NantKwest Builds Financial and Commercial Expertise with the Appointment of Fred Driscoll to Its Board of Directors
September 22 2017 - 4:39PM
Business Wire
NantKwest, Inc. (Nasdaq:NK) today announced that Fred Driscoll,
currently an Advisor and former Chief Financial Officer of Flexion
Therapeutics, Inc., has been appointed to the Board to fill the
position being vacated by Mr. Richard Kusserow.
Joining NantKwest’s Board, Mr. Driscoll brings more than 30
years of deep financial and commercialization experience in the
biotechnology and medical device industries to the Board of
NantKwest as the company transitions its novel, natural killer (NK)
cell based programs to human clinical trials across the company’s
broad aNK, haNK and taNK cell therapy platforms.
“Having dedicated almost four years of Board service to
NantKwest, we would like to express our deepest appreciation to
Richard for his strong commitment to the company,” said Patrick
Soon-Shiong, MD, Chairman and CEO of NantKwest. “NantKwest
continues to grow and bringing on board an experienced executive
like Fred Driscoll marks another important milestone for NantKwest
as we accelerate our clinical development activities focused on
bringing important new and potentially more effective NK cell-based
therapeutic options to cancer patients across a wide range of
cancer types. We look forward to tapping Fred’s broad industry
expertise to further strengthen our Board and assist in the
advancement of our clinical and commercial strategy.”
“The immuno-oncology and cell therapy space has quite simply
exploded with new, novel therapeutics coming to the market that
target the human immune system in novel and more effective ways,”
said Fred Driscoll. “NantKwest is clearly a leader in this emerging
area of cancer immunotherapy and I am thrilled to have the
opportunity bring my expertise to the company and help further
build upon their strong expertise in unique, natural killer
cell-based therapeutics.”
Prior to joining NantKwest, Fred has been an Advisor of Flexion
Therapeutics, Inc. and served as the Chief Financial Officer of
Flexion Therapeutics, Inc. from 2013 until his retirement earlier
this year. Prior to Flexion, Mr. Driscoll served as the Chief
Financial Officer, Vice President, Treasurer and Principal
Accounting Officer of Novavax, Inc. Mr. Driscoll served as the
Chief Executive Officer and President at Genelabs Technologies,
Inc. and also served as its Chief Financial Officer.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Driscoll was Chief Financial Officer
of Astraris, Inc., Chief Executive Officer and President of
OXiGENE, Inc., and Senior Vice President of Finance and Operations
of Collagenesis Corporation. Mr. Driscoll has more than 30 years of
financial management experience with biotechnology and medical
device companies.
Mr. Driscoll has a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Finance
from Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
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) Targeted
activated killing using taNKs, which are NK cells engineered to
incorporate chimeric antigen receptors (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 www.nantkwest.com.
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NantKwest, Inc.Jen Hodsonjhodson@nantworks.com
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