BOSTON — Ariadne Labs today announced the appointment of biotech industry leader and Ironwood Pharmaceuticals CEO Dr. Peter Hecht to its Advisory Board.
“I’m thrilled to be able to welcome Peter to our advisory board,” said Ariadne Labs Executive Director Dr. Atul Gawande. “Ariadne Labs is a research and innovation center producing insights and tools for health care practice that are saving lives and reducing suffering across the world. Peter’s unique experience as a leader within Boston’s biotech innovation hub will provide much-needed and much-valued perspective to our organization.”
Hecht is a molecular biologist and a founder of Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge-based commercial biotechnology company that focuses on diseases in four key therapeutic areas: irritable bowel syndrome and chronic idiopathic constipation, uncontrolled gout, refractory gastroesophageal reflux disease, and vascular and fibrotic diseases. Ironwood innovated, co-developed and co-commercializes LINZESS® (linaclotide), for which more than 1 million patients have filled a prescription since its launch in 2012.
Prior to founding Ironwood, Hecht was a research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s affiliated Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Ariadne Labs is a joint center between Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, whose mission is to create scalable solutions that produce better health care at the most critical moments in people’s lives from birth to end of life. Its Advisory Board comprises top leaders from health care, business and education who advise Gawande and his executive leadership team on key strategic issues relating to the growth and impact of Ariadne Labs.
Other board members include Don Berwick, president emeritus and senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement; Troy Brennan, executive vice president and chief medical officer of CVS Caremark; Andrew Dreyfus, president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts; David Ebersman, CEO of Lyra Health and former CFO of Facebook; Mala Gaonkar, co-portfolio manager of Lone Pine Capital LLC; Eric S. Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Elizabeth Nabel, president of Brigham and Women’s Health Care; Michelle Williams, dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Jason Yeung, managing director and portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley; and Gwill York, entrepreneur and co-founder of Lighthouse Capital Partners.