SANTA ANA, Calif., Feb. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NKMax America, a biotechnology company harnessing the power of the body's immune system through the development of Natural Killer (NK) cell therapies, announced the appointment of Stephen Chen, MBA to Chief Operating Officer (COO).
“As our Chief Technical Officer, Stephen has been critical to establishing our cGMP-compliant manufacturing facility and is a proven and impactful leader in our dynamic organization,” said Sangwoo Park, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NKMax America. “In his expanded role as Chief Operating Officer we are confident that his extensive industry experience and success in building out both autologous and allogeneic platforms will be invaluable to our future growth.”
In his new role as COO, Mr. Chen will be responsible for overseeing the business operations and providing strategic leadership while retaining his current responsibilities as Chief Technical Officer. Previously, Mr. Chen had been Senior Vice President of Quality and Technical Operations, he was then promoted to Chief Technical Officer of NK Max America in 2019.
“I look forward to building on the progress we have made to date and becoming more deeply involved in the company’s strategic decision making as we transition towards becoming a fully integrated commercial entity,” said Mr. Chen.
Mr. Chen has more than 16 years in operational leadership in the areas of quality assurance, quality control, laboratory operations, and GMP manufacturing. Prior to joining NKMax, he served as Director of Quality Assurance for ARMO BioSciences and Director of Quality Assurance for Kite Pharma. Additionally, Mr. Chen was Director of Quality for Channel Technologies Group and held various quality management positions at Baxter International.
Mr. Chen earned his B.S. degree in Biochemistry/Cell Biology from University of California, San Diego and his MBA degree from the University of Southern California (USC).
About NKMax America
NKMax America Inc. is a clinical stage biotechnology company dedicated to restoring and enhancing overall immune integrity. Our proprietary natural killer cell expansion and activation technology achieves infinite fold natural killer cell expansion with greatly enhanced cytotoxicity across its autologous and allogenic products which are all derived from peripheral blood. Our first in class autologous product, SNK01, is currently in a Phase I clinical trial in advanced refractory solid tumors and in a Phase I/IIa combination trial with Keytruda in Stage IV non-small cell lung cancer. We have also added another cohort of SNK01 in combination with pembrolizumab or avelumab in refractive PD-L1 positive or PD-L1 negative solid tumors and are planning to initiate a Phase 1 combination trial of SNK01 and AFM24 in EGFR positive solid tumors. The company and its commercially licensed cGMP facility are headquartered in Santa Ana, California, USA. www.nkmaxamerica.com.
Contact:
Denise Chua, MBA, CLS, MT (ASCP)
Vice President, Marketing
949-396-6830
dchua@nkmaxamerica.com