OPL-0401

Flagship Pioneering has appointed two new CEO-partners to advise its portfolio companies and help steer its spinouts Apriori Bio and Valo Health, the life sciences incubator and investor told Endpoints News . Vaccine upstart Apriori Bio promoted its president Craig Williams to CEO, and computational-driven Valo Health named former Foundation Medicine CEO Brian Alexander as its new leader, Flagship told Endpoints on Wednesday. Endpoints reported in September that Valo’s interim CEO Graeme Bell had departed. Alexander joins Valo at a pivotal moment. The Boston-area startup expects a Phase 2 readout in diabetic retinopathy by year’s end, a spokesperson told Endpoints in September. Valo is testing OPL-0401, an oral small molecule that inhibits Rho kinase, or ROCK, 1 and 2. The biotech withdrew a different mid-stage drug last year. Alexander started at Valo on Wednesday after joining from Roche, where he was head of the Boston Roche Innovation Center and before that was CEO of Foundation Medicine, the Swiss pharma’s genomic profiling unit. Valo also promoted Brett Blackman, its business and innovation chief, to chief operating officer. At the same time, joining the board is Travis Wilson, a former Stealth BioTherapeutics CEO and now Flagship growth partner. The company launched in 2019 and was set for a $2.8 billion valuation had it followed through with a proposed combination with a special purpose acquisition company. That path to the public markets was nixed in November 2021 . The company later bought another startup, the cardiovascular drug discovery shop TARA Biosystems, and then inked a $60 million upfront and nearly $2.7 billion biobucks deal with Novo Nordisk in the cardiovascular space. Meanwhile, Williams started leading Apriori earlier this month as Flagship general partner Lovisa Afzelius focuses on other biotechs and projects at the incubator. Afzelius has been involved in multiple Flagship-founded startups, including Alltrna, Metaphore, and Generate:Biomedicines. Williams joined Flagship and Apriori last year after helping launch more than 15 vaccines and treatments during his prior roles at GSK. He also spent about three years leading the international unit of ViiV Healthcare, the HIV company owned by GSK, Pfizer and Shionogi, until the fall of 2021. Apriori unveiled $50 million in July 2022 to predict virus variants before new outbreaks occur and create vaccines for viral threats . Williams and Alexander are taking on the CEO-partner roles shortly after Flagship unveiled its $3.6 billion capital haul in July. The firm has also boosted its presence in Singapore , unveiled a few new startups and inked multiple pharma collaborations this year.