WUGEN Expands Leadership Team with Appointment of a Vice President of Research and Development and a Vice President of Product Development

ST. LOUIS, March 26, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- WUGEN Inc., a biotechnology company developing a novel, universal allogeneic CAR-T therapy platform, today announced the appointment of Ayman Kabakibi, Ph.D., as Vice President of Research and Development, and Kenneth Chrobak, Ph.D., as Vice President of Product Development.

"The experience and talent that Ayman and Ken bring to WUGEN strengthen our ability to build our pipeline of allogeneic CAR-T therapies," said John McKearn, Ph.D., CEO of WUGEN. "Filling these positions will allow us to continue the rapid development of our CAR-T platform. Dr. Kabakibi and Dr. Chrobak will be valuable additions to the WUGEN team as we advance toward clinical studies."

Prior to joining WUGEN, Dr. Kabakibi served as Vice President of Biology and co-founder of Tollnine, an immune-oncology company, and prior to that as Executive Director, Head of Biology and Pharmacology at Solstice Biologics where he led the immune-oncology technology research efforts. He has more than 20 years of experience in large pharma and biotech companies advancing research programs to the clinic. Dr. Kabakibi also held positions at Traversa Therapeutics as Head of Biology and Pharmacology and at Kalypsys as Head of Pharmacology. He started his pharmaceutical career at Pfizer. Dr. Kabakibi received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts and his Master of Science in medical laboratory sciences from Northeastern University.

Dr. Chrobak was most recently at Allogene Therapeutics, and prior to Allogene's acquisition of their CAR-T portfolio, he was with Pfizer. In his role as a Principal Scientist in Process Development (PD) and later in Manufacturing Sciences and Technology, Dr. Chrobak was responsible for developing allogeneic CAR-T processes and leading technical transfer activities. He has more than 10 years of experience in PD and manufacturing support. Dr. Chrobak has held various positions of increasing responsibility at Baxter in Process Science and Technical Operations, supporting both clinical and commercial products. Dr. Chrobak received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Boston University and his Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

About WUGEN

WUGEN Inc., is a biotechnology company developing a novel CAR-T therapy platform including an "off-the-shelf" fratricide-resistant CAR-T cell therapy initially for T-cell malignancies and acute myeloid leukemia. WUGEN's state-of-the-art gene editing technologies and cutting-edge CAR-T cell therapy address some of the challenges that have limited the clinical development of allogeneic CAR-T cells. WUGEN was founded based on technology licensed from Washington University in St. Louis. For more information please visit www.wugen.com. 

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SOURCE WUGEN Inc.

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http://www.wugen.com