After nearly 25 years with Sanofi, Sanjay Gurunathan, M.D., has left for GSK, where he will lead vaccine and infectious disease R&D for the British pharma.
At GSK, Gurunathan will work from Boston and report to Chief Scientific Officer Tony Wood, Ph.D., a company spokesperson told Fierce Biotech.
Gurunathan had worked at Sanofi Vaccines since 2000, rising through the ranks to most recently serve as the French drugmaker’s global head of development and life cycle management portfolio strategy.
The physician-scientist has contributed to more than 20 global regulatory approvals and guided eight multinational phase 3 studies, according to Gurunathan’s LinkedIn.
“Welcoming Sanjay to lead our R&D efforts is a perfect fit as he brings 25 years of vaccines development experience,” Wood said in his own LinkedIn post. “His solid track record of designing robust vaccines portfolios containing new targets, driving strong life cycle innovation, and delivering across all phases of development will benefit our talented vaccines and infectious disease R&D team.”
Gurunathan will be filling the vacant role previously held by Phil Dormitzer, M.D., Ph.D., who departed GSK at the end of last year and has since started his own vaccine and biologics R&D consulting company, according to his LinkedIn. Dormitzer had joined GSK back in 2021 after serving as chief scientific officer of RNA and viral vaccines at Pfizer.
Gurunathan's new role will see him lead all innovation across GSK’s vaccines and infectious diseases pipeline, according to a spokesperson. This includes late-stage hepatitis B treatment bepirovirsen, an antisense oligonucleotide GSK licensed from Ionis Pharmaceuticals in 2019 that has snagged fast track designation from the FDA.
The vaccine leadership appointment comes as the industry faces a reckoning surrounding vaccine development and production amid widespread misinformation campaigns and federal cuts to public health programs.
GSK saw sales stumble for its RSV vaccine Arexvy after the CDC said last year that the shots should be limited to people aged 75 and older, plus individuals older than 60 years who are at risk of developing severe RSV-linked lower respiratory tract disease.
However, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has now recommended expanding its previous guidance, a move that awaits final approval from the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The leadership appointment is also the latest in the constantly revolving merry-go-round of leadership change-ups and trade-offs in the biopharma industry.
The announcement comes just a few months after GSK’s former senior vice president and global head of development, Christopher Corsico, M.D., left for Sanofi at the end of March.
Corsico now serves as Sanofi’s global head of development, taking on a role that sat vacant since Gilead Sciences plucked Dietmar Berger, M.D., Ph.D., to replace Chief Medical Officer Merdad Parsey, M.D., Ph.D. Berger then left his role as Sanofi’s CMO and global head of development at the start of 2025.