— Seattle vaccine maker Curevo Vaccine hired Guy De La Rosa as its new chief medical officer.
De La Rosa was previously an executive director at Enanta Pharmaceuticals, where he helped clinical development of assets for RSV, SARS-CoV-2, and HBV.
De La Rosa also held leadership roles at Abbot, Takeda and Janssen, where he led the development of assets for HIV, HCV, RSV, and the Dengue Tetravalent Vaccine program.
Curevo aims to develop a shingles vaccine with a better safety profile and equivalent effectiveness to the leading vaccine on the market. It’s taking on pharma giant GSK, which pulled in $2.3 billion in sales last year for Shingrix, its shingles vaccine approved in 2017. Curevo raised $26 million last year.
— Affini-T Therapeutics named Christopher A. Klebanoff as a scientific co-founder and advisor.
Klebanoff currently serves as an associate and attending member at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, as well as an investigator at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.
— Buffy Alegria announced she is joining Columbus, Ohio-based Loud Capital as a managing partner.
The longtime Seattle investor is the founder of Alegria Ventures, which backs female entrepreneurs, as well as healthcare and medicine tech for women and children. She previously was a managing director and venture investor at SteelSky Ventures. In that role she invested in more than 55 companies, 85% of which had female or minority founders.
— Linda Schwaber-Cohen joined Hone as vice president of marketing.
Schwaber-Cohen was previously head of marketing at BrightHire. She also held leadership roles at Pendio and Skilljar.
Hone was co-founded in 2018 by Tom Griffiths, Jeremy Hamel and Savina Perez. The startup, which sells workplace training software, raised $30 million in September.
— Seattle-based Chinook Therapeutics added longtime biotech exec Robert W. Azelby to its board of directors.
Azelby led Eliem Therapeutics as its president and CEO, overseeing the development of compounds to treat nervous system disorders, before stepping down earlier this year. Prior to that, he held leadership positions at Alder BioPharmaceuticals, where he served as president, CEO, and board member and played a role in negotiating the company’s sale to Lundbeck in 2019.
