WARREN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Tevogen Bio, a clinical stage biotechnology company specializing in the development of cell and gene therapies in oncology, neurology, and virology, today announced the strategic expansion of its leadership team with two new executives to support the biotech’s rapid operational growth, manufacturing readiness, and the continued development and utilization of its next generation precision T cell platform technology.
New hires include:
-Stephen Chen, Chief Technical Officer
Stephen Chen, MBA, has more than 18 years of biotech industry experience. He was most recently Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technical Officer at NKGen Biotech where he led technical operations and the build out of the company’s clinical GMP manufacturing facility. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Quality and Technical Operations at NKGen Biotech. Before joining NKGen Biotech, he was Senior Director of Quality Assurance and Quality Control at ARMO Biosciences. Previously, he was Director of Quality Assurance at Kite Pharma. Chen started his career with over a decade of increasing responsibility in technical operations at Baxter BioScience. He earned an MBA from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry/cell biology from the University of California, San Diego.
-Sadiq Khan, Global Commercial Lead
Sadiq Khan, MBA, brings over 30 years of commercial leadership, operations, and alliance management experience. Most recently, Sadiq served as Executive Director of Operations & Business Planning at BioCentriq where he played a key role in the creation of the CDMO specializing in cell and gene therapy manufacturing. Over the course of his career at Sanofi-Aventis and its predecessor companies, Sadiq successfully launched and managed multiple products in individual markets, regions, and globally. His experience covers over 12 therapeutic areas from specialty brands to blockbuster franchise with annual sales exceeding $1.4 billion. In addition to several country and regional commercial leadership roles in the Asia-Pacific region, he has held U.S. and global franchise leadership positions. Sadiq holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics and physics, and an MBA cum laude from University of Illinois at Chicago. He has been a regular guest speaker on topics related to biopharmaceutical commercialization, marketing, and alliance management at the Martin Tuchman School of Management at NJIT and the School of Engineering at Columbia University.
“I have witnessed Tevogen Bio’s rapid growth and disruptive technological advances in the cell and gene therapy space and am excited to join a team who values scientific innovation and embraces a new brand of operational efficiency,” Chen said.
“Tevogen’s proprietary cell and gene therapy platforms with potential cures for hard-to-treat viral infections, neurological diseases, and cancers give me hope to finally offer accessible treatment options to the community. I am very excited to join this team of professionals where innovative ideas don’t have to wait too long to become a reality,” said Khan.
About Tevogen’s Next Generation Precision T Cell Platform
Tevogen’s next generation precision T cell platform is designed to provide increased specificity to eliminate malignant and viral infected cells, while allowing healthy cells to remain intact. Multiple targets are selected in advance with the goal of overcoming mutational capacity of cancer cells and viruses.
Tevogen believes its technology has the potential to overcome the primary barriers to the broad application of personalized T cell therapies: potency, purity, production-at-scale, and patient-pairing, without the limitations of current approaches. Tevogen’s goal is to open the vast and unprecedented potential of developing personalized immunotherapies for large patient populations impacted by common cancers and viral infections.
The company’s lead product, TVGN-489, is currently in clinical trials for high-risk COVID-19 patients at Jefferson University Hospitals in Philadelphia. TVGN-489 is a highly purified, SARS-CoV-2-specific cytotoxic CD8+ T lymphocyte (CTL) product, which is designed to detect targets spread across the entire viral genome.
Tevogen recently announced it has completed dosing of the second cohort of patients in the proof of concept clinical trial of TVGN-489, marking the midway point of the trial’s planned four dosing levels. Trial details and recruitment information are available at Clinical Trials - Tevogen.
About Tevogen Bio
Tevogen Bio is driven by a team of distinguished scientists and highly experienced biopharmaceutical leaders who have successfully developed and commercialized multiple franchises. Tevogen’s leadership believes that accessible personalized immunotherapies are the next frontier of medicine, and that disruptive business models are required to sustain medical innovation in the post-pandemic world.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements relating to Tevogen Bio™ Inc (the “Company”) and its business. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and beliefs as of the date of this release and are subject to a number of factors which involve known and unknown risks, delays, uncertainties and other factors not under the Company’s control that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or other expectations implied by these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can sometimes be identified by terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “intend,” “expect,” “believe,” “potential,” “possible,” or their negatives or comparable terminology, as well as other words and expressions referencing future events, conditions, or circumstances. In any forward-looking statement in which the Company expresses an expectation or belief as to future results, there can be no assurance that the statement or expectation or belief will be achieved. Various factors may cause differences between the Company’s expectations and actual results, including, among others: the Company’s limited operating history; uncertainties inherent in the execution, cost and completion of preclinical studies and clinical trials; risks related to regulatory review and approval and commercial development; risks associated with intellectual property protection; and risks related to matters that could affect the Company’s future financial results, including the commercial potential, sales, and pricing of the Company’s products. Except as required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements or any of the information in this release, or provide additional information, and expressly disclaims any and all liability and makes no representations or warranties in connection herewith or with respect to any omissions herefrom.
