Gene therapy biotech Voyager snags a former Lilly exec to take the reins

Third Rock Ventures' Voyager Therapeutics has named Steven Paul as its full-time CEO, tasking the longtime Eli Lilly ($LLY) R&D exec with shepherding its gene therapy candidates into clinical trials. Paul spent 17 years at Lilly in various leadership roles--president of the Lilly Research Laboratories--before handling gene therapy work as director of the Appel Alzheimer's Disease Research Institute and serving as a professor of neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College, eventually ending up as a venture partner at Third Rock. All of that experience will come to bear at Voyager, Paul said, as the biotech develops one-time treatments for CNS ailments including Parkinson's disease, Friedreich's ataxia and ALS. Voyager set off about 6 months ago with $45 million from Third Rock. More