former Google Health head Adam Bosworth founded Keas, whose interactive online software enables healthcare experts to design plans for helping consumers meet certain health goals. Originally Keas planned to offer these in a marketplace similar to the iPhone App Store, but the company is now out to sell the care plans to employers as a way to reduce employee healthcare costs and to pharmaceutical companies, who could, for instance, use the service to remind patients to take their meds.
—Watertown, MA-based Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, a developer of RNA-interference drugs, pulled in $5 million in an offering of debt and options. Doug Fambrough left his post as general partner at Oxford Bioscience Partners last month to become CEO of Dicerna, which previously raised $21.4 million in Series A funding from Abingworth Management, Oxford, and Skyline Ventures.
—Cambridge-based Biogen Idec filled its open CEO slot with George Scangos, who has led South San Francisco-based cancer drug developer Exelixis (NASDAQ: [[ticker:EXEL]]) since 1996. (Bloomberg News first reported the company’s impending CEO announcement on Wednesday.) The chief executive position at Biogen (NASDAQ: [[ticker:BIIB]]) has been vacant since James Mullen concluded his ten-year role at the company on June 8. In a call with analysts on Wednesday, Scangos (who starts on July 15) revealed his ambitions for improving the productivity of the research and development engine at Biogen, which hasn’t brought a product to market since 2004.
