Guardant Health: Helmy Eltoukhy, AmirAli Talasaz, Meghan Joyce
Helmy Eltoukhy, CEO of Guardant Health, and AmirAli Talasaz, the company's president and chief operating officer, will serve as co-CEOs going forward. Both will also continue to be company directors, and Eltoukhy will assume the role of board chairman.
In addition, Meghan Joyce has been appointed as an independent director of Guardant. She is chief operating officer and executive VP of platform at Oscar Health. Prior to that, she held several roles at Uber Technologies, most recently regional general manager of the US and Canada. She holds a master's degree from Harvard Business School and a bachelor's degree from Harvard College.
Foundation Medicine: Sanket Agrawal
Foundation Medicine announced that it has appointed Sanket Agrawal as its chief biopharma business officer. Agrawal will lead and expand the company's set of collaborations with biotech and pharmaceutical partners to support the development of innovative cancer treatments.
He previously served at Amgen in roles related to research and development and commercial oncology, and as a general manager. He led the development of sotorasib (Amgen's Lumakras), a targeted therapy for patients with non-small cell lung cancer driven by any KRAS mutation.
Earlier in his career, he held leadership positions at Oracle Health Sciences (formerly Relsys) and management consultant firms.
PGDx: Jamie Platt, Maggie Rougier-Chapman
Personal Genome Diagnostics has appointed Jamie Platt as chief operations officer, charged with overseeing the firm's product and services operations and supporting the advancement and global impact of the PGDx Elio product line. Most recently, Platt served as COO at Inivata. She also held roles as VP of genomic solutions at MPLN and director of advanced sequencing at Quest Diagnostics. Platt serves on the boards of Pictor, Mobility Health Lab, and DxTerity Diagnostics. She earned her Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology from Oregon State University and completed post-doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
The company has also appointed Maggie Rougier-Chapman as its senior VP and head of marketing and commercial strategy. Most recently, Rougier-Chapman served as head of oncology product management and strategy at Invitae, having joined the firm through its acquisition of ArcherDX, where she served as executive VP of commercial operations. Prior to that, she was VP of global marketing at Bionano Genomics; spent several years in management roles at Agilent Technologies’ diagnostics and genomics division; and held various commercial roles at Advanced Cell Diagnostics, Cogenics, Incyte Genomics, and Stratagene. Rougier-Chapman holds an M.S. in molecular cancer biology and a B.S. in biology with a certificate in genetics from Duke University.
GenapSys: Ryan Walters
GenapSys has named Ryan Walters as chief product officer, overseeing development of the company's next-generation sequencing platform. Prior to GenapSys, Walters served in a series of roles of increasing responsibility at ArcherDX (now part of Invitae), most recently as executive VP of R&D. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado and a B.S. from Colorado State University.
For additional recent items on executive appointments and promotions in omics and molecular diagnostics, please see the People in the News page on our website.