BOSTON, May 12, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Elicio Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a pipeline of novel immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer and other diseases, today announced the appointment of Joy Seymour as Vice President, Head of Regulatory Affairs and the promotion of Dr. Peter DeMuth to Chief Scientific Officer. Ms. Seymour will oversee the regulatory strategy supporting the advancement of Elicio’s novel immunotherapy programs including the company’s regulatory submissions and interactions with regulatory health authorities worldwide. Dr. DeMuth will continue to lead efforts on building Elicio’s lymph node-targeted pipeline centered on the company’s proprietary Amphiphile (AMP) platform that delivers investigational immunotherapeutics directly to the lymph nodes—the “schoolhouse” of the immune system.
“I look forward to working with the team on advancing our cancer and infectious disease immunotherapy work that has the potential to change how these diseases are addressed,” said Ms. Seymour, Elicio’s newly appointed Vice President, Head of Regulatory Affairs. “It’s clear that everyone from the leadership team to the scientists at the bench is deeply dedicated to bringing these therapies to the millions of patients in need, and I’m excited to be part of the team.”
Ms. Seymour was most recently the Global Regulatory Lead for cellular therapy at Bristol-Myers Squibb where she led the simultaneous submission of four global marketing applications for lisocabtagene maraleucel in Europe, Japan, Switzerland and Canada, while in parallel as the BLA Lead, secured the U.S. approval for Breyanzi®. Prior to Bristol-Myers Squibb and during Ms. Seymour’s tenure at Celgene as the Global Regulatory and U.S. Lead for Abraxane®, she facilitated approvals in 11 new countries across multiple oncology indications, overseeing a total of 74 marketing authorizations across geographies, and led the submission of Celgene’s first biologic IND in solid and hematologic malignancies. Ms. Seymour holds bachelor degrees in biochemistry and human biology from the University of Kansas.
As Elicio’s newly promoted Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. DeMuth added, “It’s an honor to take on this new role within Elicio and continue to help expand the versatility of the AMP platform. As someone who’s been with Elicio since the very beginning, I’m so proud of our growing scientific team and how we’ve been able to develop the pipeline with a strong foundation in research. In addition to our KRAS-targeted therapeutic cancer vaccine, we are looking forward to maturing the cell therapy and infectious disease applications of the platform and studying how our lymph node-targeted approach may make an impact in these spaces.”
Dr. DeMuth has advanced in a multifaceted role at Elicio from his early days as a scientist at the bench to becoming Vice President of Research to his new role as Chief Scientific Officer. He’s led the efforts on expanding the applicability of the AMP platform and has provided strategic input with cross functional impact. He’s also helped to broaden the team including the addition of a translation research group to support clinical trials. Prior to joining Elicio, Dr. DeMuth worked extensively with the co-founder of the company, Dr. Darrell Irvine, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research in affiliation with the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, and Harvard University, where he received recognition from the National Institutes of Health and the American Chemical Society. In 2015, Dr. DeMuth received the Quadrant Award from Quadrant AG, a global manufacturer and innovator in polymer materials science, for research he completed while at the Koch Institute at MIT. Dr. DeMuth has also been an NIH Fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and a research fellow at Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics. As a Howard Hughes Research Fellow at the University of Maryland, he was awarded the University Medal for his development of advanced technologies for oncology therapeutics.
Dr. Christopher Haqq, Executive Vice President, Head of Research and Development and Chief Medical Officer at Elicio, added, “We’re delighted to welcome Joy, an accomplished and seasoned industry regulatory expert, as we expand and strengthen our Elicio team. The development of our lead asset ELI-002, a KRAS-targeted cancer vaccine designed with the AMP platform, is anticipated to progress from dose escalation into the Phase 1b/2 trial by early 2023. Joy’s experience will be instrumental in the months to come as we engage with regulatory authorities to advance our pipeline. In addition, we look forward to seeing Pete continue playing a key role as the architect of the innovative pipeline of the company. As one of the founding scientists, he has rapidly risen within the company as we have taken the AMP platform from a novel preclinical concept into clinical trials. We are committed to continuing to advance innovative immunotherapeutics for cancer and infectious diseases.”
About Elicio Therapeutics
Elicio Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a pipeline of novel immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer and other diseases. By combining expertise in immunology and immunotherapy, Elicio is engineering investigational Amphiphile immunotherapies that are intended to precisely target and fully engage the lymph nodes, the site in our bodies where the immune response is orchestrated. Elicio is engineering lymph node-targeted AMPlifiers, immunomodulators, adjuvants and vaccines for an array of aggressive cancers and infectious diseases. Elicio began dosing subjects in AMPLIFY-201, its Phase 1/2 clinical trial in solid tumor subjects for its lead Amphiphile vaccine, ELI-002, targeting KRAS-driven cancers in October 2021. The Amphiphile platform emerged from the laboratories of Darrell Irvine, Howard Hughes Investigator and Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Koch Institute of Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. For more information, please visit https://elicio.com/.
Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements
This press release includes forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other important factors that could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from historical results or any future results, performance or achievements expressed, suggested or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding our expectation that we will continue to build a lymph node-targeted pipeline centered on our proprietary Amphiphile, or AMP, platform, that delivers investigational immunotherapeutics directly to the lymph nodes, our expectation that our lead asset ELI-002, a KRAS-targeted cancer vaccine design within the AMP platform, will progress from dose escalation into the Phase 1b/2 trial by early 2023, our expectation that we will build interactions with regulatory authorities to advance our pipeline, our belief that Dr. DeMuth will continue playing a key role as the architect of the innovative pipeline of the company, our view that we are pioneering new visionary immunotherapies for cancers and infection diseases and that we will continue to advance our cancer and infectious disease immunotherapy work, our expectation that we will expand the versatility of the AMP platform including the maturing of cell therapy and infectious disease applications of the platform. Applicable risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from historical results or any future results, performance or achievements expressed, suggested or implied by our forward-looking statements include, among others: the potential that we experience slower than expected enrollment in our clinical trials, we identify serious side effects or other safety issues, we do not have clinical supply of our product candidate that is adequate in amount and quality and supplied in a timely fashion, and the inherent risks of clinical development; our limited operating history and historical losses; our need to raise capital to fund our research and development programs; the early stage nature of the development of our product candidates; our ability to obtain orphan drug designation from the FDA; competition from various competitors in the markets targeted by our product candidates, including from competitors with substantially greater resources than us; our general dependence on third parties in connection with manufacturing, clinical trials and preclinical studies; the potential complexity of the manufacturing process for our product candidates; our ability to protect our intellectual property; our dependence on the patents we license from MIT; our compliance with healthcare laws and regulations; and risks relating to the impact on of COVID-19 or other infectious diseases on our business. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release reflect our current views with respect to future events, and we do not undertake and specifically disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.
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