— Mark Adams is stepping down as chief operating officer of Adaptive Biotechnologies, the company said today in a regulatory filing.
Adams joined the Seattle-based biotech giant more than three years ago. The filing stated that “his service is being terminated by May 2023.”
His role will be absorbed by Adaptive’s current president, Julie Rubinstein.
“Mark Adams has been instrumental in scaling Adaptive’s operations over the past several years, including putting in place world-class technology and operations leaders,” Adaptive said in a statement to GeekWire. “He is an incredible leader and cultural champion, and we are grateful for his contributions to Adaptive.”
Adams was previously managing director of healthcare advanced analytics at SVB Securities and was a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton. He was first hired by Adaptive as chief technology officer.
Rubinstein joined Adaptive in 2011 as senior vice president of corporate and business development and became president seven years later. She previously held commercial development roles at Pfizer.
Adaptive’s personnel moves come more than a year after the public company laid off about 100 people, or 12% of its workforce at the time, citing “current market conditions.” Last year the company also hired Tycho Peterson as chief financial officer, and chief medical officer Lance Baldo resigned. The Seattle-based company reported 20% growth in revenue for 2022.
— Praveen Seshadri is CEO of a new startup, Thunk.AI. Seshadri sold his previous startup, AppSheet, to Google Cloud in 2020 and was most recently a distinguished software engineer at the tech giant.
Thunk.AI “thinks differently about productivity, knowledge, and work,” Seshadri said on LinkedIn. He told GeekWire the company has raised seed funding. His other co-founders also worked at AppSheet.
Seshadri published a blog post in February after leaving Google, suggesting that the company needs an “intervention” as it faces pressure from Open AI and Microsoft.
— Sana Biotechnology named two new research leaders.
- Douglas Williams joins as president of R&D. Williams was previously CEO of Codiak BioSciences and held leadership positions at Immunex, Seattle Genetics and Biogen. He was also CEO of ZymoGenetics, a Seattle company bought by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2010.
- Gary Meininger joins as chief medical officer. Meininger was previously an executive at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson and Merck, and was a clinical assistant professor at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
As part of the transitions, Sana’s longtime chief medical officer, Sunil Agarwal, will step down from the company.
— Sonoma Biotherapeutics announced the formation of its scientific advisory board. Members include:
- Sonoma co-founder Alexander Rudensky, chair of the immunology program at the Sloan Kettering Institute.
- Sonoma co-founder Qizhi Tang, director of the Transplantation Research Laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco.
- 23andMe chief scientific officer Joseph Arron.
- Benaroya Research Institute immunologist Daniel Campbell.
- UC Los Angeles associate professor Yvonne Chen.
- New York University professor Dan Littman.
— Ozette Technologies hired Ashley Wilson as head of immunology. Wilson was previously director of therapeutics correlative science at Seattle Children’s Therapeutics.
— Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center immunologist Philip Greenberg is the incoming president of the American Association for Cancer Research. Greenberg is also the co-founder of Affini-T Therapeutics, and spoke about his vision for the company earlier with GeekWire.
— Zymeworks appointed Derek Miller to its board of directors. Miller is an independent commercial and business development consultant and CEO of a cell and gene therapy imaging startup spun out of the University of Pennsylvania.
— Tune Therapeutics, which has locations in Seattle and Durham, N.C., hired Zachary Hale as general counsel, and Derek Jantz as chief technology officer. Hale is a former senior VP at Juno Therapeutics and Jantz was previously chief scientific officer at Durham, N.C.-based Precision Biosciences.
