Recursion picks J&J alum Khan to succeed Gibson as CEO
Plus: Prime Medicine hires Matthew Hawryluk as CBO and updates from Atrogi, Esperion, Bioversys
After 12 years, Recursion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: RXRX) co-founder and CEO Chris Gibson is passing the reins. Effective Jan. 1, Gibson will become the techbio company’s chairman, and Najat Khan, Recursion’s chief R&D and commercial officer, will become president and CEO. Khan joined Recursion in 2024 from Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), where she served as chief data science officer and global head of strategy & portfolio for innovative medicine R&D.
The planned transition may signal a new phase for one of the industry’s first companies to fully commit to AI-first discovery. Recursion’s automated, multiplexed discovery screens and AI analysis platform has generated enormous datasets and many therapeutic hypotheses. It has also inspired investors, partners and entrepreneurs across a techbio space it’s partly responsible for creating, but the company has yet to achieve a late-stage clinical success and recently pared its pipeline. Khan’s task will be translating platform promise into clinical execution...