NantKwest (Nasdaq:NK) today announced the appointment of Cheryl
L. Cohen to the Board of Directors of NantKwest, effective
immediately.
“Cheryl is a proven business executive and highly experienced
board member in both the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors,”
said Patrick Soon-Shiong, Chairman and CEO of NantKwest. “We are
very pleased to welcome such an accomplished business leader and
are confident that her strategic perspective and operational
expertise will add significant value to our Board of
Directors.”
Since 2008, Ms. Cohen has served as president of CLC Consulting,
a pharmaceutical and biotechnology consulting firm specializing in
new product start-up and commercialization.
Prior to CLC, Ms. Cohen served as chief commercial officer of
Medivation, Inc., a publicly-traded bio-pharmaceutical company,
from September 2011 until July 2014. From November 2007 to
September 2008, she served as the vice president, strategic
commercial group, of Health Care Systems, Inc., a Johnson &
Johnson company, and from October 1998 to November 2007, she worked
at Janssen Biotech, Inc. (formerly Centocor Biotech, Inc.), a
Johnson & Johnson company, in a variety of senior sales roles
including vice president, rheumatology franchise.
In addition, Ms. Cohen served on the board of Aerpio
Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a pharmaceutical company, since 2018 and
also served on the board of Vital Therapies, Inc., a therapeutics
company, from 2015 until 2019.
Since 2015, Ms. Cohen has served on the board of Novus
Therapeutics, Inc. (reverse merger of Tokai Pharmaceuticals, Inc.),
a publicly-traded pharmaceutical company focused on the
acquisition, development, and commercialization of ear, nose, and
throat products and served on the board of Protein Sciences
Corporation, a privately held bio-pharmaceutical company
specializing in vaccine development from October 2014 to August
2017. She served on the board of Cytrx Corporation, a publicly
traded bio-pharmaceutical company specializing in oncology, from
June 2015 through October 2016.
Ms. Cohen began her career at Solvay Pharmaceuticals in a
variety of sales positions and received her B.A. from Saint Joseph
College.
For additional information, please
visit, www.nantkwest.com.
About NantKwest:
NantKwest, a member of the NantWorks ecosystem of companies, is
an innovative clinical-stage immunotherapy company focused on
harnessing the power of the innate immune system by using the
natural killer cell to treat cancer and virally induced infectious
diseases.
NantKwest is uniquely positioned to implement precision cancer
medicine, with the potential to change the current paradigm of
cancer care. Natural Killer (NK) cells are a safeguard in the human
body designed to recognize and detect cells under stress due to
cancer or viral infection. NantKwest’s “off-the-shelf” activated NK
cell platform is designed to destroy cancer and virally infected
cells from the body. The safety of our NK cells as well as their
activity against a broad range of cancers have been tested in phase
I clinical trials in Canada and Europe as well as in multiple phase
I and II clinical trials in the United States. In addition to being
a universal cell-based therapy that does not require individualized
patient sourcing or matching, our NK cell products have been
largely administered in the outpatient setting as an
“off-the-shelf” living drug.
With the capacity to grow active killer cells as a cancer
therapy, our NK cells have been designed to induce cell death
against cancers and virally infected cells by several mechanisms,
including: (i) innate killing, whereby all of our NK platforms
recognize the stress proteins typically found on cancer cells,
which, upon binding, release toxic granules to immediately kill
their targets; (ii) antibody-mediated killing with our haNK®
platform, which are NK cells engineered to express antibody
receptors that can bind to therapeutic antibody products, thereby
enhancing the cancer cell killing effect of that antibody; and
(iii) Chimeric Antigen Receptor directed killing using the taNK®
platform, which includes NK cells engineered to incorporate
chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) to target tumor-specific antigens
found on the surface of cancer cells. All three modes of killing
(innate, antibody-mediated, and CAR directed killing) are employed
by our t-haNK™ platform, which is an innovative combination of our
aNK, haNK® and taNK® platforms in a single product.
Our haNK®, and t-haNK™ platforms have been designed to address
certain limitations of CAR T-cell therapy including the capability
to infuse cell therapy in an outpatient setting which allows for
potential reduction of risk for serious cytokine storms and
protracted serious adverse events. In Phase I and II clinical
trials in patients with late stage cancer, our NK cells have been
administered as an investigational outpatient infusion safely with
greater than 500 infusions to date at a dose of 2 billion
cells per infusion.
By leveraging an integrated and extensive genomics and
transcriptomics discovery and development engine, together with a
pipeline of multiple, clinical-stage, immuno-oncology programs, 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.
NK-92, aNK, haNK, taNK, and t-haNK are trademarks of NantKwest,
Inc.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within
the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of
1995. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning or
implying that NantKwest will be successful in improving the
treatment of cancer. Risks and uncertainties related to this
endeavor include, but are not limited to, obtaining FDA approval of
NantKwest’s NK cells as well as other therapeutics as part of the
NANT Cancer Vaccine platform as a cancer treatment.
Forward-looking statements are based on management's current
expectations and are subject to various risks and uncertainties
that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely
from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
Accordingly, these forward-looking statements do not constitute
guarantees of future performance, and you are cautioned not to
place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.
These and other risks regarding NantKwest’s business are
described in detail in its Securities and Exchange Commission
filings, including in NantKwest’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for
the quarter ended March 31, 2019. These forward-looking statements
speak only as of the date hereof, and we disclaim any obligation to
update these statements except as may be required by law.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190606005809/en/
Media Contact:Jen HodsonNANT562-397-3639Jen@nant.com
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