BURLINGAME, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Humanigen, Inc. (NASDAQ:HGEN), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on preventing and treating an immune hyper-response called cytokine storm with its lead drug candidate lenzilumab, today announced that the Company’s Board of Director has elected Dr. Dale Chappell, the Company’s chief scientific officer, to serve as a director of the Company, effective February 5, 2021. Dr. Chappell will continue to serve as the Company’s chief scientific officer.
“It has been an exciting time to participate in the development and execution of Humanigen’s business strategy,” stated Dr. Chappell. “I look forward to extending my contributions to further increase value as a member of the board. Humanigen has shown the strength of its research and development capabilities with the encouraging progress of lenzilumab for COVID-19—one of the most competitive areas of all of biopharma—and intends to get this drug to patients as quickly as possible following receipt of the requisite regulatory approvals.”
Commenting on Dr. Chappell’s appointment, Cameron Durrant, MD, MBA, chief executive officer of Humanigen said, “Having come to Humanigen as an investor and scientist, Dale has long been instrumental in helping shape our organization. His valuable service to the company has been evident in the successes we have seen over several years and more recently in our program for lenzilumab for COVID-19.”
Dr. Chappell joined Humanigen in July 2020 as full-time chief scientific officer after serving in an interim capacity for the Company. He began his career as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellow at the National Cancer Institute where he studied tumor immunology and published in the field of T-cell therapy, immunology pathways, and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (“GM-CSF”), an immune system protein that initiates the cytokine storm that can occur in COVID-19. Dr. Chappell is also the founder of Black Horse Capital with decades of biotechnology investment experience.
About Humanigen, Inc.
Humanigen, Inc. is developing its portfolio of clinical and pre-clinical therapies for the treatment of cancers and infectious diseases via its novel, cutting-edge GM-CSF neutralization and gene-knockout platforms. Humanigen believes that its GM-CSF neutralization and gene-editing platform technologies have the potential to reduce the inflammatory cascade associated with coronavirus infection. Humanigen’s immediate focus is to prevent or minimize the cytokine release syndrome that precedes severe lung dysfunction and ARDS in serious cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Humanigen is also focused on creating next-generation combinatory gene-edited CAR-T therapies using strategies to improve efficacy while employing GM-CSF gene knockout technologies to control toxicity. In addition, Humanigen is developing its own portfolio of proprietary first-in-class EphA3-CAR-T for various solid cancers and EMR1-CAR-T for various eosinophilic disorders. Humanigen is also exploring the effectiveness of its GM-CSF neutralization technologies (either through the use of lenzilumab as a neutralizing antibody or through GM-CSF gene knockout) in combination with other CAR-T, bispecific or natural killer (NK) T cell engaging immunotherapy treatments to break the efficacy/toxicity linkage, including to prevent and/or treat graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) in patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Additionally, Humanigen and Kite, a Gilead Company, are evaluating lenzilumab in combination with Yescarta® (axicabtagene ciloleucel) in patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma in a clinical collaboration. For more information, visit www.humanigen.com and follow Humanigen on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
