— Peter M. Strumph, Chief Executive Officer
— Brendan Classon PhD, Executive Vice President, Research and Development
— Louis Demers, Vice President of Technical Operations
— Matthew J. Hogan, member of the Board of Directors
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA & CALGARY, Alberta — July 6, 2021 — Parvus Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of medicines using the proprietary platform-based, disease-specific immunoregulator, Navacims™, to treat autoimmune diseases without impairing normal immunity, today announced the appointment of Peter Strumph as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors, Matthew J. Hogan as a member of the Board of Directors, Brendan Classon as Executive Vice President, Research and Development, and Louis Demers as Vice President of Technical Operations.
“Parvus’ Navacim technology has the promise to deliver treatments for many autoimmune diseases, with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) as the first indication. The Board of Directors is confident this leadership team has the skills and experience to execute the Parvus strategy to bring our first Navacim into the clinic and soon, other Navacims™ for additional indications,” said Hugh Young Rienhoff, Jr. MD, Chairman of the Board.
“Recent progress has been made in developing our Navacim platform, specifically improvements to meet manufacturability requirements and the generation of the production cell line to support our lead PBC clinical program,” stated Peter Strumph, CEO. “I am thrilled to assume this leadership role at Parvus, to be given the opportunity to build the company, and to develop a series of Navacim based products to address the unmet need of patients afflicted with autoimmune disease.”
Peter Strumph has more than two decades of experience in executive leadership and technical roles supporting successful development and commercialization of 7 FDA approved novel therapies. Peter’s prior experience includes CEO at Amygdala Neurosciences, CEO at Codexis, SVP of Operations at Portola Pharmaceuticals, SVP of Operations at CV Therapeutics, and manager of Operations & Planning at Biogen. Peter served as a Lieutenant in the US Navy, earned a BAS in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and earned an MBA from the Wharton School.
Brendan Classon has more than two decades of biopharmaceutical industry experience in discovery, research, and preclinical development of small molecule and biologic therapeutics for autoimmune disease. Brendan has held positions of increasing responsibility in research leadership at Genocea Biosciences, Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Brendan earned a BS with Honors from Monash University and a PhD in Immunology from The University of Melbourne.
Louis Demers has more than two decades of experience in the biopharma industry with large and small companies like J&J, Genentech/Roche, XOMA, and, most recently, Rezolute. Louis has managed CMC programs across a wide array of technologies with a focus on large molecules and Antibody-Drug Conjugates. He is experienced in setting up and managing virtual global supply chains to advance pre-clinical, clinical commercial manufacturing. Louis earned a BE in Chemical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal and an MBA from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.
Matt Hogan has extensive experience in the field of healthcare corporate finance. Matt served as the CFO of DURECT Corporation from 2006 to 2018 and serves as a corporate finance advisor to DURECT and other biopharmaceutical companies. Prior to joining DURECT, Matt was the CFO of Ciphergen Biosystems, Avocet Medical, and Microcide Pharmaceuticals. Matt has also held positions as an investment banker with Merrill Lynch for ten years and a commercial banker with Manufacturers Hanover Trust. Matt earned a BA in Economics, cum laude, from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration.
About Navacims™
Navacims are a novel first-in-class nanomedicine designed to treat autoimmune disease by selectively modulating disease-specific cellular responses without impairing normal immunity. Navacims specifically target and act only on disease causing effector T cells, delivering a signal that programs effector T cells to differentiate into regulatory T (Treg) cells specific for self-antigens relevant to the patient’s disease. These disease- or tissue-specific Treg cells induce immunological tolerance to block undesired immune responses to self-antigens, while maintaining normal immune surveillance and activity.
— Hugh Young Rienhoff, Jr., M.D., appointed as Chairman of the Board
— Charles A. Johnson, M.D., appointed to Board of Directors
— Alain Delcayre, Ph.D., appointed Senior Vice President of Research
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. & CALGARY, Alberta — (BUSINESS WIRE) — July 16, 2019 — Parvus Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of disease-specific immunoregulatory medicines to treat autoimmune diseases without impairing normal immunity, today announced the appointment of Hugh Young Rienhoff, Jr., M.D., as Chairman of the Board, Charles A. Johnson, M.D., to the Board of Directors, and Alain Delcayre, Ph.D., as Senior Vice President of Research.
