CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Repertoire Immune Medicines, a clinical-stage biotech company decoding the immune synapse to create novel immune therapies for cancer, immune disorders, infectious disease, and other serious diseases, today announced the company has elected neuroscience researcher and educator, Susan Hockfield, Ph.D., President Emerita of MIT, to its board of directors.
“Dr. Hockfield is a tremendous addition to Repertoire Immune Medicines, as a scientist, organizational leader, and public servant,” said John Cox, CEO of Repertoire. “Our company is positioned at the frontier of immune medicines based on our ability to understand the drivers of cellular immunity. The breadth and depth of Dr. Hockfield’s experiences will help guide us along the way.”
Dr. Hockfield is Professor of Neuroscience and President Emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She served as MIT’s sixteenth president from 2004 to 2012 and was the first woman and the first life scientist to lead MIT. She is also a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. Prior to joining MIT, she was at Yale University as the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1998 to 2002 and Provost from 2002 to 2004. Her research pioneered early applications of molecular biology to neuroscience, and she is the author of a recent book, “The Age of Living Machines: How Biology will Build the Next Technology Revolution,” in which she describes the transformational technologies emerging from a convergence of biology with engineering.
"It is an honor to welcome Susan to the Repertoire Board," said Doug Cole, M.D., Chairman, Repertoire and Managing Partner, Flagship Pioneering. "Her breadth of insight, experience and accomplishment will add a unique dimension, helping the company realize the full potential of immune medicines.”
In addition to her professional accomplishments, Dr. Hockfield has a long record of service to public, non-profit and business organizations. She served as Science Envoy to Turkey with the U.S. Department of State and as a member of a Congressional Commission evaluating the Department of Energy laboratories. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where she recently served as president then chair. She also serves as a director of the Fidelity Non-Profit Management Foundation, Lasker Foundation, Mass General Brigham, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and is a life member of the MIT Corporation. She is a director of Pfizer Inc. and a past director of General Electric Company and Qualcomm.
“We’re in an age where the powerful convergence of technology and biology is transforming the world as we know it, and I believe Repertoire is a leading company paving the way for innovative discovery and development of novel immune medicines through its decoding capabilities to generate novel therapeutics,” Dr. Hockfield said. “I look forward to contributing to the company’s growth and path forward.”
Dr. Hockfield received a B.A. in Biology from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. in Anatomy and Neuroscience from Georgetown University School of Medicine. She also holds honorary degrees from many institutions, including Brown University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Northeastern University, Tsinghua University (Beijing), Université Pierre et Marie Curie, University of Edinburgh, University of Massachusetts Medical School, University of Rochester, and the Watson School of Biological Sciences at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
About Repertoire Immune Medicines
Repertoire Immune Medicines is a clinical-stage biotechnology company working to unlock and direct the remarkable power of the human immune system to prevent or treat cancer, as well as autoimmune disorders, infectious diseases, and other serious diseases. The company’s repertoire of T cell receptor (TCR)-antigen codes that drive health and disease represents one of the greatest opportunities for innovation in medical science. Repertoire scientists created and developed the DECODE and DEPLOY suite of technologies, which allow in-depth characterization of TCR-antigen pairs, and the ability to rationally design and develop novel targeted immune medicines.
Repertoire Immune Medicines was formed in December 2019 by combining two Flagship Pioneering companies to create a fully integrated immune medicines company. From its sites in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Zurich, Switzerland, Repertoire’s team of more than 120 is creating a new category of immune medicines enabled from its DECODE discovery platform and DEPLOY development engine. The company’s first product in the clinic is a novel multiclonal T cell therapy consisting of naïve, rare T cells derived from the peripheral blood, activated against a curated set of antigens, and armed with a proprietary cytokine payload. Repertoire is in clinical-stage immuno-oncology development today, targeting metastatic solid tumors. In the field of autoimmunity, Repertoire is using its proprietary platform to discover novel epitopes and TCRs from patients with type 1 diabetes. The company is also using its DECODE platform to discover infectious disease antigens and responding T cell clones.
To learn more about Repertoire Immune Medicines, please visit our website: www.repertoire.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
