Imugene (ASX:IMU) welcomes new CMO and Vice President CMC - Kalkine Media

Highlights

• ASX-listed biotech firm Imugene Limited (ASX:IMU) has made new appointments in pivotal roles to reinforce its team.
• The company has appointed Paul Wright and Dr Giovanni Selvaggi as its new Vice President CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls) and CMO, respectively.
• Both the new recruitments have immense experience in drug development and are, thus, expected to add great value to the pharma prowess of the Imugene team. 

Renowned biotech firm Imugene Limited (ASX:IMU) has strengthened its team with fresh appointments as its clinical development activities advance in both number and prominence. The company has appointed Paul Wright and Dr Giovanni Selvaggi to serve as its new Vice President CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls) and Chief Medical Officer (CMO), respectively.

An insight into the profiles of the new appointments is shared below.

Paul Wright (Vice President, CMC)

An accomplished bioprocess development leader, Paul Wright holds more than 25 years of experience in the areas of virus and protein production, across all phases of development. Monoclonal antibodies, bioconjugate vaccines, viral vectors, and oncolytic viruses are some of his areas of expertise.

Before joining IMU, Mr Wright worked at Pfizer for about 21 years in roles of growing responsibility within the Global Manufacturing and Vaccine Research and Development organisations.

As Director of Bioprocess and Analytical and a member of the Executive Leadership team within Cancer Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, he headed a team managing all the stages of production, from the preclinical to first-in-human study stages, and was thus involved in the process, analytical, and formulation development of cancer vaccine projects. He looked after the process development, tech transfer, and clinical trial manufacture of Pfizer’s vaccinia-based oncolytic virus PF-07263689.

Mr Wright is a graduate with a Bachelor of Science with Honours in cell and molecular biology, from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK.

Dr Giovanni Selvaggi (CMO)

Dr Selvaggi is an experienced pulmonologist trained in thoracic malignancy management. Lung cancers and mesothelioma are a couple of his focus areas. During his 10 years of career in the pharmaceutical industry, he has worked in diverse clinical development focused roles at Novartis Oncology, GlaxoSmithKline, and Bristol Myers Squibb.

Dr Selvaggi played a significant part in Novartis’s successful development and approval of ceritinib (or Zykadia), which targets non-small-cell lung cancer. At Bristol Myers Squibb, he was a member of the immunotherapy team that worked to get nivolumab’ (Opdivo) approval in third-line small cell lung cancer. In 2021, the US oncology company Xcovery Holdings Inc. promoted him from CMO to CEO and CMO. Prior to this, Dr Selvaggi also served as Vice President, Clinical Development, at Oncolytics Biotech in Canada.

Interestingly, Dr Selvaggi was an attending physician in the thoracic oncology division of– San Luigi Hospital in Turin, Italy, before he decided to enter the pharmaceutical industry. There, Dr Selvaggi also served as an investigator on several oncology clinical trials.

Dr Selvaggi completed his studies at the Medical School at the University of Torino in Italy. He is a Resident in Respiratory Medicine qualified from the Postgraduate Medical School at the university.

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Imugene’s shares were trading at AU$0.190 (as of 11:26 AM AEDT on 4 October 2022).