Biotech veteran Harvey Berger takes over as CEO of Arena Bioworks

Allison DeAngelis is the East Coast biotech and venture capital reporter at STAT, reporting where scientific ideas and money meet. She is also co-host of the weekly biotech podcast, The Readout Loud. You can reach Allison on Signal at AllisonDeAngelis.01.

Arena BioWorks, the research institute that launched last year with $500 million from a group of high-profile billionaires, has brought on a new chief executive amid a series of changes at the organization. 

The move also reunites a pair of veteran biotech founders. 

The institute announced Monday that Harvey Berger, co-founder and longtime CEO of ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, is taking the reins from Stuart Schreiber, who will now serve as Arena’s chief scientific officer. The pair cofounded ARIAD in 1991 and have sporadically worked together over the past 35 years, during which time Berger led ARIAD through its first drug approval and Schreiber co-founded the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard, and later Arena.