Roger Sidhu, M.D., is staying in the chief medical officer role but switching up his employer in favor of a cell and gene therapy biotech targeting cancer and blood disorders. He jumped from Roivant Sciences to Brooklyn ImmunoTherapeutics this week.
Sidhu joins the biotech’s quest to move a cytokine cell therapy through a phase 2b trial in patients with head and neck cancer. Results are slated for the first half of next year.
The executive’s late-stage clinical development experience at companies like Gilead’s Kite Pharma will be pivotal to bringing the program forward, said Howard Federoff, M.D., Ph.D., Brooklyn’s president and CEO, in a statement.
Sidhu leaves Roivant just as the multiple-Vant-owning company goes public through a blank-check company tie-up. He has held multiple hats at the biotech since last summer, including CMO, executive VP and head of R&D.
At Roivant, Sidhu oversaw a pipeline that includes multiple mid- and late-stage assets across dermatology, hematology, immunology and neurology. While there, Roivant submitted a regulatory filing for a plaque psoriasis and atopic dermatitis topical cream, and the FDA plans to decide the treatment’s fate in the second quarter of next year.
Prior to Roivant, Sidhu was vice president of clinical development at Gilead’s Kite for about two years. His resume also includes the CMO title at Cell Design Labs, a short stint of about one year. Before that, the executive served in multiple roles at Amgen over nearly nine years, leading up to global product general manager.