TIDMPRTC
PureTech Health PLC
08 July 2016
PureTech Health plc
PureTech Appoints Feng Zhang to Scientific Advisory Board and
Expands Team and Advisory Group
PureTech Health plc ("PureTech" or the "Company", LSE: PRTC), a
cross-disciplinary biotech company developing novel medicines at
the interface of the gut, brain and immune system, today announced
the appointment of Feng Zhang, Ph.D. to its Scientific Advisory
Board (SAB). The Company has also appointed Jeff Stevens, as Vice
President of Growth Strategy & Operations and has expanded its
team of senior advisors to include Meghan Fitzgerald, DrPH,
Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy, M&A and Health
Policy at Cardinal Health; Atul Pande, M.D., Former Senior Vice
President and Head of Neurosciences at GlaxoSmithKline; and Philip
J. Larsen, M.D., Ph.D., Global Head of Diabetes Research &
Development at Sanofi.
"We are very pleased to add these accomplished leaders to our
team and advisory group of distinguished scientists and
clinicians," said Daphne Zohar, Chief Executive Officer of PureTech
Health. "Insights from this group will further add to the
intellectual capital resident at PureTech as we advance and enhance
our pipeline."
Feng Zhang, Ph.D., will join PureTech as a member of the
Company's SAB. He is an accomplished bioengineer focused on
developing tools to better understand nervous system function and
disease. His lab applies these novel tools to interrogate gene
function and study neuropsychiatric diseases in animal and stem
cell models. Since joining MIT and the Broad Institute in January
2011, Dr. Zhang has pioneered the development of genome editing
tools for use in eukaryotic cells - including human cells - from
natural microbial CRISPR systems. These tools, which he has made
widely available, are accelerating biomedical research around the
world. Dr. Zhang is a recipient of many awards including the
Perl/UNC Prize in Neuroscience (2012, shared with Deisseroth and
Boyden), the National Science Foundation's Alan T. Waterman Award
(2014), the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine
(2014, shared with Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier), the
Canada Gairdner International Award (2016, shared with Emmanuelle
Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna), and the Tang Prize in
Biopharmaceutical Science (2016, shared with Emmanuelle Charpentier
and Jennifer Doudna). He has also received technology innovation
awards from the McKnight, New York Stem Cell and Damon Runyon
foundations. In 2013 Popular Science named him one of its
"Brilliant Ten." He was named one of the "Top 20 Researchers in
2014" by Nature Biotechnology, which considers the total impact of
a scientist's body of published work. Dr. Zhang is also a founder
of Editas Medicine, a genome editing company with specific
expertise in CRISPR-Cas9 and TALE technologies.
Jeff Stevens will join PureTech as Vice President of Growth
Strategy & Operations. In this role, he will be helping to
refine and prioritise indications and commercial opportunities for
PureTech's growth stage platforms. Mr. Stevens has been involved
with the global healthcare industry for nearly 25 years. He started
his career at Roche in sales, marketing, and business development
before transitioning into institutional investments. Over the past
decade, Mr. Stevens was a dedicated healthcare analyst and
portfolio manager at Fidelity Investments in Boston. During his
tenure at Fidelity and other asset managers, he has researched and
invested in a diverse mix of biotherapeutic, medical device and
service companies from all over the world. Mr. Stevens has a BS in
chemistry from Trinity College and an MBA in finance and strategy
from New York University.
Meghan Fitzgerald, DrPH, will join PureTech as a senior advisor.
She is the Executive Vice President of Strategy, M&A and Health
Policy at Cardinal Health and is a member of Cardinal Health's
executive committee. She is an expert on a wide array of healthcare
topics and trends, including specialty healthcare and healthcare
policy. Dr. Fitzgerald leads Cardinal Health's Corporate Strategy
team and previously was the President of Cardinal Health Specialty
Solutions, a specialty healthcare business that offers services for
healthcare providers, payers, and pharmaceutical and biotech
industries. Specialty Solutions is one of the fastest growing
businesses at Cardinal Health. Prior to joining Cardinal Health,
she was Senior Vice President of New Markets International Division
and Business Development at Medco Health Solutions, Inc., where she
was responsible for leading business development efforts in the
U.S. and internationally. She previously held positions of
increasing responsibility at Pfizer Global Pharmaceuticals, where
she supported business strategies and operations, including the
implementation of ten-year lifecycle plans for various
pharmaceutical products such as Celebrex. Dr. Fitzgerald serves on
the Board of Directors for SeniorLink, a model of in-home care for
elders as well as Concert Pharmaceuticals. She is a member of the
World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Aging and also
serves as a member of the adjunct faculty at Columbia University in
New York, teaching The Business of Healthcare and Strategy.
Philip J. Larsen, M.D., Ph.D., will join PureTech as a senior advisor. He is the Global Head
of Diabetes R&D at Sanofi. He has 20 years of pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry experience
in the field of diabetes and obesity. Previously he was Head of the Neuroendocrine Pharmacology
Department at Novo Nordisk and was Chief Scientific Officer for diabetes research at Eli Lilly.
