Shape Therapeutics CEO Francois Vigneault has departed the RNA gene therapy startup, and chief scientific officer David Huss is filling the post while the Seattle biotech searches for a clinically-experienced chief executive.
Vigneault, a co-founder of the six-year-old company, announced his departure on LinkedIn earlier this week. Huss told Endpoints News on Thursday that Vigneault and the board felt it was the “best time for him to move on and explore other things.”
David Huss“He’s one of these serial entrepreneurs and always has a lot of ideas,” Huss said. “He did a phenomenal job taking Shape to a place now where we’re evolving to the next phase of the company.”
In a phone interview, Huss said he was selected by the board because of his longstanding experience with the startup as one of its first employees and key leader across its fundraising activities, collaborations with Roche and Otsuka, and scientific direction.
The biotech has already started a search for a permanent CEO with clinical development experience and an ability to drive multiple platforms, rather than a single-asset venture, Huss said. Shape has three main platforms: RNA editing payloads, AAV capsid engineering and a “fully stable manufacturing cell line for AAVs,” he said.
While the biotech would like to fill the post within a couple months, such processes can be on the order of six months or more, Huss said.
The interim CEO confirmed that no workforce shifts nor any other management changes are expected at the 150-employee biotech.
Huss has spoken with Roche and Otsuka in recent days and confirmed their pacts are ongoing. It’s exploring Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s among other areas with Roche, and is investigating eye diseases with Japanese pharma Otsuka.
Shape is in discussions with other potential partners and those deals could inform how much financing the company decides to raise in a Series C, Huss said, which would likely kick off in the first quarter of 2025.
The biotech last disclosed a $112 million Series B in July 2021. It traces its origins to the work of bioengineering professor Prashant Mali at UC San Diego.
“With all of the recent excitement in the RNA editing space, with some of the first clinical proof of concept from Wave, I think there’s a lot of opportunity,” Huss said about potential investor enthusiasm.
On Wednesday, Wave Life Sciences said early data showed its RNA-editing therapy helped patients make a corrected version of a protein that their bodies are unable to properly make with an inherited condition known as alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.
Huss declined to disclose when Shape could first enter the clinic. At the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in January, he told Endpoints the company had “line of sight toward next year” for its first clinical trial. On Thursday, he said multiple programs are “vying for the first clinical spot,” including Parkinson’s, Rett syndrome, Stargardt disease and others.
Shape also had ambitions in tRNA — a nascent space that Flagship Pioneering’s Alltrna, HC Bioscience and others are in — but decided to sideline that work at least a year ago, Huss said.
“We’re always trying to put resources where the data looks the strongest, and once we started unlocking 90+% editing in the brain in mice, we’ve shown in NHPs [non-human primates], that’s when we really put a lot of energy into our” RNA and CNS work, Huss said.
Shape recently added to its board with former Seagen executives David Epstein and Todd Simpson.