hemo3 Apr 2018 09:52
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Professor Sir Marc Feldmann, pioneer of anti-TNF therapy, appointed as Executive Chairman
Anti-TNF therapy is the world's largest drug class with more than US $36bn in sales
Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals Plc (LSE: HEMO), the biotechnology company developing novel therapies to transform bone marrow, or blood stem cell, transplantation for the treatment of blood diseases, announces the appointment of Sir Marc Feldmann, AC, FRS, as Executive Chairman effective as of 9 April 2018. He has a unique blend of scientific, medical and commercial experience and expertise.
Sir Marc shares the Academic credit for inventing and developing anti-TNF therapy for rheumatoid arthritis, the first major use of monoclonal antibodies in a common disease. Centocor, Inc licensed Sir Marc's key patent, and then developed Infliximab, ultimately branded as Remicade. Remicade was the main driver of the $4.9 billion acquisition of Centocor by Johnson and Johnson in 1999, and is still J&J's best selling drug. Since 2012 Anti-TNF therapy has become the world's largest drug class with sales in 2016 exceeding US$36 billion. Sir Marc was previously Chairman of the Company's Scientific Advisory Board and has a remarkably broad experience of discovering new medicines, having worked through all stages from developing new concepts of how diseases emerge, through testing ideas and early clinical development, leading clinical trials, approval, registration and commercial reality.
Robin Campbell, Chairman, will become a Non-Executive Director and Adrian Beeston, Non-Executive Director, will step down from the Board, both with immediate effect.
About Sir Marc Feldmann
Professor Sir Marc Feldmann is a pre-eminent medically trained immunologist at the University of Oxford where he was Head of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology until 2014 and now Emeritus Professor. He trained in medicine at Melbourne University and then earned a Ph.D. in Immunology at the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute with Sir Gus Nossal, before working in London at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. Sir Feldmann's main research interests are immunoregulation, understanding mechanisms of autoimmunity and the role of cytokines in disease, and working out how to fill unmet medical needs.
His work in London led to the generation of a new hypothesis for the mechanism of autoimmunity, linking upregulated antigen presentation and cytokine expression. Testing this hypothesis led to the discovery, with colleague Sir Ravinder Maini, of the pivotal role of TNFa (Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha) in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis. This major discovery has revolutionised therapy not only of rheumatoid arthritis but other chronic inflammatory diseases (eg Inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, ankylosing spondylitis), and helped change the perception of monoclonal antibodies from niche products to mainstream therapeutics. Anti-TNF therapeutics are the current leading drug class with 2016 sal
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