Gothenburg, Sweden, July 22, 2016 - Immunicum AB (publ), a biopharmaceutical company pursuing to develop sophisticated, safe and efficient therapeutic cancer treatments with powerful and long lasting immune responses, announced today that Peter Suenaert, M.D., Ph.D., has accepted the offer to take the role as the Company's Chief Medical Officer (CMO). In this role, Dr. Suenaert will oversee preclinical and clinical development of the Company's immunotherapies pipeline of three diversified technology platforms COMBIG, CD70 and Ad5PTDf35-adenovirus vector.
"Peter brings a wealth of clinical development expertise to Immunicum during an exciting time in our company's growth," said Jamal El-Mosleh, Chief Executive Officer of Immunicum. "In addition to the recent announcement of our global clinical trials development collaboration with Accelovence, the recruitment of a CMO with Peter's background represents another important step in the evolution of Immunicum. With Peter's 14 years of clinical and preclinical development experience with a variety of early and late stage oncology/cancer immunotherapeutic products, we believe we are well positioned to continue advancing our proprietary platforms, including our lead product INTUVAX, through the clinical process and ultimately, to patients."
Prior to joining Immunicum, Dr. Suenaert served as Global Clinical Program Lead for oncology and Senior Director of Clinical Sciences at Glenmark Pharmaceuticals R&D in London, where he was heading up the clinical oncology unit (immune oncology assets) from start-up stage to being fully operational phase I/II protocol development.
Prior to that role, he was Director and Head of Clinical Development and Human Translational Research, a position with global reach, and member of the global management team Life Science at Danone Research in Palaiseau (Paris), France. Previously, Dr. Suenaert was Clinical Research and Development Leader in global early cancer immunotherapeutics development at GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines in Rixensart, Belgium and Clinical Research Senior Medical Scientist, Global Development, Haematology / Oncology at AMGEN in the U.K.
"Immunicum's novel three platform technologies for cancer immune priming, adoptive immunotherapy and oncolytic treatment have the potential to deliver truly transformative therapies," said Dr. Suenaert. "Our lead product INTUVAX, an off-the-shelf cancer immune primer, has the ability to offer personalized treatment, targeting solid tumors with the potential for success in many indications. The product addresses cancer in ways that have not been possible to-date and significantly widens the therapeutic index. I am excited by the potential of Immunicum's offerings to pursue areas of treatment currently with great unmet medical need. Given the promising clinical data that has been gathered to date, I am looking forward to advancing our pipeline and realizing our vision of bringing safer, more effective therapies to patients."
For further information, please contact:
Jamal El-Mosleh, CEO, Immunicum
Phone: +46 (0) 31 41 50 52
jamal.el-mosleh@immunicum.com
The Company's Certified Adviser is Redeye AB
Phone: +46 (0) 8 545 013 31. www.redeye.se
About INTUVAX
INTUVAX is a cancer immune primer, developed for the treatment of solid tumors. Its active ingredient is activated white blood cells, so called dendritic cells, derived from healthy blood donors. Intratumoral injection of these cells is expected to lead to an inflammatory response which in turn leads to tumor-specific activation of the patient's cytotoxic T lymphocytes.
About Immunicum AB (publ)
Immunicum AB (publ) is working to develop and advance cancer immune primers for the treatment of tumor diseases. A clinical phase II trial for the Company's most advanced product - INTUVAX® against kidney cancer - has been initiated. The project portfolio contains additional clinical phase I/II studies in liver cancer and in gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST).
For more information, please visit www.immunicum.com