NantKwest Appoints Dr. John Lee as Senior Vice President of Adult Medical Affairs
May 18 2017 - 8:00AM
Business Wire
Company Adds Immuno-Oncology and Clinical
Trial 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 John Lee, MD, FACS, as
Senior Vice President of Adult Medical Affairs. In his new
role, Dr. Lee will oversee regulatory strategy for clinical trials,
medical writing and translation of pre-clinical science into the
development of new trials.
“Adding Dr. Lee to our adult medical affairs team will help
accelerate our efforts towards bringing impactful clinical trials
to life,” said Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, Chairman and CEO of
NantKwest. “As an esteemed medical professor and surgeon with
extensive experience in oncology research, Dr. Lee’s leadership
will be crucial to advancing the development of effective
immunotherapy treatments.”
In addition to joining NantKwest, Dr. Lee currently serves as
Co-Director of the Chan Soon-Shiong Institute of Medicine, and has
been a surgical oncologist with Sanford Health since 2008.
“Our ultimate goal is to reduce the overall cancer mortality
rate by leveraging the body’s immune system to combat all types of
cancer,” said Dr. Lee. “From our recent authorization from the U.S.
Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for an Investigational New
Drug (IND) application for the NANT Cancer Vaccine, to our
partnership with Viracta Therapeutics, Inc. to combine our platform
of natural killer (NK) cell therapies with the company’s Phase 2
drug candidate, I’m thrilled to be a part of a company that is on
its way to revolutionizing the way we treat this complex
disease.”
Dr. Lee’s prior experience at Sanford Health was largely focused
on developing a comprehensive head and neck cancer program aimed at
bringing immuno-oncology drugs to patients. In addition, as medical
director of cancer research, he helped develop several other cancer
multi-disciplinary teams that focused on clinical and research
excellence. By initiating and overseeing the health system’s
protocol review committee for all incoming oncology trials, Dr. Lee
has developed several clinical trials within Sanford. Throughout
his time there, he was promoted to full professor and Dr. Lee’s lab
produced more than 40 peer-reviewed papers, multiple patents and
helped increase institutional funded research from the National
Institutes of Health (NIH). His surgical training in head and neck
surgery was completed at the University of Iowa, where he was
eventually promoted to associate professor. Dr. Lee received his MD
from the University of Minnesota and completed his undergraduate
education at Stanford University.
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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version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170518005420/en/
NantWorksJen Hodson, 562-397-3639jhodson@nantworks.com
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