VC-backed GRAIL Appoints Cook as CEO

GRAIL, Inc., a McKesson Ventures portfolio company whose mission is to detect cancer early when it can be cured, announced on December 14th the appointment of Jennifer Cook as Chief Executive Officer, effective January 2nd, 2018. Bill Rastetter, the interim CEO since August 2017, will continue as the chairman of the Board of Directors.

The company also announced the appointment of Catherine Friedman and Min Cui to its board of directors.

Jennifer Cook joins GRAIL from Roche/Genentech, where she is Head of Clinical Operations in Product Development for Roche Pharmaceuticals. Before that, she was the Head of Region Europe for Roche Pharmaceuticals. She began her career at Genentech in early-stage research and has held numerous senior management positions at the company covering a full lifecycle of product development and commercialization.

Catherine Friedman has been in independent financial consultant serving public and private companies in the life sciences industry since 2006. She also sits on the Boards of Directors of Altaba (formerly Yahoo), Innoviva, and Radius Health.

Min Cui is the founder and managing director of Decheng Capital. He is a member of the Boards of Directors of AccuraGen, Ariagen, ARMO BioSciences, CardioMed, EpimAb Biotherapeutics, GenapSys, GeneMDS, Ketai Medical, LEvitas, and SINOMED.

GRAIL is building its capabilities in Asia so it can develop tests for the early detection of cancers prevalent in the region, starting with a screening test for nasopharyngeal cancer that will be launched in 2018. The company is also enrolling people in its two large studies—the Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas (CCGA) Study and the STRIVE Study.

Read more about Jennifer Cook, Catherine Friedman, and Min Cui, as well as about GRAIL’s clinical research program, in this release on PEHub.