ImaginAb Announces Strengthening of Board and Executive Leadership Team
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 2, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- ImaginAb Inc., a clinical stage immuno-oncology imaging company, announced today the appointment of Friedhelm Blobel, Ph.D., former President and Chief Executive Officer of SciClone Pharmaceuticals, Inc. as an independent non-executive Director to its Board of Directors. In addition, Ivan Plavec, Ph.D., will be joining the company full time as Chief Business Officer (Dr. Plavec had up until now been serving in a consulting capacity).
Martyn Coombs, CEO of ImaginAb said, "We welcome Friedhelm to ImaginAb and are thrilled that we will be working with Ivan in a permanent and expanded role. We look forward to leveraging their deep business experiences in this space as we continue to grow ImaginAb's clinical efforts and business partnerships."
"I am excited to be joining ImaginAb's board at this important time in the company's evolution," said Dr. Blobel.
"I am thrilled to be joining ImaginAb team as a CBO," said Dr. Plavec. "In the past eighteen months working with the ImaginAb team as a consultant, we made huge progress on all fronts, from completing Phase I with the lead product to forging strategic relationships with major pharmaceutical companies. I am now looking forward to helping establish ImaginAb as a major player in immuno-oncology."
Friedhelm Blobel, Ph.D., currently serves as board member of private Life Science companies (ImaginAb, ENTvantage, and SciClone Pharmaceuticals International Ltd). From June 2006 until its acquisition by a Chinese consortium in October 2017 he served as President, Chief Executive Officer and a Director for SciClone Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Throughout these years SciClone was a NASDAQ listed company, based in the San Francisco Bay Area with a specialty pharmaceuticals business focused in China, managing its own sales force and recent annual revenues of approximately $150 million. From July 2000 to 2006 Dr. Blobel was President, Chief Executive Officer and a Director of Gryphon Therapeutics, Inc., a private South San Francisco-based biopharmaceutical company. Prior to joining Gryphon Dr. Blobel spent more than two decades as an executive with the Hoechst Group and the Boehringer Mannheim Group, including responsibilities in the areas of diabetes and in vitro diagnostics. For these companies he lived and worked eight years in Europe and Japan before moving to the USA. Dr. Blobel holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Microbiology from the University of Hohenheim, Germany.
Ivan Plavec, Ph.D. is a president and founder of Ascellna Life Science Group, a consulting firm supporting life science companies with innovative technologies and products. Dr. Plavec has a unique combination of deep scientific knowledge and business acumen and over twenty-five years of experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. Prior to Ascellna, Dr. Plavec held senior research positions at Novartis and Systemix, and executive and business development positions at BioSeek and Asterand. He has negotiated and closed over one hundred deals including complex drug discovery collaborations, technology-based collaborations, and product and technology licensing deals. On the science front, Dr. Plavec is an author on over thirty peer-reviewed publications, has filed numerous patents and has a track record of scientific accomplishments and broad scientific experience in drug discovery and repositioning, gene therapy, immunology, and oncology. He holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Zürich, Switzerland.
About ImaginAb
ImaginAb Inc. is an immuno-oncology company focused on providing actionable insight into patient selection and treatment progress for cancer immunotherapy, enabling precision medicine. ImaginAb engineers antibody fragments called minibodies that maintain the exquisite specificity of full-length antibodies while remaining inert in the body. Used with widely available PET scan technology, these novel minibodies illuminate high-value molecular targets, providing physicians with a whole-body picture of immune activity. ImaginAb is also advancing a best-in-class imaging agent to improve prostate cancer management and patient outcomes, as well as developing a pipeline for other targets in oncology. ImaginAb's products have the potential to improve patient care and lower healthcare costs.
For more information about ImaginAb's pipeline and technology, visit www.imaginab.com.
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SOURCE ImaginAb, Inc.
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