Four years after he resigned as chief medical officer at Novartis in the wake of a restructuring at the Big Pharma, John Tsai, M.D., has taken up a similar role at Daiichi Sankyo.
Tsai has been appointed global head of R&D at the Japanese pharma, where he will take over from Ken Takeshita, M.D., who is stepping down April 1. Tsai previously held senior R&D positions at Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb and Amgen before taking up the CMO position at Novartis in 2018.
During his four-year stint at the Swiss pharma, Tsai led the development of 160 projects and 500 clinical trials that resulted in global approvals for 15 new medicines, according to Daiichi’s post-market release yesterday. Tsai decided to leave Novartis in April 2022 as the company kicked off an organizational restructure.
Still, he’s remained busy in the interim, serving as an executive partner at Syncona Investment Management, where he has been responsible for launching and overseeing a range of fledgling biotechs. In 2023, Tsai was appointed to head up one of these companies, the heart-disease-focused Forcefield Therapeutics.
“John Tsai will bring unique expertise to our continued pursuit of cutting-edge science and technology and will be a formidable addition to the Daiichi Sankyo leadership team as we execute our next five-year business plan and beyond,” Daiichi CEO Hiroyuki Okuzawa said in a Feb. 19 release.
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“We thank Ken Takeshita for leading the global transformation of our R&D function, including the development of the company’s industry-leading antibody drug conjugate (ADC) portfolio,” Okuzawa added.
Despite the success of Enhertu, Daiichi’s ADC adventures haven’t always gone to plan. The pharma recently discontinued internal development of a next-wave candidate featuring its second ADC platform, as well as announcing another delay for a highly anticipated phase 3 readout for the AstraZeneca-partnered Datroway.
In another setback, Daiichi and partner Merck & Co. were recently hit with a clinical hold for their B7-H3-directed ADC ifinatamab deruxtecan after logging an unexpected number of deaths due to interstitial lung disease (ILD). The FDA has since lifted the hold, and the two companies have implemented a stricter risk management protocol, including exclusion of patients with high ILD risks and additional training of investigators and clinical trial staff.