Arcus Biosciences names Richard Markus chief medical officer

Arcus Biosciences (RCUS) announced that Richard Markus, M.D., Ph.D., has been appointed chief medical officer effective January 31, 2025. Dr. Markus replaces Dimitry Nuyten, M.D., Ph.D., who will be leaving the company at the end of January to pursue other opportunities. Dr. Markus’s responsibilities will include oversight of Arcus’s clinical development organization and its late-stage portfolio, currently including four ongoing registrational Phase 3 studies, the first of which, STAR-221, is expected to read out next year. Arcus plans to initiate a fifth registrational Phase 3 study, PEAK-1, in the first half of 2025, to evaluate its HIF-2a inhibitor casdatifan plus cabozantinib in people with clear-cell renal cell carcinoma who have progressed on immunotherapy. Dr. Markus’s extensive late-stage development experience will be essential as he leads Arcus’s strategy and efforts to fully leverage the opportunities in Arcus’s portfolio. “Dr. Markus is a biotechnology industry veteran who will advance our late-stage programs into commercialization. His decades and breadth of clinical development success will solidify Arcus’s emerging position as a leader in creating and developing a next generation of therapies in oncology,” said Terry Rosen, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Arcus. “Our development organization has seamlessly advanced our broad portfolio of investigational molecules to address multiple cancers with high unmet need, and we are thrilled that Dr. Markus will be leading our organization and creating the infrastructure and culture to reproducibly deliver innovative therapies. I would also like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Nuyten for building a world-class development organization and leading Arcus through a period of incredibly rapid growth with parallel creation of a late-stage portfolio.”