Some five months after announcing the planned retirement of its longtime CEO Doug Ingram over what the helmsman dubbed an “ironic twist of fate” involving the health of his family members, Sarepta Therapeutics has found a prominent replacement.
Effective Tuesday, Michael Severino, M.D.—known for his stewardship over Flagship Pioneering’s Tessera Therapeutics—will become Sarepta’s new chief executive, taking the reins at a company that has spent the past year and change navigating tough commercial realities—and prominent safety concerns—around its Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) gene therapy Elevidys.
Ingram’s planned departure became public in February, when he said we would retire by the end of the year after two of his close family members were diagnosed with myotonic dystrophy (DM1), another form of muscular dystrophy. He first took up the duties of CEO at Sarepta back in 2017.
Sarepta’s broader commitment to DMD and its patient community is unimpeachable, and in early 2025, the company went after DM1 specifically—alongside other targets—when it struck a multiprogram partnership with Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals to develop RNA interference against rare genetic diseases of the muscles, central nervous system and lungs.
Ingram had planned to stick around until the end of the year, or until his replacement was found, Sarepta said in February.
“Leading Sarepta has been the honor of my professional career,” the outgoing CEO said in a statement Monday. “I am particularly pleased that Mike inherits a company with a great team, a portfolio of life-changing therapies, a pipeline with exceptional potential and the financial resources to advance that science independently and at scale.
Severino has a storied resume in the biopharma field, having served as vice chairman and president at AbbVie before his time at Tessera. At the Chicago Big Pharma, Severino had hands in both R&D and the firm’s corporate strategy office, helping AbbVie swiftly grow its pipeline and branch out into fields like genetics and genomics, computational biology and precision medicines, by Sarepta’s tally.
Severino’s AbbVie tenure coincided with the rise of major brands like Rinvoq, Skyrizi and Venclexta.
“It is a privilege to join Sarepta, the leader in precision genetic medicine for rare diseases, and a company driven by an extraordinary purpose: bringing innovative therapies, hope and possibility to patients and families facing serious and life-threatening diseases,” the incoming CEO said.
Severino added that he was encouraged by the prospects of Sarepta’s approved drugs—which, alongside Elevidys, also include Exondys 51, Vyondys 53 and Amondys 45 in different subsets of Duchenne patients—plus the company’s pipeline of small interfering RNA (siRNA) programs.
The changing of the guard comes as Sarepta continues to navigate its recent Elevidys troubles, which will likely remain a major task for Severino.
Liver safety signals last year ultimately led to an FDA label restriction, preventing DMD patients who can no longer walk from accessing the therapy in the U.S. That change came almost half a year after Sarepta and Roche, its partner outside the U.S., stopped giving the gene therapy to non-ambulatory patients following reports of a handful of deaths after patients developed acute liver failure.
Analysts late last year suggested that weakening sales for the drug in the fourth quarter could foretell a softer trajectory to come in 2026. In the first quarter, Sarepta reported that revenue was down to $730.8 million, compared to nearly $745 million at the same point in 2025, attributing the drop to “lower volume of Elevidys sales due to our updated label that only includes the ambulatory patient population for treatment.”
Sarepta is set to report second quarter earnings on Aug. 5.