the chief business officer of Seattle-based Calistoga, which was acquired earlier this year by Gilead Sciences for as much as $600 million. Before that, he spent 15 years at Bothell, WA-based Icos, where he helped craft the joint venture with Eli Lilly that developed and marketed tadalafil (Cialis) for erectile dysfunction.
This is Stocks’ first go-round as a CEO, although he’s quick to add that he learned a lot from his experience working for Carol Gallagher at Calistoga and both George Rathmann and Paul Clark at Icos.
Stocks says he was drawn to the Theraclone job because of the combination of the science, and the people he’ll be working with. Gillis called him back in August to see if he might be interested in the Theraclone job, and after discussing it for about 10 minutes, he said he would be interested in hearing more.
“After meeting some of the folks in the company, I decided these are the kinds of folks I want to spend my days working with,” Stocks says.
So where does Stocks see things going for Theraclone? In a couple of years, it should have proof-of-concept data from a couple of different antibody drugs in clinical trials, he says. It should have “a portion” of the ownership of its drugs on a worldwide basis, or it could be in position to develop one of its drugs internally for a rare disease niche market, he says. The IPO market “doesn’t appear to be open now,” but he didn’t want to completely rule out that idea.
Russ Hawkinson, who has carried a lot of the business load at Theraclone’s chief financial officer, sounded pretty happy to join Stocks on a conference call with his interview as CEO.
“It’s going to mean a lot to have someone here day-to-day,” Hawkinson says. “It’s been wonderful to work with Steve (Gillis) and all the experience he brings, but to take Theraclone where we want to go, we have to have somebody here full-time. A core part of our business plan is to partner our platform technology and key programs, and Cliff brings a ton of experience in that area.”
