Sethi to leave AstraZeneca to take up Oncimmune post

Tariq Sethi is set to leave AstraZeneca to join Oncimmune as chief scientific officer at the start of next month. Sethi spent the past four years at AstraZeneca, rising to the post of chief physician scientist at its clinical discovery unit.

AstraZeneca hired Sethi in 2015 to work at a translational medicine unit that handled respiratory, immunology and autoimmune programs. Sethi took on the chief physician scientist title two years later, giving him a role in target validation, patient segmentation, asset repurposing and a search for drivers of lung cancer.   

Those tasks, notably the search for lung cancer drivers, made use of the experience and networks Sethi accrued in academia. Sethi remains an emeritus professor of respiratory medicine at King’s College London and worked at the academic center and the University of Edinburgh for years before joining AstraZeneca.

The AstraZeneca appointment moved Sethi into industry, but the physician scientist already had some exposure to the field through his involvement in Galecto Biotech, a Danish biotech. Galecto set up shop around the start of the decade to build on Sethi’s research into galectin-3.

Based on that résumé, Oncimmune said Sethi is “very well placed to direct and lead [its] discovery research, translational and clinical programs effectively” in a statement to disclose the new hire. 

Oncimmune used the release about Sethi’s arrival to share details of two other new hires. Matthew Luttrell is set to join Oncimmune as chief commercial officer. Luttrell joins from Takeda, where he spent eight months following the acquisition of his former employer—Shire—managing the portfolio of hematology products in emerging markets. Earlier in his career, Luttrell worked at drug companies including Eli Lilly, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline and Novo Nordisk.

Luttrell and Sethi will arrive at a company that recently installed a new head of investor relations. Cléa Rosenfeld, formerly of Shire, took up the position in July.