Fore Biotherapeutics has installed Matthew Ros as new CEO and director of the board nearly five months after ousting its former CEO Usama Malik, who is facing insider trader charges related to a separate company.
The functional genomics biotech announced the results of an "extensive search" for its next leader in an April 18 release. Dieter Weinand, Fore Biotherapeutic’s chairman of the board of directors and former Bayer Pharma CEO, had been serving in the role on an interim basis.
Malik was relieved of his duties after he was charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for insider trading alleged to have occurred while he served as chief financial officer at Immunomedics.
Ros now joins the clinical-stage oncology biotech from Epizyme, a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company that develops new epigenetic therapies, where he was executive vice president and chief strategy and business officer. Ros has more than 30 years of industry experience, with past leadership roles at Sanofi-Genzyme, ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, and Bristol Myers Squibb.
Fore is expected to complete enrollment in the coming months for a phase 1/2a study of its lead asset, a Class I/II BRAF inhibitor dubbed FORE8394.
In December 2021, the Philadelphia- and Jerusalem-based biotech fired Malik after becoming aware of the SEC charges, though the charges do not relate to any activities at Fore. Malik joined the company in February 2021, when it rebranded from NovellusDx after transitioning from a diagnostics startup to a cancer therapeutics biotech.
The insider trading charges stem from Malik’s time as chief financial officer at Immunomedics, a biopharma he helped lead to a $21 billion exit via acquisition by Gilead in 2020.
The federal charges are tied to stock trades made after Malik was privy to an FDA decision about one of Immunomedics' investigational drug trials. On April 6, 2020, the company publicly disclosed that the FDA had allowed the study of a breast cancer drug to stop because the therapy proved effective in trial data. Branded as Trodelvy, the drug snagged a full breast cancer nod from the FDA in April 2021.
Malik was one of the first and only Immunomedics employees familiar with the nonpublic information about the drug before April 6, according to the charges. He allegedly tipped off his partner at the time, Lauren Wood, with whom he lived, as well as three family members.
The SEC alleges that Wood, two of the family members and the spouse of a third family member all bought Immunomedics stock after the tip. Malik and Wood were arrested Dec. 1, 2021.
The securities fraud count could lead to a prison sentence up to 20 years and a $5 million fine. Additionally, the SEC seeks to bar Malik from future leadership roles as officer or director.
Trodelvy in itself has an embattled history, with a $4 million settlement proposed to resolve a lawsuit alleging Immunomedics violated securities laws by distorting the info it planned to present at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO’s) 2016 annual meeting. The SEC charges against Malik are unrelated to the 2016 lawsuit.