Caliber Associates Fills Senior Post for Sutro Biopharma
October 4, 2021 – San Diego, CA- based Caliber Associates recently placed Werner Rubas as VP of preclinical development at Sutro Biopharma. The assignment was spearheaded by Steven Hochberg, the search firm’s founder and CEO, along with director of search Kate Rogers.
“The collective expertise of our preclinical development team is a valued strength at Sutro as we focus on execution across robust and innovative clinical-stage programs,” said Trevor Hallam, president of research and chief scientific officer. Werner brings a remarkable scope of accomplishments and experience to Sutro, with extensive research expertise in oncology and immune-modulatory therapeutics, to support the long-term potential of Sutro’s pipeline for cancer patients.”
Dr. Rubas brings to Sutro 30 years of biotech and pharmaceutical industry experience. Formerly, he was at Nektar Therapeutics for over nine years, most recently as executive director in non-clinical pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. At Nektar he provided leadership support, directed the generation of data packages for regulatory submissions of NKTR-214, NKTR-358, NKTR-262 and NKTR-255, filed a patent application for an immunotherapeutic tumor treatment method, and provided scientific input on cross-functional teams from research concepts to late stage development.
Prior to Nektar, Dr. Rubas was at Roche in Palo Alto, CA, where he was the associate director of the drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics group. Additionally, he has been a SPARK advisor at Stanford University since 2010 and lectures classes on drug development at UC Berkeley Extension. Dr. Rubas earned his doctorate from ETH, Zurich and received his pharmacy license from the School of Pharmacy at ETH.
Sutro Biopharma is a clinical-stage drug discovery, development and manufacturing company. Using protein engineering and rational design, Sutro is advancing next-generation oncology therapeutics. The company is dedicated to transforming the lives of cancer patients by creating medicines with improved therapeutic profiles for areas of unmet need. To date, Sutro has designed cytokine-based immuno-oncology therapies, ADCs, vaccines and bispecific antibodies primarily directed at clinically-validated targets for which the current standard of care is suboptimal.
Life Sciences Recruiters
Caliber Associates, founded in 1988, is focused exclusively on the life sciences sector. The firm’s leaders are highly experienced search professionals and biopharmaceutical executives who bring more than 70 years of industry experience. Caliber Associates has partnered with over 150 leading companies and has completed upwards of 700 searches, placing strategic leaders with broad therapeutic and functional reach. The firm has offices in San Diego, metro New York and Boston/Cambridge, MA.
Leadership in a Post-Covid World
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Among the roles that the firm has recently filled include chief scientific officer for GentiBio, vice president of project management at Locanabio and CEO for Caraway Therapeutics.
Mr. Hochberg focuses on recruiting CEOs, board members, C-level and strategic teams for emerging life science companies and global biopharmaceutical companies. He has assembled a small team of highly experienced, results driven search professionals. Prior to his search career, he held strategic human resources roles with Rhône-Poulenc Rorer, FMC Corp. and Shell Oil Co.
Recently, the firm placed Robert Crotty as the new executive vice president and general counsel of INOVIO Pharmaceuticals. “Rob brings significant industry experience leading the legal function of several successful biotech companies,” said Mr. Hochberg. Mr. Crotty joined INOVIO from Nabriva Therapeutics, where he served as general counsel and secretary.
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
