Dive Brief:
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Vaccine manufacturer Novavax announced Tuesday its CFO, Greg Covino, will be stepping down after five months in the role for “personal reasons.” He will stay with the company as executive adviser.
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Covino assumed the CFO role in November 2020, taking over from John Trizzino, who had been holding the finance chief position along with chief business officer position. Since November, Trizzino has served as chief business officer and chief commercial officer.
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The Gaithersburg, Md.-based company also announced it was bringing on board Gale Smith as senior vice president of discovery and pre-clinical research and chief scientist, and Troy Morgan as chief compliance officer.
Dive Insight:
The departure comes at a critical time for Novavax, which last week announced it would be expanding clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate to include children and teens.
Earlier this year, Novavax expressed hopes of receiving emergency-use authorization from the FDA for its vaccine candidate by May, MarketWatch reported.
Additionally, it was announced Wednesday, the Novavax vaccine candidate, alongside Moderna, has been added to a U.K.-based “mix and match” trial aimed at assessing whether vaccines from different distributors could effectively be mixed.
Last month, a late-stage U.K. trial found the Novavax vaccine to be 96% effective in preventing cases caused by the original coronavirus strain.
Trizzino will assume the CFO role on an interim basis as Novavax conducts a search for Covino’s replacement.
Before joining Novavax, Covino was group CFO at GlaxoSmithKline’s TESARO oncology division, where he also served as chief accounting officer.
Previously, he served as chief accounting officer at biopharma giant Biogen, and served as vice president of corporate internal audit and international finance for Boston Scientific. In his early career, Covino spent 10 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“I look forward to contributing to Novavax’ positive impact on reducing the global burden of serious infectious diseases around the world, including COVID-19 and influenza,” Covino said in a statement at the time of his hire. “This is a very exciting time to join Novavax and play a role in the company’s rapid strategic growth."