ISA Pharmaceuticals Appoints Leon Hooftman as Chief Medical Officer

- Experienced Chief Medical Officer to advance ISA´s clinical pipeline -

Leiden, The Netherlands, April 30, 2018 - ISA Pharmaceuticals B.V., a clinical-stage immunotherapy company focusing on rationally designed immunotherapeutics against cancer and persistent viral infections, today announced the appointment of Leon Hooftman, MD, to the position of Chief Medical Officer (CMO), effective May 1, 2018. He brings many years of experience in drug development and academic research and has a strong track record in early- and late-stage clinical development with specific expertise in immuno-oncology.

"As we are planning to start two new clinical programs with ISA101b together with Regeneron as well as other clinical trials, we are happy to further strengthen the team with a new Chief Medical Officer. We are delighted to welcome Leon Hooftman to the ISA team, he brings very valuable experience in the clinical development of immuno-oncology therapies in big pharma as well as in biotech companies." said Ronald Loggers, CEO of ISA. "We would like to thank Rick Stead for his valuable support over the recent years and are pleased that he will continue to be involved as an advisor to ISA."

After academic medicine, Leon Hooftman became an accomplished pharmaceutical physician with more than 20 years of experience in drug development in immunology, haematology, and oncology, and with several New Drug Applications to his credit. Previous positions include Head of Clinical Development at Celltech Group Plc (UCB), and Chief Medical Officer of Chroma Therapeutics. Dr. Hooftman joins ISA from Allecra Therapeutics Ltd, a French-German biopharmaceutical company, where he served as CMO. Before moving into biopharmaceutical drug development, Leon was Director Clinical Science, Oncology and Immunology, at F. Hoffmann-LaRoche, where, amongst others, he led the clinical team that successfully completed a registration study with rituximab which gave the antibody its first approval in a first-line cancer indication (first-line NHL). Dr. Hooftman is an experienced clinician and has initiated and successfully completed multiple clinical studies in immunology, oncology and immuno-oncology. He is also an accomplished scientist and author of more than 50 scientific papers and publications.

"I am excited to join the team at ISA Pharmaceuticals," said Leon Hooftman. "The clinical data generated with ISA's SLP- and AMPLIVANT-based product candidates so far look very promising and I am looking forward to advancing these unique therapeutic candidates closer towards pivotal development stage which will benefit patients with early as well as advanced cancer."

About ISA Pharmaceuticals

ISA Pharmaceuticals B.V. is an immunotherapy company developing rationally designed, fully synthetic immunotherapeutics against cancer and persistent viral infections. The company has built a proprietary immunotherapy platform based on the Synthetic Long Peptide (SLP®) concept and AMPLIVANT® technology. SLP® immunotherapies are designed to fully harness and direct the body's own defenses towards fighting the disease. In December 2017, ISA Pharmaceuticals closed a clinical immuno-oncology collaboration with Regeneron to advance its SLP® lead compound ISA101, an immunotherapy targeting human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV16)-induced cancer, in combination with cemiplimab (REGN2810), a PD-1 (programmed cell death protein 1) antibody. In addition, ISA develops MyISA®, a personalized SLP® immunotherapy, targeting tumor-specific, mutation-derived neo-antigens.

For more information, please visit www.isa-pharma.com.

SLP®, AMPLIVANT® and MyISA® are registered trademarks in Europe.

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This release was published on openPR.