Vaccentis Appoints Dr. Ingrid Rauter as Chief Medical Officer and Head of Research & Development

Zurich, Switzerland, May 3, 2023 - Vaccentis AG, a clinical-stage Swiss biopharmaceutical company developing patient-individualized medicines, today announced the appointment of the experienced life science executive Ingrid Rauter as Head of R&D and Chief Medical Officer.

Ingrid Rauter, PhD, has successfully led global research and clinical development programs for pipeline and marketed products for over ten years. She joins Vaccentis from at Amgen Inc., where her most recent role was as Global Medical Affairs Asset Lead Early Inflammation Pipeline. She also held key clinical development roles with increasing responsibilities at Takeda, Sandoz and Baxalta. Dr Rauter was honored by a prestigious fellowship in immunology at Harvard Medical School and has been recipient of scientific awards including the Herbert-Herxheimer Award of the German Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology and the Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship of the Austrian Science Fund.

“I am delighted to welcome Dr Ingrid Rauter to Vaccentis as Chief Medical Officer and Head of R&D,” said Martin Munte, Chief Executive Officer of Vaccentis. “Ingrid brings a wealth of experience in biopharmaceutical industry R&D and medical affairs to Vaccentis. Over the last six months as an external consultant, she created a clear and compelling clinical and regulatory plan. Her expertise will especially inform and de-risk the late-stage clinical development of VCC-001, our autologous adjuvant renal tumor vaccine to treat non-metastatic renal cell carcinomas post-nephrectomy. She also will help us to leverage our autologous vaccine development platform to shape the Vaccentis pipeline strategy for future successes.”

The appointment further strengthens Vaccentis’ executive leadership team, following the July 2022 appointment of Martin Munte as CEO and the May 2022 appointments of three experienced entrepreneurs to the Board of Directors: Matthias Oertle, Marcel Frei and Subhasis Roy.

Ingrid Rauter, CMO, said, “I am excited to further contribute to Vaccentis as it is poised for a new phase in its product development and corporate growth. Working with the new agile leadership to progress the pipeline holds exciting prospects for patients and the company. VCC-001 is particularly compelling to me as it is a highly de-risked therapeutic-candidate with great potential; its value can be unlocked through rigorous clinical development. I look forward to completing development of this potentially highly impactful therapeutic so that we can offer it to patients suffering from renal cell carcinoma.”

VCC-001 is an autologous adjuvant renal tumor vaccine in late clinical development to treat non-metastatic renal cell carcinomas post nephrectomy. VCC-001 is individually prepared from each patient’s tumour and therefore includes the specific tumour-associated antigens from the patient’s tumour. These are then administered in the vaccine such that they inform the immune system on how to build an immune response tailored to fight the patient’s cancer. The personalized vaccine has the potential to reduce risk of recurrence as well as protect against development of metastases.

Patients treated with VCC-001 compared to a control group had a significantly better progression-free survival; these data were published in the leading peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet (Jocham et al., in 2004). In a separate consecutive 10-year retrospective overall survival (OS) analysis, including 1,267 RCC patients who underwent radical nephrectomy in 84 hospitals and were subsequently treated with VCC-001 and compared to propensity-matched historical controls, it was shown that patients with pT3 stage RCC had 5-year OS rates of 71.3 and 53.6%, respectively, and 10-year OS rates of 65.4 and 36.2% (p = 0.022), respectively (May et al. 2009).

Vaccentis AG is a clinical-stage Swiss biopharmaceutical company developing patient-individualized medicines to improve patients’ chances of recovery from chronic and malignant diseases. Vaccentis’ lead product VCC-001, which is in late-stage clinical development to treat non-metastatic renal cell carcinomas post nephrectomy. Vaccentis’ proprietary production methodology reduces complexity and allows for a 3-4 week vaccine delivery time, significantly shorter than normally seen with other personalized biologics.

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Attachments

• Vaccentis Appoints CMO
• Dr Ingrid Rauter