Bellicum Pharmaceuticals Appoints Gregory Naeve as Chief Business Officer
August 03 2017 - 7:00AM
Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq:BLCM), a leader in
developing novel, controllable cellular immunotherapies for cancers
and orphan inherited blood disorders, today announced that Gregory
Naeve, Ph.D., has been appointed as Chief Business Officer,
effective August 21. Dr. Naeve, who will report to CEO Rick Fair,
will lead product and portfolio strategy as well as business
development for the Company.
“We are excited to welcome a leader of Greg’s caliber and
experience as we look to expand our pipeline and secure strategic
partnerships to leverage our technology platform,” said Bellicum’s
President & CEO Rick Fair. “He brings an impressive track
record of defining immuno-oncology portfolio strategy and
implementing it through successful collaborations. His
contributions will be critical as we look to capitalize on the
unique strengths of our controllable cell therapy
technologies.”
Commented Dr. Naeve, “It is becoming increasingly clear how
important innovations like Bellicum’s cellular control technologies
are to advancing CAR T and TCR candidates into more diseases,
particularly solid tumors. I look forward to working with
Bellicum’s leadership and R&D teams to further these novel
technologies, which have the potential to transform the field of
cellular therapy.”
Dr. Naeve joins Bellicum from Pfizer where he served as the
ImmunoOncology & Cell Therapy Lead for Pfizer’s External
Research and Development Unit. During his tenure, he was a key
member of the executive team responsible for identifying and
implementing many of the strategic partnerships in Pfizer’s
ImmunoOncology portfolio, including the Cellectis and Servier CAR T
alliances. Prior to Pfizer, Dr. Naeve served as Principal of The
Column Group, a venture capital firm focused on investing in and
creating innovative biotechnology companies. Prior to that, he was
the President and Chief Scientific Officer at Parallax Biosystems,
a company he co-founded that developed novel technologies with
applications in preclinical drug discovery and diagnostics. Early
in his career, Dr. Naeve held research positions at Neurocrine
Biosciences and Amgen. He holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the
University of Southern California and a B.S. in Biochemistry
and Biological Sciences from Colorado State University.
Inducement AwardsThe Compensation Committee of
the Board of Directors has approved inducement awards to Dr. Naeve,
which will be granted effective on his start date. The inducement
awards consist of a stock option to purchase up to 130,000 shares
of the Company's common stock and a restricted stock unit for
15,000 shares. Each such stock award will be priced at the closing
price of the Common Stock on the grant date of August 21,
2017. The stock option and restricted stock unit award will be
granted subject to the terms of the Company’s 2014 Equity Incentive
Plan. One-fourth of the shares subject to the stock option award
will vest on the one-year anniversary of Dr. Naeve’s start
date and the remainder of the shares will vest in a series of 36
successive equal monthly installments thereafter, and 25% of the
shares subject to the restricted stock unit award will vest on
each anniversary of Dr. Naeve’s start date, in each case subject to
his continuous service with the Company through each such vesting
date and subject to potential vesting acceleration under certain
circumstances pursuant to the terms of Dr. Naeve’s employment
agreement with the Company.
About Bellicum Pharmaceuticals Bellicum is
a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering
and developing cellular immunotherapies for cancers and orphan
inherited blood disorders. Bellicum is using its proprietary
Chemical Induction of Dimerization (CID) technology platform to
engineer and control components of the immune system. Bellicum is
developing next-generation product candidates in some of the most
important areas of cellular immunotherapy, including hematopoietic
stem cell transplantation (HSCT), and CAR T and TCR cell therapies.
More information can be found at www.bellicum.com.
Forward-Looking Statement This press
release contains forward-looking statements for purposes of the
safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform
Act of 1995. Bellicum may, in some cases, use terms such as
"predicts," "believes," "potential," "proposed," "continue,"
“designed,” "estimates," "anticipates," "expects," "plans,"
"intends," "may," "could," "might," "will," "should" or other words
that convey uncertainty of future events or outcomes to identify
these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements
include statements regarding our intentions, beliefs, projections,
outlook, analyses or current expectations concerning, among other
things: our research and development activities relating to our
CID, CAR T and TCR programs, including our intentions to expand our
pipeline, partner our technologies and expand our development into
additional diseases. Various factors may cause differences between
Bellicum’s expectations and actual results as discussed in greater
detail under the heading “Risk Factors” in Bellicum’s filings with
the Securities and Exchange Commission, including without
limitation our annual report on Form 10-K for the year
ended December 31, 2016 and our report on Form 10-Q for the
quarter ended March 31, 2017. Any forward-looking statements
that Bellicum makes in this press release speak only as of the date
of this press release. Bellicum assumes no obligation to update our
forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information,
future events or otherwise, after the date of this press
release.
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at
http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/29512c02-8be9-4aec-84a9-268f535e08b9
Investors:
Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Alan Musso, CFO
832-384-1116
amusso@bellicum.com
Media:
BMC Communications
Brad Miles
646-513-3125
bmiles@bmccommunications.com
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