Immunome Appoints Purnanand Sarma, PhD, as President and Chief Executive Officer

EXTON, Pa., June 24, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Immunome, a biotechnology company focused on discovering first-in-class therapeutics by leveraging the most highly educated components of the human immune system from cancer patients, announced today that industry veteran Purnanand Sarma, PhD, has joined Immunome as President and Chief Executive Officer. Sarma brings more than 25 years of industry experience with a proven track record in drug development, fund raising, and growing companies across multiple R&D platforms ranging from venture-backed biotechnology start-ups to large-cap pharmaceutical companies. Immunome's former Chief Executive Officer, Michael Morin, PhD, assumes the role of Chief Scientific Officer, allowing him to focus his time and expertise on maximizing the value of the company's proprietary breakthrough R&D engine.

"Immunome is poised to emerge as a dominant player in developing next-generation therapies for cancer, offering tremendous potential for new treatments and hope to patients and their families," said Sarma. "Immunome's unique ability to harness the information from the most educated human B cells, coupled with its breakthrough target interrogation techniques, delivers a truly powerful discovery engine, and I am very excited to join the team and create what could be a revolution in oncology drug discovery. I am grateful to the exceptional leadership of Mike Morin, producing incredible scientific advances that have rapidly accelerated our discovery engine, which now delivers multiple novel and exciting targets on a monthly basis."  

"Sarma is a seasoned biotech executive with an impressive track record in scaling up promising companies," said Morin. "We are thrilled to have him lead our team as we begin to unveil our differentiated approach to immunology, share the recent success and advancements of our innovative discovery platform, build out a development pipeline and articulate our vision for a fully integrated company."  

Prior to joining Immunome, Sarma was the President & CEO of Taris Biomedical, which he built during the last nine years into a leader in therapeutic urology focused on diseases such as bladder cancer and overactive bladder. In addition to raising more than $100 million in equity capital, Sarma also sold one of Taris' products to Allergan in a transaction worth up to $587 million. Prior to TARIS, he served in several leadership roles at Cephalon Corporation, which was acquired by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries; Nektar Therapeutics; and SmithKline Beecham, now Glaxo SmithKline.  Sarma earned his PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of Minnesota and B. Pharm from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India. Sarma also serves as an independent Board Member at Ohm Oncology and Vaxess Technologies Inc.

About Immunome
Immunome is a biotechnology company focused on leveraging the human immune system to change the paradigm of cancer treatment. Immunome's growing pipeline of cancer immunotherapies, targeting novel areas of cancer biology, is fueled by a proprietary, outcome-based discovery engine that was originally developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Whitehead Institute. Our technology both captures and deeply interrogates patient immune responses to uncover novel tumor antigens and fully human antibodies with therapeutic potential against those targets. For more information about the company, visit http://immunome.com.

Investor Contact
Purnanand Sarma
President and CEO
Immunome, Inc.
[email protected]

Media Contact
Jennifer Guinan
Sage Strategic Marketing
610.410.8111
[email protected]

SOURCE Immunome