The dealmaker at the center of an HDAC6 bet
Andy Hu carries a medical degree he never uses to see patients. Instead, he reads term sheets, structures partnerships, and decides when a small company is ready to hand itself over to a much larger one. Since April 2025 he has done that work as Chief Business Officer of Augustine Therapeutics, a biotech with one foot in Leuven, Belgium and the other in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The company is chasing something specific: selective inhibitors of an enzyme called HDAC6, aimed at neuromuscular, neurodegenerative, and cardio-metabolic diseases. Its lead program, AGT-100216, is positioned as the first selective HDAC6 inhibitor designed for the long-term treatment of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, an inherited nerve disorder that today has no approved disease-modifying drug. Hu's job is to make sure the science finds the partners, the capital, and the deals it needs to reach a clinic.
He did not arrive cold. Before becoming a full-time executive, Hu spent time as an advisor to Augustine, watching the science up close before committing. When he finally joined, he framed it as a decision made with eyes open.
Having worked as an advisor, I have had a first-hand opportunity to appreciate the cutting-edge science behind Augustine's next-generation HDAC6 inhibitors.
- Andy Hu, on joining Augustine TherapeuticsA habit of being in the room when biotechs get bought
Read Hu's resume backwards and a pattern emerges. He was Chief Business Officer of Arkuda Therapeutics, a company focused on neurodegenerative disease, when Johnson & Johnson moved to acquire it in a deal announced in January 2025. Before that he was Senior Vice President of Business Development at Dimension Therapeutics, where he helped guide the company through an IPO, a string of partnering transactions, and an eventual acquisition by Ultragenyx.
The thread is not luck. It is a particular skill set - knowing how to position a company so that bigger players see value, and knowing when to sell rather than push on alone. That instinct was sharpened earlier, on the financing side, where he worked in investment banking at Leerink Partners and was part of teams that executed more than $600 million in equity financings for public and private life sciences companies. Earlier still, he advised major biopharma companies as a senior consultant at Strategic Decisions Group.
What is HDAC6, and why does it matter?
Augustine's pipeline rests on a single idea: that selectively dialing down one cytoplasmic enzyme can change the course of hard diseases. Here is the simplified logic Hu is helping to commercialize.
The target
HDAC6 is a cytoplasmic enzyme involved in protein clearance and the transport of cargo along nerve cells.
The approach
A selective, non-hydroxamate inhibitor aims to hit HDAC6 without disturbing the rest of the family.
The hope
Restored axonal transport and protein clearance could slow or modify diseases like CMT.
Three schools, one unusual combination
Hu's training is the kind that does not fit on a single business card. He earned an AB in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard, an MD from Baylor College of Medicine, and an MBA from the Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University. The medicine gives him fluency in the science; the MBA gives him fluency in the markets; and the unusual undergraduate detour suggests a person who never planned to take the obvious path.
$85 million and a first-in-class ambition
Hu joined Augustine just after the company closed an oversubscribed Series A of roughly €78 million, about $85 million, in March 2025. The round drew a notable syndicate, including Novo Holdings, Jeito Capital, Asabys Partners, and Eli Lilly and Company. That capital is meant to push the lead program toward the clinic and to broaden a pipeline of HDAC6 inhibitors that the company believes can address diseases with few good options.
Augustine's chief executive, Gerhard Koenig, framed the dual hire of Hu and a new CFO as a step-change for the company.
Their skills will be invaluable as we advance our lead program into the clinic and further build our pipeline of HDAC6i across significant diseases which lack novel therapeutic options.
- Gerhard Koenig, CEO, Augustine TherapeuticsFunding at a glance
Series A and total funding figures reflect Augustine Therapeutics. The Leerink figure reflects financings Hu's teams executed across multiple life sciences clients.
Why this hire makes sense
There is a quiet logic to putting a former M&A-adjacent executive at the business helm of a young, well-funded biotech. Companies like Augustine rarely go the distance alone; their value is often realized through partnerships or an acquisition by a larger pharma. Hu has lived that arc three times over - at Dimension into Ultragenyx, at Cubist Pharmaceuticals into Merck, and at Arkuda into Johnson & Johnson. He knows what acquirers want to see and how to build toward it.
For a company whose lead asset is a first-in-class swing at a disease with no approved disease-modifying therapy, that kind of patient, exit-aware strategy is not a luxury. It is the plan. Hu's role is to keep the science funded and the optionality open while the molecules do their work in the lab.