“We are delighted to announce the addition of Hugh, Charlie, and Alain to the Parvus team as we continue to expand and build out our R&D organization and Board of Directors following the close of our second license and collaboration agreement,” said Curtis Ruegg, Ph.D., President & CEO of Parvus. “Hugh’s leadership and experience as a successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist is an ideal fit with Parvus as we set and implement the Company’s direction and strategy. Together with Charlie’s strong background in biopharma in clinical development and overall product development strategies, these two board additions enrich Parvus with valuable guidance as we invest more resources toward the selection of additional Navacim drug candidates for development. With the addition of Alain as SVP of Research, we are further positioned to successfully execute on our expanding R&D plan.”
Dr. Rienhoff is a San Francisco Bay area physician and entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Imago Biosciences, his fourth start-up. Prior to Imago, he was the founder and CEO of FerroKin BioSciences, which was acquired by Shire Plc in 2012. Earlier in his career, Dr. Rienhoff was involved in venture capital as a Director at Abingworth Management in London and a partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Throughout his career, Dr. Rienhoff has held numerous board positions in life science companies, many of which lead to successful exits. He obtained his B.A. from Williams College, studied mathematics at Harvard University and earned an M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine as a member of the Osler Medical House staff at the Johns Hopkins Hospital where he was later a fellow in hematology and clinical genetics. Dr. Rienhoff continued his training at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington as a Howard Hughes Investigator.
“I am delighted to assume the position of Chairman at Parvus as the company transitions to the clinical stage with products of such great promise,” said Dr. Rienhoff.
Dr. Johnson is an accomplished physician and pharmaceutical executive with more than 40 years of experience in clinical practice and biopharmaceutical clinical development. Most recently, he was the Chief Medical Officer of Neurotech, where he was responsible for all clinical programs using encapsulated cell technology to treat retinal diseases. Before Neurotech, he was the Vice President of Global Medical Affairs at Vertex and held leadership positions at Inspire Pharmaceuticals and APT Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Johnson began his biotechnology career at Genentech where he was the Vice President and Head of the Immunology and Tissue Repair clinical group. At Genentech, he was the Chair of the Development Review Committee where he led the team responsible for reviewing and assessing pipeline candidates. Dr. Johnson received his M.D. from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, attained Board Certification in Pediatrics at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, and completed his Pediatric Pulmonology Fellowship at Washington University.
Dr. Delcayre is a seasoned biotechnology professional with considerable experience translating early stage research into clinical drug candidates, primarily in the field of nanoparticle-based immunotherapy. He has consulted on and co-founded several start-ups/entities focused on the commercialization of exosome-based therapeutics. Notably, while VP of Research and Development at Anosys, Dr. Delcayre and his team co-discovered Exosome Display, a technique to manipulate exosome protein content that is now broadly implemented by many companies in exosome-based targeted drug delivery. Dr. Delcayre received his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (PARIS VI) and completed postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Biological Research and Stratagene (La Jolla, CA).
About Parvus Therapeutics Inc.
Parvus Therapeutics Inc. is a privately-held biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development and commercialization of Navacim therapeutics targeting autoimmune and other inflammatory diseases. Navacims were discovered by Pere Santamaria, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and Founder of Parvus, Julia McFarlane/Diabetes Canada Professor of the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary.
