- New
appointments bring therapeutic development expertise and proven
leadership to support continued progress of Allarity’s multiple
oncology clinical programs
BOSTON (July 24, 2023) —
Allarity Therapeutics, Inc. (Allarity or the Company), a
clinical-stage pharmaceutical company developing novel oncology
therapeutics together with drug-specific DRP® companion diagnostics
for personalized cancer care, today announced the appointment of
three seasoned biotechnology executives, Laura Benjamin, Ph.D.,
Robert Oliver, M.B.A., Joseph Vazzano, C.P.A., to its Board of
Directors, effective August 1, 2023.
The appointment of these new Board Directors,
which fills existing vacancies, completes the Company’s
restructuring of its Board, following listing on NASDAQ in late
2021. Additionally, the appointment of these independent Directors
is expected to bring the Company back into compliance with the
Nasdaq Stock Market’s continued listing requirements relating to
Board and Committee independence.
"We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Benjamin, Mr.
Oliver, and Mr. Vazzano to our Board of Directors," said Jerry
McLaughlin, Allarity's Chairman of the Board. "Their combined
expertise, industry knowledge, and diverse backgrounds will
strengthen our Board's strategic guidance for Allarity. Their
appointment results in the assembly of a highly qualified and
experienced Board to support the Company’s development efforts
towards clinical, and ultimately commercial, success."
Laura Benjamin, Ph.D.
Laura is the Founder and currently serves as
Chief Executive Officer of OncXerna Therapeutics, Inc. Prior to
this role, Laura was a Vice President in Oncology at Eli Lilly,
where she led cancer discovery and translational discovery teams in
New York and Indianapolis. She worked closely with the
clinical teams to support multiple clinical programs, most notably
the ramucirumab program from Phase 2 to commercial launch
in colorectal, gastric, and non-small cell lung cancers.
Additionally, she helped build the cross-functional initiative to
discover, test and advance biomarker development in oncology
clinical trials across the portfolio. Prior to joining Lilly, Laura
spent 10 years as a tenure track professor in the Department of
Pathology at Harvard Medical School. During this time, she
supported and mentored Ph.D., postdoctoral, and medical students
with NIH and foundation grants. When she left Harvard in 2009,
Laura was an Associate Professor and was co-Director of the
Vascular Biology Center at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center. Both Laura’s postdoctoral work and academic
research at Harvard focused on cellular and molecular
mechanisms driving cancer, with a particular interest in the role
of the microenvironment on cancer progression and response
to targeted therapies. Laura received a B.A. in Biology from
Barnard College, Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Molecular
Biology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Robert (Bob)
Oliver,
M.B.A.
Bob most recently served as President and CEO of
Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, Inc., (OAPI). He was responsible for
overseeing OAPI’s diverse and growing product portfolio across
the neuroscience, cardiovascular, oncology, and medical device
markets. Prior to joining Otsuka, Bob was Vice President and Global
Business Manager for Oncology at Wyeth (now Pfizer.) In his
roles there, Bob also provided leadership to the Vaccines Division
and Primary Care while eventually assuming responsibility for U.S.
Commercial Operations, including Puerto Rico and the
Caribbean. He began his career in pharmaceuticals with Johnson
& Johnson, holding positions of increasing responsibility in
sales, marketing, business operations and corporate
management. Bob also serves as a member of the Board for Academic
Fellows at Eastern University, where he mentors doctoral
candidates. Bob has extensive board experience in the
biopharmaceutical industry, currently serving on boards for
Exelixis, PysBio Therapeutics, and Hyalo Technologies. He
previously served as Board Chairman for Otsuka Canada
Pharmaceutical. Bob received a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers
University and an M.B.A. degree in Marketing from the Haub School
of Business at Saint Joseph’s University, where he now sits on
the Pharma Board of Advisors.
Joseph Vazzano, CPA
Joseph (Joe) Vazzano joined Abeona Therapeutics,
Inc. (Nasdaq: ABEO) as Chief Financial Officer in March 2022. While
at Abeona, Mr. Vazzano has secured multiple equity raises including
private placements, a registered direct offering, and at the market
transactions. Before joining Abeona, Mr. Vazzano worked
at Avenue Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATXI) from August 2017
to January 2022, most recently serving as Avenue’s Chief Financial
Officer. During his tenure at Avenue, Mr. Vazzano secured multiple
equity financings and served in a leadership role for signing
a complex, two-stage acquisition of Avenue with future contingent
value rights. Previously, Mr. Vazzano served as Assistant
Corporate Controller at Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq:
ICPT) from October 2016 to July 2017, where he helped grow the
finance and accounting department during the company’s
transition from a development-stage company to a fully integrated
commercial organization. Prior to Intercept, Mr. Vazzano has held
various finance and accounting roles at Pernix Therapeutics, Inc.
and NPS Pharmaceuticals. Mr. Vazzano began his career at
KPMG, LLP and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from
Lehigh University and is a Certified Public Accountant in the State
of New Jersey.
