Bill Grossman is leaving Arcus Biosciences to take up a position at Gilead, putting him in charge of the Big Pharma’s collaboration with his former employers.
Grossman is currently chief medical officer at Arcus. Effective July 26, he will transition to the role of SVP of oncology clinical research at Gilead. The Foster City, California-based biopharmaceutical company is tasking Grossman with leading co-development and co-commercialization of the agreement with Arcus.
Gilead has put the person who oversaw Arcus’ clinical development in charge of its alliance with Arcus.
“In his new role, Grossman will be Arcus’s point of contact at Gilead for development activities across the Arcus programs, and this move reinforces both companies’ commitment to working together to advance important new medicines for people with cancer,” Arcus wrote in a statement.
The transfer of Grossman comes around 14 months after Gilead entered into a 10-year agreement to co-develop cancer drugs with Arcus. The deal gave Gilead access to multiple investigational assets, including Arcus’ TIGIT program.
Arcus shared an update on the TIGIT program last month without disclosing the data people wanted to see to evaluate the prospects of the candidate. Gilead is expected to decide whether to opt in to the program later this year. Having helped Arcus generate phase 2 data that will inform the decision, Grossman looks set to be at Gilead by the time the opt-in decision is made.
With Grossman moving on, Arcus has put Kartik Krishnan, currently SVP of clinical development, in charge of its clinical trial program. Grossman will work closely with his former colleague Krishnan in his new role at Gilead.
Arcus said Krishnan started to take on some of Grossman’s responsibilities in December, when Grossman began consulting for Gilead while continuing to work as chief medical officer at Arcus.