NantKwest Appoints Dr. Leonard Sender as Senior Vice President of Medical Affairs for Pediatric, Adolescent & Young Adult Onc...
May 16 2017 - 08:00AM
Business Wire
Company adds esteemed pediatric, adolescent
and young adult oncology expert to leadership team
NantKwest Inc. (Nasdaq:NK), a pioneering, next generation,
clinical-stage immunotherapy company focused on harnessing the
unique power of our immune system using natural killer (NK) cells
to treat cancer, infectious diseases and inflammatory diseases,
announced today the appointment of Leonard S. Sender, MD, as senior
vice president of Medical Affairs for Pediatric, Adolescent and
Young Adult Oncology.
“With pediatric cancer as a leading cause of death for children
in the United States, we knew that it was imperative to have
someone on our team that has knowledge and expertise in
identifying, diagnosing and treating patients within this
demographic,” said Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, chairman and CEO of
NantKwest. “Having Dr. Sender as part of the Cancer Breakthroughs
2020 program has proven to be invaluable as we target this deadly
disease in young patients. We are excited to bring Dr. Sender on
board and are confident that he will be a strong asset to our team
as we continue our journey in winning the war on cancer.”
Dr. Sender currently serves as the Medical Director of the
Hyundai Cancer Institute at CHOC Children's Hospital as well as the
Executive Director of the Pediatric, Adolescent and Young Adult
Cancer Breakthroughs 2020 Program for the Chan Soon-Shiong
Institute for Medicine. Prior to joining NantKwest, he was the
Medical Director of Clinical Oncology at the University of
California’s NCI designated Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer
Center.
“Since the launch of Cancer Breakthroughs 2020, I have been
working with Dr. Soon-Shiong and his team on this journey to
combatting cancer,” said Dr. Sender. “Childhood cancer is unique
and as we continue to focus on personalized medicine, we need to
think about ways we can transform the way we treat pediatrics,
adolescents and young adolescents to ensure they have the best
chance of survival. I am thrilled to be a part of the NantKwest
team and look forward to working with my peers to research and
develop effective ways to treat our young patients who have been
faced with cancer.”
In over 20 years of experience treating pediatric, adolescent
and young adult cancer patients and survivors, Dr. Sender has seen
and experienced how the field of oncology has transformed, and how
concerted efforts are now made to address patients’ ancillary
needs, including fertility preservation, management of acute and
chronic treatment effects, and to be sensitive to the psychosocial
impacts of a cancer diagnosis on those just beginning their most
productive years. Dr. Sender's research interests are comprehensive
and multidisciplinary, extending from epidemiological components
(incidence, prevalence), to biological factors (genomic or cellular
differences), to the psychosocial impact of cancer, to long-term
cancer survivorship. In 2011, Dr. Sender was the recipient of a $10
million Hyundai Hope on Wheels grant to study the genomic basis of
pediatric and adolescent and young adult cancers to test the
hypothesis that genomic knowledge can enable clinical decisions
related to treatment options. In 2010, he founded two entities
critical to the development of the emerging adolescent and young
adult (AYA) oncology subspecialty as President of the Society for
Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology (SAYAO) and Editor-in-Chief of
the Journal of Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology (JAYAO).
About NantKwest
NantKwest (NASDAQ:NK) is a pioneering, next generation,
clinical-stage immunotherapy company focused on harnessing the
unique power of our immune system using natural killer (NK) cells
to treat cancer, infectious diseases and inflammatory diseases. NK
cells are the body’s first line of defense due to the innate
ability of NK cells to rapidly identify and destroy cells under
stress, such as cancer or virally-infected cells.
NantKwest’s unique NK cell-based platform, with the capacity to
grow active killer cells as a biological cancer therapy, has been
designed to induce cell death against cancer or infected cells by
three different modes of action: (1) Direct killing using activated
NK cells (aNK) that release toxic granules directly into the cell
through cell to cell contact, (2) Antibody-mediated killing using
haNKs, which are NK cells engineered to incorporate a high affinity
receptor that binds to an administered antibody, enhancing the
cancer cell killing effect of that antibody, and (3) Chimeric
Antigen Receptor (CAR) activated killing using taNKs, which are NK
cells engineered to incorporate CARs to target tumor-specific
antigens found on the surface of cancer cells.
Our aNK, haNK® and taNK™ platform addresses certain
limitations of T cell therapies including the reduction of risk of
serious “cytokine storms” reported after T cell therapy. As an
“off-the-shelf” therapy, NantKwest’s NK cells do not rely on a
patient’s own often compromised immune system. In Phase 1 clinical
trials in patients with late stage cancer, NantKwest’s NK cells
have been successfully administered as an outpatient infusion
therapy without any reported severe side effects, even at doses of
10 billion cells.
By leveraging an integrated and extensive genomics and
transcriptomics discovery and development engine, together with a
pipeline of multiple, clinical-stage, immuno-oncology programs that
include a Phase 2 trial for a rare form of melanoma and the planned
initiation of a clinical trial of NK cells targeted to breast
cancer, we believe NantKwest is uniquely positioned to be the
premier immunotherapy company and transform medicine by delivering
living drugs in a bag and bringing novel NK cell-based therapies to
routine clinical care. For more information please
visit http://www.nantkwest.com and follow Dr. Soon-Shiong
on Twitter @DrPatSoonShiong.
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NantWorksJen Hodson562-397-3639jhodson@nantworks.com
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