Welcome to this week's Chutes & Ladders, our roundup of significant leadership hirings, firings and retirings across the industry. Please send the good word—or the bad—from your shop to Darren Incorvaia, Marissa Russo or Donavyn Coffey, and it will be featured here at the end of each week.
GSK vet takes the helm at CSL
CSL
Deborah Waterhouse, the longtime head of GSK's HIV business ViiV Healthcare, is departing to lead
Australian pharma CSL as its new CEO.
Waterhouse joins CSL as the company attempts to right the ship in rough waters. In 2026 alone, the company has faced downgraded earnings, CEO changes, a $5 billion hit to its balance sheet, and plummeting stock prices all compounded by growing competition and price pressure for some of its biggest earners.
Waterhouse brings three decades of experience at GSK. She’s been CEO of ViiV since 2017 and president of GSK Global Health—GSK’s infectious disease business focusing on low- to middle-income countries—since 2022. And prior to ViiV, Waterhouse was president of GSK Australia and New Zealand. Lynn Baxter, currently president of GSK Europe, will take over Waterhouse’s roles at GSK in November.
“In February this year we said CSL's next chief executive would need the ability to continue the momentum of our commercial performance, renew our pipeline and simplify our operations without losing the science and purpose that built this great company," CSL Chair Brian McNamee said in a statement. "Deborah has done all those things on multiple occasions.”
Waterhouse starts her appointment as CEO on February 1, 2027. Story
Ironwood chips Gaskins up to CEO
Ironwood Pharmaceuticals
After a 17-year stint across multiple roles with Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Tom McCourt will be retiring as CEO. McCourt had been with the company since 2009, first in the position of chief commercial officer before working his way up to chief executive in 2021.
The Boston biotech’s current chief commercial officer, Tammi Gaskins, will assume the role of CEO effective in the new year. At Ironwood, Gaskins has had a hand in the recent turnaround of the company's GC-C agonist Linzess for patients with irritable bowel syndrome with constipation or chronic idiopathic constipation. She has also led commercial development efforts for the investigational apraglutide, a once-weekly GLP-2 analog in phase 3 development to treat adults with short bowel syndrome.
Prior to joining Ironwood, Gaskins spent some 20 years with AstraZeneca, where she held multiple commercial leadership roles. Release
CytoDyn secures new CEO to propel its lead antibody therapy
CytoDyn
Vancouver, Washington-based CytoDyn has appointed Robert Hoffman as its new CEO.
The oncology biotech is hoping to advance its lead asset leronlimab, a humanized monoclonal antibody targeting the CCR5 receptor, into the clinic for multiple cancers including colorectal and metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. Leronlimab was originally brought forward as a treatment for HIV but struggled in that space, prompting CytoDyn to pull an approval application in a specific indication there in 2022 due to issues with data from the CRO that had overseen a successful phase 2b/3 trial.
“We are entering a transformational period for the Company, with opportunities to build on the scientific and clinical progress achieved in recent years,” Hoffman said in a release.
Hoffman will take the place of Jacob Lalezari, M.D., who had served as CEO since November 2023, and who will remain with CytoDyn as head of research and translational sciences. Release
> Sernova Biotherapeutics and Seraxis Holdings have tapped FDA vet Patricia Beaston, M.D., Ph.D., as the new chief medical officer of Seraxis, with the goal for Beaston to ultimately serve in that role after a planned merger that will see the companies combine to form BetaNova Biotherapeutics. Seraxis is currently advancing a stem cell-derived pancreatic islet cell therapy, SR-02, to the clinic for type 1 diabetes. Release
> Hearing health biotech Sensorion named Peter Weber, M.D., an otologist and neurotologist, as its new chief medical officer. Release
> Flagship Pioneering company Abiologics has appointed Per Jr. Greisen, Ph.D., as its new chief artificial intelligence officer. Release
> Matthew Fyfe, Ph.D., has been tapped as the new chief scientific officer of nuclear medicine house Orano Med. Release
> Massachusetts biotech Voyager Therapeutics is shuttling Robin Swartz, its current chief business and operating officer, to CEO. Swartz, who has immediately taken up the role of president, will replace Alfred Sandrock, M.D., Ph.D., as chief executive in Q1 2027. Release
> RNAi expert Craig Blanchette, Ph.D., is leaving Switch Therapeutics to become senior vice president of research at Pliant Therapeutics, where he will help advance the company’s proprietary integrin-mediated delivery platform. Release
> Precision oncology biotech Foundation Medicine plucked Chadi Nabhan, M.D., as its new chief medical officer. Nabhan will be tasked with leading the biotech’s global medical affairs and clinical development. Release
> Adial Pharmaceuticals appointed David Rubenstein, M.D., Ph.D., as its new chief scientific officer to lead development on the company's AhR agonist candidate for ulcerative colitis. Previously the chief scientist at Dermavant, Rubenstein is one of very few drug developers who has shepherded an AhR agonist from lab to patients, Adial said in a statement. Release