Crinetics recruits Arrowhead alum Hassard as CCO
Plus Hillhouse-backed Overland finds CTO in Xun Liu, and updates from Veracyte, Janux, Connect and more
San Diego-based endocrine disease company Crinetics Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:CRNX) hired James Hassard as chief commercial officer. Hassard joins Crinetics from Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ARWR), where, as CCO, he began building the company’s commercial capabilities and launch strategy for three rare disease programs. Before that, he was SVP of marketing and market access at Coherus BioSciences Inc. (NASDAQ:CHRS) and served in a variety of roles at Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN) over 17 years. Crinetics’ oral SST2 agonist, paltusotine, is now in Phase III to treat acromegaly.
Hillhouse’s Overland Pharmaceuticals hired Xun Liu as CTO. Liu, who will remain in his senior adviser at Hillhouse, was previously VP of Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co. Ltd. (Shanghai:600276) and president of its biomedicine development and business division, where he oversaw the development of over 50 new biological products, of which 23 entered clinical trials and three were approved. He was also a tenured staff scientist at NIH’s vaccine research center. Overland was co-founded by CEO Ed Zhang to bring innovative Western therapies to China; it has partnerships with platform companies ADC Therapeutics S.A. (NYSE:ADCT) and Allogene Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:ALLO)...