PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Tmunity Therapeutics, Inc., a private clinical-stage biotherapeutics company focused on saving and improving lives by delivering the full potential of next-generation T cell immunotherapy, today announced the appointment of Christina Coughlin, MD, PhD, as Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President. Dr. Coughlin formerly served as Chief Medical Officer at Immunocore Ltd., a British biotechnology company, where she was responsible for leading the effort to develop novel bispecific T cell receptor-based biologics for cancer immunotherapy.
“Chris’ depth and breadth of experience in immunotherapeutic clinical development will be tremendously valuable to Tmunity,” said Usman “Oz” Azam, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Tmunity. “We are fortunate to have her clinical and scientific leadership as we advance our portfolio of next-generation T cell immunotherapies, targeting liquid and solid tumor cancers, through pre-clinical and Phase 1 studies.”
In her role at Tmunity, Dr. Coughlin will be responsible for clinical development, program leadership and regulatory affairs.
“In addition to her great immunotherapeutic industry knowledge, Chris will also fuse the research and translational capabilities that she developed when she was part of our team at UPenn,” said Carl H. June, MD, Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perleman School of Medicine, and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania.
During her tenure at Immunocore, Dr. Coughlin led the Company’s clinical efforts and developed a pivotal program around the gp100-specific TCR bispecific in uveal melanoma. She previously led early development programs at Novartis, including programs focused on the investigation of checkpoint inhibition and PI3’ kinase inhibition. Dr. Coughlin has both biotechnology and large pharmaceutical industry experience, having held senior medical positions at Morphotek (Eisai), Pfizer and Wyeth. Earlier in her career, Dr. Coughlin was a physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia where she studied patient responses to tumor antigens with Dr. Robert Vonderheide in the division of Translational Research under the direction of Dr. June.
Dr. Coughlin holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Temple University and an MD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her residency and a hematology/oncology fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, as well as a research post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Coughlin was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (London, UK).
About Tmunity Therapeutics
Tmunity is a private clinical-stage biotherapeutics company focused on saving and improving lives by delivering the full potential of next-generation T cell immunotherapy to patients with devastating diseases. Integrating a foundational collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) with the groundbreaking scientific, clinical and manufacturing expertise and demonstrated track record of its founders (Carl June, MD; Bruce Blazar, MD; Bruce Levine, PhD; Yangbing Zhao, MD, PhD; Jim Riley, PhD; and Anne Chew, PhD), Tmunity represents a new center of gravity in translational T cell medicine. The company is developing a diversified portfolio of novel treatments that exhibit best-in-class control over T cell activation and direction in the body, with an initial focus in cancer with two programs currently in the clinic. With headquarters in Philadelphia, Tmunity utilizes laboratories and production facilities at Penn and its own dedicated cGMP manufacturing facility in Norristown, PA, to pursue process improvement and production scale-up in support of clinical development of its T cell therapies. For more information, visit www.tmunity.com.