Dr. Larsen also founded Rheoscience, a Danish biotechnology company focussed on obesity and
diabetes. He has served in his current role at Sanofi since August 2012, where he is directing
discovery and early clinical development in the field of diabetes, including addressing diabetes
with both small molecule and biologics based therapies. In addition to drug product focused
research, under Dr. Larsen's leadership Sanofi has intensified its focus on translational
medicine to address the accelerating prevalence of type 2 diabetes.
Atul Pande, M.D., will join PureTech as a senior advisor. Dr. Pande has more than two decades
of experience in drug development. He has led several programmes in neurosciences, respiratory,
HIV, oncology and cardiovascular therapy areas. Dr. Pande is the former Senior Vice President
and Senior Advisor, Pharmaceutical R&D at GlaxoSmithKline and has been active in the development
of multiple important central nervous system drugs while holding various senior roles in Pfizer
R&D, Parke-Davis/Warner-Lambert, and Lilly Research Laboratories. His experience includes
drug development, registration, launch and lifecycle management in the areas of anxiety, depression,
epilepsy, neuropathic pain, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury, and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
diseases. Dr. Pande is a psychiatrist and fellow of several scientific societies, including
the American Psychiatric Association. He began his career as a faculty member at the University
of Michigan Medical School where his research focused on mood disorders. He has published
over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and over 100 abstracts, book chapters, and book reviews.
About Pure Tech's Scientific Advisory Board
In addition to its group of esteemed Senior Advisors who are
working with PureTech on specific projects or products, PureTech's
Scientific Advisory Board is focused on identifying "what's next"
for PureTech. This group is chaired by H. Robert Horvitz, Ph.D.,
PureTech Board Advisor and SAB Chair, Nobel Laureate and David H.
Koch Professor at MIT. Members of the SAB include Dennis A.
Ausiello, M.D., Chief Emeritus of Medicine at Massachusetts General
Hospital and Jackson Distinguished Professor of Clinical Medicine
at Harvard Medical School; Edward Boyden, Ph.D., optogenetics
pioneer, professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and
Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) Media Lab and the MIT McGovern Institute; James J. Collins,
Ph.D., Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science and
Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT; Sanjiv Sam Gambhir,
M.D., Ph.D., Ludwig Professor and Chair, Department of Radiology
and Director of the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford
University; Raju Kucherlapati, Ph.D., PureTech Board member, Paul
C. Cabot Professor of Genetics and Professor of Medicine at Harvard
Medical School and Robert Langer, Sc.D., PureTech Co-founder and
Board member, David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT; and Feng
Zhang, Ph.D., W.M. Keck Career Development Professor of Biomedical
Engineering in the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and
Biological Engineering at MIT and Core Member at the Broad
Institute of MIT and Harvard.
About PureTech Health
PureTech Health (PureTech Health plc, PRTC.L) is a
cross-disciplinary biotech company focused on areas of growing
scientific and technical insights that are at an important
inflection point, including the central nervous, gastro-intestinal
and immune systems, and the interactions and signalling between
them. PureTech has approximately 20 clinical studies across its
pipeline targeting multi-billion dollar market opportunities,
including five human proof-of-concept studies and multiple pivotal
or registration study readouts expected in the next two years.
While inevitably some technologies will not advance to
commercialisation, PureTech's approach mitigates risk as most of
the cash resides on a PureTech parent company level, allowing
PureTech to build value and divert cash to its most successful
programmes as milestones are achieved. PureTech has over 220
patents and patent applications. PureTech's leading team and board,
along with an advisory network of more than 60 expert
founder-scientists and advisors across multiple disciplines, gives
PureTech access to potentially ground-breaking science and
technological innovation. With healthcare undergoing major
transformation, PureTech believes it is well positioned to
develop and launch medicines for the 21st century. For more
information, visit www.puretechhealth.com and connect with us on
Twitter.
Forward Looking Statement
This press release contains statements that are or may be
forward-looking statements, including statements that relate to the
company's future prospects, developments and strategies. The
forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and
are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could
cause actual results, performance and achievements to differ
materially from current expectations, including, but not limited
to, those risks and uncertainties described in the risk factors
included in the company's regulatory filings. These forward-looking
statements are based on assumptions regarding the present and
future business strategies of the company and the environment in
which it will operate in the future. Each forward-looking statement
speaks only as at the date of this press release. Except as
required by law, regulatory requirement, the Listing Rules and the
Disclosure and Transparency Rules, neither the company nor any
other party intends to update or revise these forward-looking
statements, whether as a result of new information, future events
or otherwise.
# # #
For further information, please contact:
PureTech +1 617 651 3156
Allison Mead, Director, Communications
and Investor Relations
FTI Consulting (Communications +44 (0) 20 3727
adviser to PureTech) 1000
Ben Atwell
Matthew Cole
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END
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