Quanterix has a new chief executive and president in Everett Cunningham, but analysts at Leerink see Illumina’s former commercial chief facing an uphill battle in his bid to turn the medtech’s fortunes around.
The company, which is working on ultra-sensitive biomarker detection across a range of diseases, will see Cunningham take the reins from current CEO Masoud Toloue on Jan. 19, according to a Jan. 8 statement. Toloue will become an advisor to the company after the transition.
Meanwhile, Bill Donnelly, Executive Chair of the Board, will return to his previous role as non-executive Chair of the Board.
Cunningham joins from an 18-month stint at gene sequencing giant Illumina as its chief commercial officer, having also served stints prior to this at Exact Sciences, Quest Diagnostics, GE Healthcare and Pfizer.
Quanterix is looking to help detect Alzheimer’s disease (AD) while also, with a new buyout, seeking to broaden its detection work.
At the end of last year, Quanterix put forward new clinical data from its Simoa assay, which it described as the largest population-based assessment of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathological changes to date.
Published in the journal Nature, the research showed that the company’s ultrasensitive test for the phosphorylated tau-217 biomarker can help pinpoint rates of Alzheimer’s-related dementia among older individuals—a number that rises sharply from 10% among people between ages 58 and 70 to nearly 65% in those over 90.
The results also suggest that Quanterix’s blood test could help identify people at risk before symptoms appear, who could then seek early treatment or enroll in a clinical trial, the company said.
Quanterix also last year snapped up Akoya Biosciences for $20 million, allowing its detection efforts to broaden out from blood into tissue samples as well.
Leerink, however, has questioned the company’s direction. In a note to clients sent out Jan. 8, the analysts said they “remain cautious” on the company under Cunningham, noting that “transformation and return to growth for the core business will take time to realize.”
The research firm said the “transformation at [Quanterix] remains a significant lift for new leadership.”
“Incoming CEO Cunningham brings commercial expertise, but Akoya’s acquisition created a distraction when [its] core business was losing share to emerging higher sensitivity, higher plex platforms entering the market,” the Leerink analysts wrote.
Related
Leerink also sees the medtech as having “lost its lead in the Alzheimer’s [diagnostics] market, with Fujirebio’s assay already FDA-approved and C2N’s PrecivityAD submitted for approval.”
Fujirebio Diagnostics nabbed an FDA first in May last year when the U.S. regulator cleared Lumipulse, an in vitro diagnostic device that tests blood to aid in diagnosing Alzheimer’s.
C2N, meanwhile, submitted its AD blood test to the FDA back in October.
Leerink also sees Akoya itself as “seeing competitive pressure and share loss, in our view.”
Shares in the company were up around 1.3% in Friday morning trading.
