president for American sales operations at The Medicines Company. Blake was most recently head of technical development and translational strategy for synthetic biology-based in vitro diagnostic technology at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Previously, he was on the founding team of GreenLight Biosciences.

Robert Hayes has been appointed as chief scientific officer at Immusoft. He was previously head of biologics at Amgen, vice president & venture leader at Centyrex, senior director of protein engineering at Johnson & Johnson and director of antibody engineering at Xencor.

PhoreMost has appointed Lorenz Mayr to its board as non-executive director. Mayr is chief technology officer at GE Healthcare Life Sciences and previously served as vice president and global head at AstraZeneca and executive director at Novartis Pharmaceuticals and Bayer Pharmaceuticals.

Gilead Sciences has announced the departures of chief scientific officer and head of R&D John McHutchison and chief patient officer Gregg Alton. McHutchison joined Gilead in 2010 and was appointed CSO in March 2018. Alton joined Gilead in 1999 and most recently has led Gilead’s corporate and medical affairs functions and developing-world access programs, as well as commercial operations in certain countries of Asia and Latin America.

Richard Peters has been appointed CEO and a member of the board of directors of Yumanity Therapeutics. He succeeds founding CEO Tony Coles, who will transition to the role of executive chairperson of the board. A veteran life sciences executive with more than 25 years of experience, he joins Yumanity from Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, where he served as president, CEO and a member of the board of directors. Before joining Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, Peters served as global head of rare diseases and senior vice president at Genzyme (Sanofi).

Newly public BridgeBio has named Richard Scheller as chairman of R&D. Scheller was previously the head of therapeutics and chief scientific officer at 23andMe. Before that, he spent 14 years at Genentech, where he was executive vice president of research and early development. Scheller was also recently named to the board of directors of Maze Therapeutics.

Christi L. Shaw has joined Gilead Sciences’ subsidiary Kite Pharma as CEO. She also becomes a member of Gilead’s senior leadership team. Shaw was previously senior vice president of Eli Lilly & Co. and president of Lilly Bio-Medicines. Before joining Lilly, she served as US country head and president of Novartis, and North American head of Novartis Oncology.

Alvin Shih has been named president and CEO of Disarm Therapeutics. He brings more than 15 years of clinical and drug development experience, most recently as CEO of Enzyvant Therapeutics. Before Enzyvant, Shih was executive vice president and head of R&D at Retrophin.

Jonathan Symonds has been named chairman of GlaxoSmithKline to help guide the expected split between its consumer health and pharma businesses. He will replace Sir Philip Hampton, who announced his departure in January. Most recently deputy group chairman of HSBC, Symonds was Novartis’s CFO from 2009 to 2013 and, before that, served as CFO at AstraZeneca for 10 years. He also serves as chairman of digital medicine technology company Proteus Digital Health and UK public–private partnership Genomics England, and is a non-executive director at Rubius Therapeutics.