Teckro has appointed Brendan Buckley as CMO. Buckley is one of a clutch of leaders hired by the Irish tech-enabled clinical research startup around the time of its $25 million series C round.
The appointments strengthen Teckro at a time when it is seeking to build on early progress that led to relationships with a who’s who of drug developers, including Novartis, Roche and Sanofi. Teckro landed the work on the strength of its mobile platform that houses information about clinical trials so study staff can quickly find answers to their questions.
From a clinical research perspective, Buckley is the headline appointment. The new Teckro CMO has worked in academic clinical practice for decades, spending more than 20 years as an endocrinologist before taking on industry roles and professorships.
Buckley’s arrival reunites Teckro’s co-founders—Jacek Skrzypiec and brothers Gary and Nigel Hughes—with an old colleague. Back in the 2000s, the trio co-founded Firecrest Clinical with Buckley. Icon bought the tech startup in 2011.
The four co-founders spent stints at Icon following the acquisition. But while the Hughes brothers and Skrzypiec left around 2014 and went on to found Teckro, Buckley took up the CMO position at Icon, leading him to stick around at the major Irish CRO until 2017.
At the time of the series C, Teckro co-founder and CEO Gary Hughes told Reuters the goal this time was to “go all the way” rather than sell up. That aspiration to build Teckro into a lasting standalone business means an IPO is on the cards at some point in the future. In unveiling the new hires, Teckro highlighted their “domain experience from publicly traded companies.”
Buckley has such experience from his years at Icon. Two of the other new hires, Kelly Brown and Sandra Blaser, acquired experience working at public companies during stints at Veeva Systems. Brown and Blaser joined Teckro as chief marketing officer and VP of customer success, respectively.
Teckro has reached outside of the life sciences sector for its other new hires. Anita Callan, formerly of airline Aer Lingus, has taken up the VP of product position, while Neil Flanagan has arrived from reinsurance company Munich Re to serve as VP of engineering.
The strengthening of the product and engineering teams positions Teckro to forge ahead with plans to use its recent $25 million series C round to further develop its product. Northpond Ventures led the round with the support of Founders Fund, Sands Capital Ventures, Bill Maris’ Section 32 venture fund and Borealis Ventures.