Former J&J R&D chief Mathai Mammen lands at burgeoning biotech FogPharma, with first trial nearing

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来源: FierceBiotech

Mathai Mammen’s job search has been months in the making, after he announced his departure from Johnson & Johnson in early August.

Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D., former head of R&D at Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical wing, is no longer one of the top executive free agents in the biopharma world.

The veteran drug developer, equipped with over 25 years of leadership experience, will be the new CEO of FogPharma, a biotech that’s gained significant investor appetite and subsequent fundraising over the last few years. The move to a startup is reminiscent of Mammen's early career, when he co-founded the biotech Theravance in the late ‘90s before taking on larger roles at Merck & Co. and J&J.

“I'm not looking for an asset to flip or anything like that,” the newly minted CEO said in an interview with Fierce Biotech. “This is about fulfilling a dream of creating a long-lived company.”

Mammen’s job search has been months in the making, after he announced his departure from J&J in early August 2022. Since then, speculation has swirled around whether he would take up various executive openings that have arisen, including reports that he was a front-runner to lead neuroscience-focused Biogen. The company ultimately hired former Sanofi CEO Christopher Viehbacher.

Mammen says he landed on Fog “a few months ago” and that the subsequent weeks have been spent getting up to speed and orchestrating a smooth handoff to incoming J&J R&D chief John Reed, M.D., Ph.D., who is himself joining from Sanofi.

Mammen arrives at Fog with the biotech well capitalized, having closed a $178 million series D round in November 2022. The company has raised more than $360 million to date.

It’s likely no surprise that at the center of Mammen’s decision is his excitement and commitment to Fog’s science. The company is in essence creating a new class of small-molecule drugs that can penetrate through cell membranes and inhibit disease-contributing, protein-on-protein interactions. Whereas monoclonal antibodies are produced to be extracellular protein antagonists, Fog is focused squarely on addressing worrisome protein interactions within the cell.

Fog's first programs are aimed at cancer, but Mammen said the platform has the potential to produce drug candidates across therapeutic areas.

“[Fog’s] first projects—this is not for the faint of heart,” he said. “These are potentially really large, important medicines if they work out.”

It's a bold statement, but Mammen insisted he means it. As a function of his heightened R&D roles over the years, Mammen has seen pitches from hundreds if not thousands of biotechs claiming to have the next best drug. That irks him.

“I really dislike exaggeration,” he said. “It’s distasteful to me.”

Fog will soon have an opportunity to show whether it lives up to the hype. The company is set to “imminently” ask regulators to enter a phase 1 trial with its lead asset, FOG-001, with the hope of patients being dosed by the middle of the year. The asset is a beta-catenin antagonistbeta-catenin antagonist, designed to stop the interaction with its transcription factor, TCF. Fog says that dysregulation of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway is evident in at least a fifth of cancers. The biotech has yet to specify which cancers FOG-001 will target first.

Mammen’s Big Pharma experience has taught him one defining lesson: When you get a whiff of success, follow the scent.

“I have a high bar for what a medicine needs to look like,” he said. “And I know that when you see it, you need to be all over it.”

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