LOS ANGELES, Nov. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CytoImmune Therapeutics, a privately-held cell therapy company focused on developing natural killer (NK) immune cells to fight cancer, announces the appointment of Christina Coughlin M.D., Ph.D., as their Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Coughlin will provide strategic leadership for the recently launched biotech and its clinical-stage pipeline of engineered NK cell therapies designed to improve outcomes for patients with cancer. Dr. Coughlin will join the company's Board of Directors.
Dr. Coughlin joins CytoImmune from Rubius Therapeutics, Inc. where she served as the Chief Medical Officer and led the clinical development, translational medicine, and regulatory efforts in the allogeneic red cell therapy platform. Prior to Rubius, Dr. Coughlin was with Tmunity Therapeutics, Inc., where she served as Chief Medical Officer and was responsible for the preclinical and clinical development of autologous CAR-T and TCR-T cellular therapies. Dr. Coughlin has held other leadership roles in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology fields in her career including Chief Medical Officer at Immunocore, heading the development of the soluble TCR platform, and Oncology Asset Team Leader at Pfizer.
"We're pleased to welcome Dr. Coughlin as our Chief Executive Officer," said Michael Caligiuri M.D., scientific co-founder, and Chief Medical Officer at CytoImmune. "We have made exciting progress in advancing our Cytokine-Induced Engineered CAR-NK cell technologies to the clinic, and Christina's expertise across multiple cell therapy platforms and her understanding of the immuno-oncology space will help propel CytoImmune to the next level."
"Christina's deep industry experience and knowledge of cell therapy positions her to lead CytoImmune as we continue to advance our pipeline to make an impact for patients," said Richard Santulli, the Chairman of CytoImmune. "With Christina at the helm as CEO, we are firmly poised to rapidly expand our clinical trial programs for NK cell therapies."
Dr. Coughlin received her M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and completed fellowships in Hematology and Oncology at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and in the Translational Research Group under the direction of Carl June, M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.
"I am honored to join CytoImmune and excited to advance its disruptive scientific approach to the off-the-shelf fully allogeneic engineered NK cell therapies targeting solid tumors and hematologic malignancies," said Dr. Coughlin. "I look forward to partnering with the team to positively impact patients."
About CytoImmune Therapeutics, Inc.
Founded in 2017, CytoImmune Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company, focused on developing an innovative and differentiated pipeline of NK cell therapies, using proprietary, robust and well characterized NK cell expansion and engineering technologies pioneered by Michael Caligiuri, M.D. and Jianhua Yu, Ph.D. The pipeline includes cytokine induced NK (CI-NK) for lung cancer, FLT3 CAR-NK for acute myeloid leukemia, PSCA CAR-NK cells for solid tumors and GPRC5D BiKE secreting BCMA CAR-NK cells for multiple myeloma. CytoImmune's lead product, CYTO-102 (CI-NK) cell therapy, aims to enter the clinic in combination with atezolizumab (anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody) for non-small cell lung cancer in 2022.
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