Dive Brief:
- Grail said Thursday that Bob Ragusa will retire as CEO on June 1 and be replaced by Josh Ofman.
- Ofman joined Grail in 2019, initially working as chief of corporate strategy and external affairs before a series of promotions culminated in his appointment as the company’s president in 2021.
- Ragusa announced his retirement weeks after a trial of Grail’s multi-cancer early detection test missed its primary endpoint.
Dive Insight:
Ragusa became Grail CEO in 2021, having spent the previous eight years as the diagnostic company’s chief operating officer. Ofman joined Grail from the biotech company Amgen. The incoming CEO spent two years as Grail’s chief medical officer during his rise to the top job at the company.
Ofman will inherit a business that is working to recover from the failure of a trial designed to show its Galleri blood test reduces late-stage cancer diagnoses and increases the cancer detection rate. The trial followed 142,000 asymptomatic participants aged 50 to 77 in England for three years. Grail’s share price halved when the company revealed news of the failure and has yet to recover.
Guggenheim Securities analysts said in a note to investors that the Grail leadership change “has been in development for some time and is unrelated to the NHS trial readout, which the company remains enthusiastic about presenting at ASCO,” the American Society of Clinical Oncology event that will be held at the end of May.
Grail said in last week’s announcement that Ofman’s appointment as its next CEO is the culmination of a long-term, comprehensive succession planning process.
Working with Grail, England’s National Health Service began the study shortly before Ragusa replaced Hans Bishop as CEO.
Grail highlighted reduced stage 4 cancer diagnoses, increased stage 1 and 2 detection of deadly cancers and a four-fold higher cancer detection rate when compared to recommended screenings alone as positive findings of the trial. However, the failure to achieve the primary endpoint, which looked at stage 3 and 4 cancers, overshadowed the other results in the eyes of investors.
Ofman’s to-do list will include winning premarket approval for Galleri in the U.S. The company submitted a filing to the Food and Drug Administration in January but has warned investors that winning approval can take several years. England’s NHS has yet to decide whether to adopt Galleri into its routine offering. The healthcare service said in 2021 that it would offer the test to 1 million people if the trial succeeded.
