Pfizer on Wednesday said it will promote Chris Boshoff to chief scientific officer and president of research and development as the giant drugmaker struggles to win back the faith of investors.
Boshoff will assume his new post on Jan. 1, succeeding Mikael Dolsten, who oversaw research at Pfizer for 15 years. The company announced Dolsten’s departure in July.
Boshoff currently serves as chief oncology officer and is credited with delivering 24 approved new medicines and biosimilars during his 11-year tenure at the company. Boshoff has also worked as Pfizer’s head of development in Japan and as chief development officer for oncology and rare disease.
“Dr. Boshoff is the ideal leader to propel Pfizer’s R&D engine forward and transform it into a world-leading organization with a more focused strategy,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in the company’s statement. He credited Boshoff with running one of the company’s most productive divisions and said he has a “compelling vision” for future research and development.
As the new head of research, Boshoff will be tasked with revving up a pipeline that some investors have found disappointing. Pfizer achieved an astonishing success developing a COVID-19 vaccine in a matter of months in 2020 and raked in billions of dollars during the pandemic, pushing its shares above $59 in late 2021. Since then, the stock has more than halved, however.
The activist investor Starboard Value argues that Pfizer executives wasted their COVID-19 windfall on bad acquisitions while neglecting innovation. Last month, Starboard pushed the company’s board “to hold management accountable for earning appropriate returns on R&D and M&A moving forward.”
A week later, Pfizer reported higher-than-expected third-quarter sales and boosted its revenue guidance for the year. The company now has to prove to investors it can keep churning out profitable new medicines. Oncology will be a big part of that effort — Pfizer executives told investors earlier this year that they expect to have eight blockbuster cancer drugs by 2030, up from five now.
Pfizer said the structure of the oncology division will remain the same as it shuffles the leadership. Roger Dansey, currently chief development officer for oncology, is helping by temporarily filling Boshoff’s chief oncology officer role and transitioning his own duties to Johanna Bendell, who’s joining the company from Roche. Bendell currently serves as Roche’s global head of oncology.
Dansey, who joined Pfizer as part of its acquisition of Seagen, plans to retire from the company once a new chief oncology officer is found.
Boshoff is a medical oncologist with a medical degree from the University of Pretoria in South Africa, a doctorate from the Institute of Cancer Research in London and training as an oncologist at the Royal Marsden and Royal Free Hospitals in London. Before joining the industry, he was also founding director of the University College London Cancer Institute.
