40

Sanofi has appointed Paulo Fontoura as Executive Vice President, Global Head of Research & Development Pharma, effective 1 September 2026. Fontoura has more than 25 years of experience spanning academic medicine, translational science, clinical development and pharmaceutical innovation. He will be a member of Sanofi's Executive Committee and will report to CEO Belén Garijo.
Fontoura will lead Sanofi's end-to-end innovation engine, spanning research, translational medicine, clinical development and regulatory affairs, with responsibility for advancing a differentiated pipeline and accelerating the delivery of transformative medicines to patients.

Most recently, he served as CMO of Xaira Therapeutics. Prior to that, he spent more than 15 years at Roche in a series of senior leadership positions, developing significant medicines across a number of areas.

Exonate has appointed Olav Hellebø as CEO. Hellebø brings extensive business and scientific leadership experience across the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, with a distinguished track record in ophthalmology, immunology and oncology. He has held senior commercial and development roles across the US and Europe. Notably, he served as Executive VP at Schering-Plough (now Merck), leading the US Biotech and Oncology business unit, COO of Novartis UK and a member of the Novartis Global Pharmaceutical Executive Committee, and President of Immunology at UCB. As CEO of ReNeuron Group, Hellebø in-licensed a retinitis pigmentosa programme from the Schepens Eye Research Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School.

Lundbeck has appointed Tarek Samad as Executive Vice President and Head of Research & Development (R&D). Samad will join the Executive Leadership Team (ELT), effective 1 September 2026. Samad currently serves as Senior Vice President, Global Head of Research and Corporate Patents at Lundbeck, where he has led the company's global research organisation since 2021 and played an instrumental role in executing Lundbeck’s R&D strategy, advancing its innovation capabilities and strengthening its research collaborations. Prior to joining Lundbeck, Samad held senior research leadership positions at Immunitas Therapeutics, Sanofi and Pfizer, and previously served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

MRM Health has appointed Michel Detheux as Chairman of the Board of Directors, taking over from Werner Cautreels. Detheux brings more than three decades of experience in innovation and value creation in life sciences and was previously founding CEO of iTeos Therapeutics. He subsequently spearheaded iTeos’ $2bn collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline. Detheux currently serves as Chairman of the Board at Egle Therapeutics and as a board member at Vor Bio. Detheux said: “MRM Health has established a unique position at the intersection of microbiome science, clinical excellence and industrial scalability. MH002 is a promising candidate with the potential to fundamentally transform the treatment of immune-mediated diseases in the gut.”