Yumanity snags a CMO as Shire keeps bleeding execs

As Takeda’s Shire buyout rumbles on, yet another R&D exec has found a new home. Brigitte Robertson, M.D., who led global development teams within Shire’s neuroscience division, is now Yumanity Therapeutics’ chief medical officer. 

Robertson is just the latest in a stream of executives to exit the rare disease specialist as it gets subsumed by Takeda. 

This year, Shire’s former R&D chief, Andy Busch, Ph.D., and Howard Mayer, M.D., its ex-CMO, vice president and neuroscience R&D head both headed to greener pastures—Busch to Cyclerion as its chief innovation officer and Mayer to Ipsen as its new R&D chief. Another alum, David Altarac, M.D., landed at the AstraZeneca spinout Entasis as its CMO having been head of global regulatory affairs, global drug safety and R&D quality and compliance at Shire. 

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Robertson spent more than eight years at Shire, first as a senior medical director and global development strategy lead and then as head of the neuroscience therapeutic area and vice president of global clinical development. In between, she had a stint at ADHD-focused Neurovance as its CMO. 

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A psychiatrist by training, Robertson got her industry start at GlaxoSmithKline before moving on to Sunovion Pharma and then Shire. 

“As Yumanity Therapeutics has now reached the clinical stage, Dr. Robertson’s experience driving the global development of multiple industry-leading neurology clinical programs will help ensure expert efficiency in our pursuit of next-generation therapeutic solutions to combat challenging neurodegenerative diseases,” Yumanity CEO Richard Peters, M.D., Ph.D., said in a statement. Peters himself is a recent addition to Yumanity, having succeeded Tony Coles, who took the helm of Pfizer spinout Cerevel Therapeutics in July.