Mirati is on the cusp of emerging as the sole challenger against Amgen in the suddenly hot KRAS inhibitor market and thinks it has the man to take it across the finish line. But new leadership often means shakeups, and now two Mirati execs are being shown the door.
Mirati CMO Joseph Leveque and Daniel Faga, the biotech’s chief operating officer and principal financial officer, have both departed the company as it enters the homestretch for filing its KRAS drug adagrasib with the FDA, Mirati revealed in an SEC filing Monday.
Details on the departures are slim, with Mirati noting the decisions on both positions were made Oct. 28. In Faga’s place, Mirati accounting lead Vickie Reed will step into the principal financial officer role without an increase in pay, the biotech said.
The shakeup comes a little over a month after Mirati appointed David Meek, a former CEO at FerGene and Ipsen, to the head role, replacing founding CEO Charles Baum.
Meek, who was mostly recently ousted from FerGene after the biotech imploded in spectacular fashion earlier this year, came on board right as Mirati races to an expected filing for adagrasib this quarter, looking to keep the heat on Amgen and its own KRAS inhibitor Lumakras. The company rolled out Phase II data for adagrasib in non-small cell lung cancer in September it says will serve as the basis for that filing, as well as winning mid-stage colon cancer data at ESMO21.
Leveque had served as CMO at Mirati since May 2020, jumping over from Synthorx, where he served as CMO for a little under two years. Prior to that, Leveque jumped around between a spate of biotechs and Big Pharmas, including EMD Serono, Bristol Myers Squibb, Onyx and Amgen.
Faga had been with Mirati since January 2020, previously holding the chief business officer role at Spark Therapeutics for more than three years. He was previously a managing director at Centerview Partners and an associate at Merrill Lynch.
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