'Heavy-hearted' Smith steps down from Amrad

Pete Smith has resigned as CEO of Amrad (ASX:AML), along with chairman Bob Moses as chairman, following a board meeting yesterday.

Ian Davis -- currently senior partner at Minter Ellison and chairman of MaxiTRANS Industries -- has been installed as chairman, just after a month after he joined the board as a non-executive director.

Moses' retirement from Amrad marks his second exit as chairman of a listed biotech in the last 12 months. In June last year he stepped down as chairman of Meditech (ASX:MTR) following a shareholder stoush.

Amrad chief scientific officer Dr Andrew Nash has been appointed as interim CEO.

Smith told Australian Biotechnology News he was disappointed to have resigned. "It certainly wasn't the plan I had," he said. "I leave with a heavy heart.

"I think there is a generic pressure on all biotechnology companies to do with time. To a certain extent it was a matter of running out of runway."

He recently told ABN that Amrad was looking to acquire later-stage biological products -- candidates that were already in the clinic -- following the failure of its fertility drug candidate emfilermin in a Phase II clinical trial last year.

"Now we've focussed what we're doing in biologicals, mainly antibodies, we want to build in that area," he said at the time. "Our number one choice [would be to] in-license or buy or merge with a company that had a clinical stage project. "It takes time. People think we've been sitting on our hands."