Joanne Mannick is joining Altos Labs as Chief Medical Officer.
What does this mean for Tornado Therapeutics? Is she leaving the company she co-founded?
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Interesting find, I’ve been following their work for a bit before. Altos seem to be doing the right thing, like with the IL-11 therapy, this is bullish overall. Though Kaeberlein wasn’t so happy with the failed drug, I don’t remember if it was ex ante.
Looks to be that:
Joan brings extensive drug development expertise to Altos including from her time as the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Tornado Therapeutics.
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Strange… they must be shutting down Tornado. I can’t see it continuing without the founder and lead person for the company. I wonder what happened? Some failed phase 1 clinical studies? We need to learn more.
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https://www.tornado-tx.com/team
According to this
She is still the CEO
Finds the company, but you need to pay to get any information.
Her LinkedIn, however, has
Her ceasing at Tornado in August 2025.
Clearly there is more to be heard.
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Tornado is under the Cambrian Biopharma umbrella, and they still have the compounds listed under their pipeline list. it will be interesting to see if they delete them from the list, or do something else with these drug candidates:
Well, the question is what happens with all the IP that Tornado developed or owns. Does Mannick have a piece of that? Does she bring it in with her to Altos? It’s entirely possible that this was one consideration fir Altos hiring her. Or does Tornado retain all IP and keeps soldiering on.
Quite a few changes at Altos…
Peter Walker left Altos Labs, Steve Horvath too
I heard through the grapevine that key investigator Steve Horvath departed Altos a few months ago.
Horvath’s LinkedIn page lists his work at Altos as having ended this February. I couldn’t find any listing for Horvath on the Altos Labs website either. An email to his former Altos email generated a reply saying he’s no longer there.
Horvath is a leader in the area of epigenetic clocks. What’s next for him? It’s not 100% clear if he retains a UCLA appointment as a professor of Human Genetics and Biostatistics as he did before, but he’s still on the website and UCLA was listed as an affiliation on a paper just a few months ago.
Wherever he ends up, I wish him well.
Another Altos leader, Peter Walter, recently left Altos Labs and joined the Buck Institute.
Apparently quite a few others have left Altos as well.