About Allarity
Therapeutics
Allarity Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALLR)
develops drugs for personalized treatment of cancer guided by its
proprietary and highly validated companion diagnostic technology,
the DRP® platform. The Company has a mature portfolio of three
drug candidates: stenoparib, a PARP inhibitor in Phase 2
development for ovarian cancer, and in Phase 1 development for
advanced solid tumors in a combination treatment with dovitinib, a
pan-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (pan-TKI) that has previously been
developed through Phase 3 in renal cancer; and
IXEMPRA® (Ixabepilone), a microtubule inhibitor approved in
the U.S. and marketed by R-PHARM U.S. for the treatment of
second-line metastatic breast cancer, currently in Phase 2
development in Europe for the same indication. Additionally, the
Company has rights in two secondary assets: 2X-111, a liposomal
formulation of doxorubicin for metastatic breast cancer and/or
glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), which is the subject of discussions
for a restructured out-license to Smerud Medical Research
International AS; and LiPlaCis®, a liposomal formulation of
cisplatin and its accompanying DRP®, being developed via a
partnership with CHOSA Oncology AB for late-stage metastatic breast
cancer. The Company is headquartered in the United States and
maintains an R&D facility in Hoersholm, Denmark. For more
information, please visit the Company’s website
at www.Allarity.com.
About the Drug Response Predictor –
DRP® Companion
Diagnostic
Allarity uses its drug-specific DRP® to select
those patients who, by the genetic signature of their cancer, are
found to have a high likelihood of responding to the specific drug.
By screening patients before treatment, and only treating those
patients with a sufficiently high DRP® score, the therapeutic
response rate can be significantly increased. The DRP® method
builds on the comparison of sensitive vs. resistant human cancer
cell lines, including transcriptomic information from cell lines
combined with clinical tumor biology filters and prior clinical
trial outcomes. DRP® is based on messenger RNA from patient
biopsies. The DRP® platform has proven its ability to provide a
statistically significant prediction of the clinical outcome from
drug treatment in cancer patients in 37 out of 47 clinical studies
that were examined (both retrospective and prospective), including
ongoing, prospective Phase 2 trials of Stenoparib and IXEMPRA®. The
DRP® platform, which can be used in all cancer types and is
patented for more than 70 anti-cancer drugs, has been extensively
published in peer-reviewed literature.
Follow Allarity
on Social Media
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allaritytx/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/allaritytx
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 provide Allarity’s
current expectations or forecasts of future events. The words
“anticipates,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,”
“expect,” “intends,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “possible,”
“potential,” “predicts,” “project,” “should,” “towards,” “would”
and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements,
but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is
not forward-looking. These forward-looking statements include, but
are not limited to, statements related to the expected availability
of capital to fund its anticipated clinical trials, statements
related to advancing dovitinib in combination with stenoparib or
another therapeutic candidate or other approved drug, any
statements related to ongoing clinical trials for stenoparib as a
monotherapy or in combination with another therapeutic candidate
for the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer, or ongoing clinical
trials (in Europe) for IXEMPRA® for the treatment of
metastatic breast cancer, statements relating to the effectiveness
of the Company’s DRP® companion diagnostics platform in
predicting whether a particular patient is likely to respond to a
specific drug, and statements related to the Company’s ability to
maintain compliance with the Nasdaq Listing Rule. Any
forward-looking statements in this press release are based on
management’s current expectations of future events and are subject
to multiple risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results
to differ materially and adversely from those set forth in or
implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and
uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risk that the
Company is not able to raise sufficient capital to support its
current and anticipated clinical trials, the risk that results
of a clinical study do not necessarily predict final results and
that one or more of the clinical outcomes may materially change
following more comprehensive reviews of the data, and as more
patient data become available, the risk that results of a clinical
study are subject to interpretation and additional analyses may be
needed and/or may contradict such results, the receipt of
regulatory approval for dovitinib or any of our other
therapeutic candidates or, if approved, the successful
commercialization of such products, the risk of cessation or delay
of any of the ongoing or planned clinical trials and/or our
development of our product candidates, the risk that the results of
previously conducted studies will not be repeated or observed in
ongoing or future studies involving our therapeutic candidates, and
the risk that the current COVID-19 pandemic will impact the
Company’s current and future clinical trials and the timing of the
Company’s preclinical studies and other operations. For a
discussion of other risks and uncertainties, and other important
factors, any of which could cause our actual results to differ from
those contained in the forward-looking statements, see the section
entitled “Risk Factors” in our Form 10-K annual report on file
with the Securities and Exchange Commission, available at the
Securities and Exchange Commission’s website
at www.sec.gov , and as well as discussions of
potential risks, uncertainties and other important factors in the
Company’s subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. All information in this press release is as of the date
of the release, and the Company undertakes no duty to update this
information unless required by law.
###
Company Contact:
investorrelations@allarity.com
U.S. Media
Contact: Mike
Beyer Sam Brown,
Inc. +1 (312)
961-2502
mikebeyer@sambrown.com EU
Media
Contact: Thomas
Pedersen Carrotize
PR &
Communications +45
6062 9390
- Allarity Therapeutics - Press Release - New Board Members
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