Third Rock Ventures’ Rheos Medicines has named former Roche SVP Sanjay Keswani, M.D., as CEO. The appointment puts Keswani in charge of overseeing Rheos’ pipeline of immunometabolism assets.

Rheos broke cover in March equipped with $60 million and plans to use drugs to tune metabolic pathways and thereby treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. At that point, Third Rock partner Abbie Celniker, Ph.D., had her hand on the tiller but that was always seen as a temporary situation.

Celniker will continue as chair of Rheos’ board but is handing over day-to-day responsibilities to the new, permanent CEO. Keswani joins Rheos from Roche, where he served as SVP and global head of neuroscience, ophthalmology and rare diseases.

The CEO post marks a departure from Keswani’s career path to date. Prior to his three-year stint at Roche, Keswani spent similar-length spells at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Amgen. That string of big biopharma companies has now been broken by Rheos, which has persuaded Keswani to join the migration of experienced executives to emerging biotechs.

In doing so, Rheos has secured a leader Celniker thinks is a good fit for the startup’s platform and pipeline.

"Sanjay’s broad drug development experience across multiple therapeutic areas and strong track record for building high-performing teams is an ideal fit for Rheos at this time when the productivity of the company’s product engine ramps up to generate initial drug programs as well as a range of therapeutic opportunities to address many immune-mediated diseases through novel targets and concurrent biomarker approach," Celniker said in a statement.

Keswani thinks Rheos’ approach to targeting the underlying cellular metabolism of immune cells will open up opportunities to better treat a range of diseases. Details of the indications and targets that Rheos is going after are yet to emerge.

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