(Olema Oncology)
When Sean Bohen, M.D., Ph.D., left AstraZeneca in the spring of last year, he didn’t know where he was going to end up. At first, he figured he’d wind up in another Big Pharma job, but after “looking around broadly” and taking some time off, he’s landed (PDF) at Olema Oncology, a startup focused on treatments for women’s cancers, as its CEO.
After working at Genentech for more than a decade, Bohen joined AstraZeneca in the midst of a transformation that had started with the arrival of CEO Pascal Soriot.
“It was really a drug development story, with the question being whether what, at that time, was viewed as an old, stodgy Big Pharma without much pipeline productivity—can that be turned around?” Bohen said. “During the period of about three and a half years I was there, I think that was done quite successfully. It was quite a bit of fun to be part of it.”
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That feeling of accomplishing the objective coincided with a shakeup at AstraZeneca that saw the birth of two new R&D units, with José Baselga leading the oncology organization and Mene Pangalos in charge of the R&D unit for biopharmaceuticals, which handles most of the company’s work outside of cancer.
“Those couple of things coming together felt like a natural time for me to move onto something else,” Bohen said. He takes the reins at Olema from Cyrus Harmon, Ph.D., who transitions to the newly created chief technology officer role.
At Olema, Bohen is leading a team of about 25 staffers working on a new treatment for estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. It’s “invigorating” to be at a small biotech that is laser-focused on women’s cancers, he said, adding that his move was a homecoming of sorts, too.
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“ER-positive metastatic breast cancer is something that I have been passionate about for a long time, scientifically and as an oncologist,” he said, adding that Olema will be his third company targeting this type of cancer.
Although ER is a validated target in this type of cancer, Bohen believes there are still improvements to be made, even over Faslodex, which was under his purview as AstraZeneca’s chief medical officer and executive vice president of global medicines development.
“There is room to improve upon Faslodex in terms of its route of administration, going to oral instead of being two large intramuscular injections, and also to improve on its pharmacological properties,” he said.
Olema raised $54 million in July to bankroll the phase 1/2 study of its lead program, OP-1250, in ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancers that have come back in spite of other treatments or that have spread locally or to other parts of the body. Olema believes its prospect is a complete ER antagonist and a selective ER degrader, unlike other drugs that have been developed for this type of cancer.
"The attempts that have been made to date—there are those that are in the clinic that are still playing out—but the ones we know about probably were not complete antagonists of ER," Bohen said. "OP-1250, we believe is a complete ER antagonist, or CERAN, and that complete shutting down of ER is the most important aspect of how to treat these patients and how to affect ER."