Editas Medicine has finally filled a vacant chief medical officer role, five months after Lisa Michaels, M.D., left without explanation. Baisong Mei, M.D., Ph.D., will take over the chief drug development role at the gene editing biotech.
The appointment marks the end of a monthslong search for the right candidate. As Editas sifted through résumés to fill the CMO role, Sarepta’s CMO, Gilmore O’Neill, was brought on to serve as CEO in April, leaving the chief drug development role empty.
Mei joins Editas from Sanofi, where he most recently served as senior global project head in rare disease and rare blood disorders. His résumé includes the French pharma’s hemophilia treatments Alprolix and Eloctate as well as Alnylam’s Onpattro and another hemophilia med made by Bayer, called Jivi.
He also has credits on Sanofi’s efanesoctocog alfa, which the company just touted at the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis 2022 Congress. Prior to Sanofi, Mei served as therapeutic area head for hematology clinical development at Biogen—where he oversaw hemophilia, sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia programs—and also took a turn at Bayer.
O’Neill said Mei brings a “proven track record” of moving therapies through the clinic to global regulatory filings.
“His extensive drug development experience and deep scientific knowledge make him an ideal partner to our research organization, enabling us to strategically advance our pipeline into and through the clinic,” the CEO said in a Monday statement.
Mei will oversee a portfolio of gene editing therapies at Editas, including vision loss therapy EDIT-101.
Michaels departed the CMO role suddenly in February, and the company did not provide an explanation on the departure. She had filled the position for about 15 months, during which time she oversaw the presentation of limited gene editing data for EDIT-101 in September 2021. The company touted the readout from six patients as the proof-of-concept needed to push forward in the clinic for the Leber congenital amaurosis 10 therapy. But analysts questioned the limited nature of the readout and the fact that only one of the half-dozen people in the study actually saw improvement in vision.
Mei will take over clinical development of that program, where he will need to pack on the data to prove Editas’ therapies can stand up against a slate of competitive gene editing biotechs such as Intellia.