She reads the science and the contract with the same eye. Then she signs the deal.
Chief Business Officer · STORM Therapeutics
Marguerite Hutchinson. The lawyer who learned to love the lab.
There is a class of medicine that does not exist in any pharmacy. It targets the enzymes that decorate RNA - the chemical marks that decide which genes get read, and when. STORM Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech in Cambridge, England, is chasing the first one into patients. Marguerite Hutchinson is the person whose job it is to turn that science into a business.
Her title is Chief Business Officer. She took it on November 1, 2023, joining what she calls "a pivotal stage": STORM is advancing the first RNA methyltransferase inhibitor to enter clinical development. The science is fragile and early. The deals around it are not.
That is the whole point of Hutchinson. She is a lawyer by training - a Harvard government major who went on to the University of San Diego School of Law - but she has spent more than a decade in the operational core of biotech, where the science meets the term sheet. She knows how to value a molecule that has never been in a human, and she knows how to write the contract that protects it.
Before STORM she founded her own company, Tatara Therapeutics, a UCSF spin-out she set up and raised seed financing for, serving as Chief Executive Officer. Before that she ran business development at Frontier Medicines, where her portfolio included a collaboration with AbbVie and programs targeting the notoriously undruggable KRAS G12C.
And before that came Plexxikon - the decade that built her. She joined in 2013 and rose to Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel, overseeing finance, IT, facilities, intellectual property, project management, legal and business development. One person, most of the company.
At STORM she now sits at the front of a pipeline built on RNA modifying enzymes - including a METTL3 inhibitor program - for oncology and beyond. The molecules are first-in-class. So is the challenge of explaining why they matter to investors and partners who have never seen anything like them.
She is, in short, the translator. Between the chemists and the capital. Between the patent and the partnership. Between a target that lives inside a cell and a market that has not been invented yet.
STORM is advancing the first RNA methyltransferase inhibitor to enter clinical development, and I am delighted to be joining the team at a pivotal stage.- Marguerite Hutchinson, on joining STORM Therapeutics
At Plexxikon, a member of the Daiichi Sankyo Group, Hutchinson's job description kept absorbing the company. It started in business development and law. It ended as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel.
She was a key member of the development team for a first-in-class therapy for tenosynovial giant cell tumor - a rare, severe disease with almost no options. TURALIO (pexidartinib) won approval in 2019.
She managed a high-stakes patent infringement case to a jury verdict in Plexxikon's favor in July 2021. Most CBOs never see the inside of a courtroom. She ran one.
She oversaw the construction and opening of a new $15 million lab and office space. Strategy is abstract; she also poured the concrete.
She established and managed collaborations across the industry's biggest names, and out-licensed two molecules that went on to anchor other companies' pipelines - bezuclastinib to Cogent Biosciences and plixorafenib to Fore Biotherapeutics, securing upfront, milestone and royalty payments.
Lead attorney and industry contracts officer, handling the academic-industry collaborations where science first meets the deal.
Joined in business development and legal roles; rose to Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel.
Contributed to Phase 3 development and approval of a first-in-class drug for tenosynovial giant cell tumor.
Appointed Chief Business Officer at Frontier, leading BD including an AbbVie collaboration. Named one of the Top 25 Women Leaders in Biotechnology.
Founded the UCSF spin-out as Chief Executive Officer and raised its seed financing - this time, the company was her own.
Appointed Chief Business Officer, joining as the company advances the first RNA methyltransferase inhibitor into the clinic.
The opportunity to impact the lives of many patients is significant. I look forward to the expeditious advancement of our novel therapies.- On joining Frontier Medicines, 2021