Dive Brief:
- Katrine Bosley, the former CEO of gene editing biotech company Editas Medicine, has joined U.K.-based Advent Life Sciences as a venture partner, the investment firm announced Thursday.
- Bosley, who left Editas in 2019 after leading it for five years, serves as board chairman for Arrakis Therapeutics, a Massachusetts-based drugmaker that Advent has invested in. Bosley’s ties to Advent go back further, as the venture firm was an early investor in Avila, a biotech Bosley led until Celgene acquired it in 2012.
- Also joining Advent alongside Bosley are Dominic Schmidt, who’s been a partner at Syncona for the past eight years, and Satish Jindal, previously the CEO of an early-stage investment fund called BioMotiv. Schmidt and Jindal were both appointed general partners at Advent.
Dive Insight:
Bosley played a major role in the development of CRISPR gene editing from laboratory breakthrough to drugmaking tool, joining Editas as CEO soon after its founding by five gene editing pioneers, including Feng Zhang and Jennifer Doudna, in 2013. (Doudna left soon after amid disputes over patents.)
In 2019, when Bosley unexpectedly stepped down as CEO, Editas had advanced to the cusp of clinical testing with its first CRISPR-based medicine, designed to treat an inherited eye disease. Since her departure, however, Editas has cycled through executives and struggled to advance that trial, which produced initial data in the fall of 2021.
Bosley’s post-Editas career has remained in biotech, although she hasn’t taken a CEO role at another company. She joined Arrakis as board chair 10 months after stepping away from Editas, and also serves on the boards of Genocea Biosciences and Massachusetts Eye and Ear, a specialty hospital. (Genocea’s board just voted to wind down the company’s operations and delist from the Nasdaq stock exchange.)
As venture partner at Advent, Bosley will get a close-up view of the many private biotechs the firm has helped fund. Typically, venture partners help advise firms on their investments and may play a role in running startups they decide to back.
“Venture financing is critical to the development of new medicines, more so than ever in these turbulent public market times, and it will continue to deliver real impact to patients in addition to strong financial returns,” Bosley said in a statement.
She will be based in Boston, as will new Advent general partner Jindal. Schmidt will be based in the U.K.