Contacts
Burns McClellan
Ryo Imai / Robert Flamm
212-213-0006 x315 / 212-213-0006 x364
rimai@burnsmc.com / rflamm@burnsmc.com
Research underpins part of the recently executed license and collaboration agreement to develop, manufacture and commercialize Navacim™therapeutics for treatment of gastrointestinal inflammatory diseases, including autoimmune liver disease
Article published in Nature Communications
BURLINGAME, Calif. & CALGARY, Alberta — June 26, 2019 — (BUSINESS WIRE) Parvus Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of disease-specific immunoregulatory medicines to treat autoimmune diseases without impairing normal immunity, today announced publication of preclinical proof-of-concept research demonstrating that Navacim therapeutics induce immune tolerance to specific autoantigens resulting in disease reversal while maintaining normal immune system function in multiple preclinical models of autoimmune liver disease (ALD). The findings from this research underpin part of the recently announced license and collaboration agreement to develop Navacim therapeutics for gastrointestinal inflammatory diseases, including autoimmune liver diseases (ALD). The article was published in Nature Communications (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09893-5).
“Although current treatments for chronic inflammatory diseases, such as IBD, ALD, and rheumatoid arthritis, offer significant therapeutic benefits to patients, their generalized immune suppressive activity can result in a range of potentially serious side effects, including infection and possibly malignancy,” said Pere Santamaria, M.D., Ph.D., founder and chief scientific officer of Parvus, and senior author of the paper. “Parvus was founded to leverage the discovery of Navacims to develop a better approach to treating these diseases. This study demonstrates that our Navacim platform technology can generate a precision therapeutic outcome in several validated animal models for ALD and, thus, has the potential to do the same in humans.”
The article, entitled “Suppression of a Broad Spectrum of Liver Autoimmune Pathologies by Single Peptide-MHC-Based Nanomedicines,” investigated the ability of Navacim therapeutics (a peptide-major histocompatibility complex class II-based nanomedicine) that displayed tissue-specific autoantigenic peptides associated with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) or autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) to reprogram CD4+ T cells into disease-suppressing type 1 regulatory T (TR1) cells in animal models. The investigators found that administration of the Navacim therapeutic was able to blunt PBC, PSC and AIH, without suppressing general immunity or local immunity against infection or metastatic tumors. Therapeutic activity was associated with TR1 recruitment to the site of the disease, the liver, as well as suppression of other pro-inflammatory processes in the liver. The authors concluded that from a translational standpoint, this study identified disease-modifying compounds for several complex liver autoimmune diseases that represent unmet medical needs.
“Our objective is to leverage our Navacim technology to develop highly innovative, well-tolerated, disease modifying treatments for a broad range of autoimmune diseases,” said Curtis Ruegg, Ph.D., President and CEO of Parvus. “This important research provides further in vivoproof-of-concept results that we are able to induce immune tolerance to a specific autoantigen while leaving normal immune system function intact. Our conviction in the potential of our Navacim technology is affirmed by our partnerships with two top-tier biopharmaceutical companies to develop Navacim therapeutics for several autoimmune and inflammatory diseases including ALD.”
About Navacims™
Navacims are a precision medicine platform designed to trigger a naturally occurring immunoregulatory mechanism of the mammalian immune system which has evolved to protect against autoimmune disease. As selected for each disease, Navacims present a singular, peptide-major histocompatibility complex (pMHC) at supra-physiological density, targeting cognate T cell receptors (TCR) on disease relevant T cells. Navacim binding causes a sustained assembly of TCR microclusters and prolonged signaling leading to disease-specific type 1 regulatory T (TR1) cell differentiation. Because Navacim activity depends on the presence of disease-causing, autoimmune T cells, their action is self-limiting. In preclinical disease models, Navacims have demonstrated broad therapeutic activity and disease reversal across a range of autoimmune disorders including diabetes, multiple sclerosis, ALD and IBD while consistently preserving immunocompetence to resist viral, microbial, and tumor challenges.
About Parvus Therapeutics Inc.
Parvus Therapeutics Inc. is a privately-held biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development and commercialization of Navacim therapeutics targeting autoimmune diseases. Navacims were discovered by Pere Santamaria, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and Founder of Parvus, Julia McFarlane/Diabetes Canada Professor of the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary.
Contacts
Media
Burns McClellan
Ryo Imai / Robert Flamm
212-213-0006 x315 / 212-213-0006 x364
rimai@burnsmc.com / rflamm@burnsmc.com