6 November 2019 - - US-based biopharmaceutical company X4 Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: XFOR) has appointed Derek Meisner, J.D., as general counsel, the company said.
Meisner brings more than two decades of experience providing counsel to public and private companies across key legal and operational functions, including regulatory compliance, debt and equity financings, mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnerships and corporate governance.
Most recently, Meisner held the role of General Counsel at Genocea Biosciences, a Cambridge-based, publicly traded, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company.
Prior to Genocea, he served as General Counsel of multiple Boston-based financial services firms, including prominent life science investor RA Capital Management, and he was previously a partner at the international law firm K and L Gates and Branch Chief in the Division of Enforcement of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Meisner holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from the Washington College of Law at American University.
X4 Pharmaceuticals is developing novel therapeutics designed to improve immune cell trafficking to treat rare diseases, including primary immunodeficiencies and certain cancers.
The company's oral small molecule drug candidates antagonize the CXCR4 pathway, which plays a central role in immune surveillance.
X4's most advanced product candidate, mavorixafor (X4P-001), is in a global Phase 3 pivotal trial in patients with WHIM syndrome, a rare, inherited, primary immunodeficiency disease, and is currently also under investigation in combination with axitinib in an open-label Phase 1/2 clinical trial in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), with eight patients remaining on therapy over 12 months beyond the primary endpoint.
X4 is also planning to commence clinical trials of mavorixafor in Severe Congenital Neutropenia and Waldenström's macroglobulinemia in 2019.
X4 is a global company that is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts with research offices based in Vienna, Austria.