Jim Burns reunites with Genzyme colleague at Ensoma; Lilly exec to retire after 27 years

Jim Burns was look­ing for his next post af­ter his lat­est ven­ture in biotech, a gene ther­a­py start­up known as Lo­can­abio, shut down “due to the time and cap­i­tal re­quired to de­liv­er clin­i­cal da­ta.”

“I felt like there was some un­fin­ished busi­ness from the Lo­can­abio side, and I got a call from a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent sources say­ing you should look at En­so­ma,” Burns said in an in­ter­view.

He al­ready knew of the ge­nom­ic med­i­cines com­pa­ny that’s sit­u­at­ed in Boston. He was friends with for­mer CEO Emile Nuwaysir, who stepped down in re­cent months due to fam­i­ly rea­sons, and board chair Paula Soteropou­los, who had tak­en on the in­ter­im CEO post. Soteropou­los was a 20-year Gen­zyme vet­er­an and had worked with Burns at the rare dis­ease out­fit at Sanofi.

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