Scancell Holdings Plc, (LON:SCLP), the developer of immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer, has appointed US life sciences veteran Dr Alan Lewis to the board.
Dr Lewis will join the board in a non-executive role.
“Since 2000, as CEO [chief executive officer], Alan has successfully led several life sciences companies through rapid growth to a successful exit,” Scancell said.
At Medistem he oversaw the acquisition by Intrexon in March 2014 for a stock and cash transaction of US$26mln, while at Novocell, he supervised a US$25.4mln fund-raising and was responsible for its multi-year drug discovery collaboration with Pfizer.
As CEO of Signal Therapeutics, he oversaw multi-year alliances with a number of leading pharmaceutical companies including Akzo Nobel, Roche Biosciences and Novartis, and subsequently managed its US$275mln acquisition by Celgene.
He is currently president and CEO of DiaVacs, a San Diego based clinical stage biotechnology company developing products to reverse the onset of autoimmune diseases by re-inducing tolerance into the patient's immune system to halt the vicious cycle of autoimmunity.
“This is an exciting time for immuno-oncology and I am delighted to be involved in the cutting edge science that underpins the company's research and development," Dr Lewis said.
Dr John Chiplin, executive chairman of Scancell, said Dr Lewis extensive experience in drug discovery and development that would be invaluable to the company as it begins to accelerate the development of a range of new products from the ImmunoBody and Moditope platforms from next year.
Shares in Scancell were down 0.47p at 18.03p in the first half hour of trading.