Numab Therapeutics appoints Daniel Vasella as new Chairman of the Board

Numab Therapeutics AG announced the appointment of Dr. med. Daniel Vasella, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Novartis AG, as the new and independent Chairman of the Board of Numab. Dr. Vasella succeeds Dr. Oliver Middendorp, founder and current Chief Business Officer, who remains on the Board of Directors as a regular member.

“We have worked very successfully with Daniel Vasella since he joined our board in October last year, and we look forward to working even closer together in the future,” said David Urech, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Numab Therapeutics.

“Numab has established itself at the forefront of multi-specific antibody development, a sector that holds promise to transform the treatment landscapes in cancer and several other disease areas with high economic burden on society. I’m glad to support the company in this highly promising period,” commented Dr. Daniel Vasella, Chairman of the Board of Numab.

Numab most recently announced the dosing of the first cancer patient with its lead compound NM21-1480 (ND021 program), a tri-specific immune-modulator that concomitantly blocks the immune-suppressive PD-(L)1 pathway and triggers the immune-stimulatory 4-1BB pathway, resulting in synergistic anti-tumor activity, locally restricted to the TME. Numab also continued to execute on its partnering strategy, which resulted in the recent expansion of its discovery alliance with Ono Pharmaceutical in oncology, and a two-product alliance with Boehringer Ingelheim, aiming at multi-specific antibodies for the therapy of retinopathy and cancer, respectively. In addition to the lead program ND021, Numab’s proprietary program ND026 (regionally partnered to Kaken) in atopic diseases is steadily progressing through preclinical development.