PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Regulatory News:
ABIVAX (Paris:ABVX) (Euronext Paris: FR0012333284 – ABVX), a biotechnology company harnessing the immune system to develop a functional cure for HIV as well as treatments for inflammatory/autoimmune diseases and cancer, today announced the appointment of Professor Ian McGowan, M.D., Ph.D., a current scientific advisory board (SAB) member, as chair, and the appointment of Professor Juergen Rockstroh, M.D., as a new member to the Company’s SAB. The changes have been made to support the transition from a discovery-focused biotechnology company to a biopharmaceutical development company.
Dr McGowan, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and current member of the Scientific Advisory Board, will take over the chairmanship of the Scientific Advisory Board, and Dr Rockstroh, the current Head of the HIV Outpatient Clinic at the University of Bonn in Germany, will be appointed as a member of the board. Both changes will be enacted at the Scientific Advisory Board’s next meeting at the end of June. Professor Luc Teyton, M.D., Ph. D., Dept. of Immunology and Microbiology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA is the current chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board and will continue as a regular member of the SAB.
“I would like to thank our former SAB Chairman, Professor Luc Teyton, for his commitment and guidance on advancing our research projects through to early clinical development for the past four years,” said Professor Hartmut Ehrlich, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Abivax. “We look forward to Professor Ian McGowan’s leadership in guiding us as we drive these exciting programs to their finish lines. Being both a gastro-enterologist and an HIV researcher, Ian’s background is most congruent with the Company’s needs for this critical and strategic position”.
Ian McGowan trained in Medicine at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. He obtained his PhD in mucosal immunology from the University of Oxford and a second doctoral degree in drug development from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He has been a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh for the last 11 years where his translational research program has focused on the development of novel products for HIV prevention, the mucosal pathogenesis of HIV infection, and the evaluation of products for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. Within the biopharmaceutical industry, he was a Senior Research Physician at GlaxoSmithKline in the UK where he contributed to the development of the antiviral drugs Amprenavir® and Abacavir®. As Director of Clinical Research at Gilead Sciences Inc. in San Francisco, he lead the team that developed tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (Viread®) for the treatment of HIV infection. He is currently Chief Medical Officer at AELIX Therapeutics, a Spanish biotechnology company focused on the development of a therapeutic HIV vaccine and is also Chief Scientific Officer of Orion Biotechnology, a Canadian biotechnology company developing CCR5 antagonists for HIV prevention, oncology, and neuroinflammation. Professor McGowan is a former Chair of the Antiviral Drug Advisory Committee of the United States Food and Drug Administration and an advisor to the United States Center for Disease Control as well as the World Health Organization.
Professor McGowan commented: “As the ABIVAX pipeline matures and gathers momentum, I am delighted to take on the position of Chair of ABIVAX Scientific Advisory Board. The ABIVAX portfolio has huge potential to bring significant clinical benefit to patients with unmet medical need, and I am happy to have a larger contributing role in this exciting phase of the company´s development.”
Professor Rockstroh brings his extensive expertise with a focus on HIV and hepatitis co-infection. He is Professor of Medicine and Head of the HIV Outpatient Clinic at the University of Bonn in Germany. From 2007 to 2011 he was elected as the president of the German AIDS Society. Since 2009, he has been a member of the executive committee of the European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS) and since 2011 a member of the governing council of the International AIDS Society. He currently chairs the hepatitis research activities in NEAT and EuroSIDA. In 2015, Professor Rockstroh was elected chair of HIV in Europe and in 2016 as president-elect for EACS.
Professor Rockstroh commented: “I am pleased to have been appointed to the board of a company on the cutting edge of pharmaceutical drug development such as ABIVAX and am eager to help guide the company towards its goal of developing substantial new therapeutic breakthroughs which will improve patient care and advance medical science.”
About ABIVAX (www.abivax.com)
ABIVAX is mobilizing the body’s natural immune machinery to treat patients with viral infections, autoimmune diseases and cancer. A clinical-stage company, ABIVAX leverages its antiviral and immune enhancing platforms to optimize candidates to cure HIV and treat inflammatory bowel diseases, as well as liver cancer. ABIVAX is listed on Euronext compartment B (ISIN: FR0012333284 – Mnémo: ABVX). More information on the company is available at www.abivax.com/en. Follow us on Twitter @ABIVAX_
