6 October 2020 - - Dutch pre-clinical stage biotechnology company Neogene Therapeutics, Inc has appointed Franz B. Humer, Ph.D., as executive chairman of the board of directors, the company said.

Humer served as chairman and chief executive officer of Roche Holding, Ltd. (OTC: RHHBY) over a period of 16 years before retiring in 2014.

As a result of the recent series A financing, Rachel Mears of Jeito Capital, Elisa Petris, Ph.D., of Syncona Investment Management Ltd., Caroline Stout of EcoR1 Capital, and Katherine Wood of TPG Capital, also have joined the Neogene Board.

Dr. Humer joined Roche in 1995 as Head of the Pharmaceuticals Division and Member of the board. He was appointed CEO in 1998 and chairman of the board of directors and CEO in April 2001.

From March 2008 to March 2014, he served as chairman of the board of directors of Roche Holding Ltd.

Prior to Roche, Dr. Humer spent more than a decade at Glaxo Holdings, where he was appointed Managing director of Glaxo Pharmaceuticals UK, Ltd. in 1987.

He was elected to the board in 1989 and became chief operating director of worldwide operations (excluding the United States) in 1992. He earned a doctorate in law from Innsbruck University and an M.B.A. from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.

Humer currently serves as an independent director of Allogene Therapeutics, a company developing novel allogeneic CAR-T cell therapies.

In addition, he holds private board appointments across industries and serves as a non-executive director of Cydar, chairman of HMNC Holding, a healthcare advisor to a number of international institutions, and chairman of the board of the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children and the Humer Foundation.

Neogene Therapeutics, Inc. is a pre-clinical stage biotechnology company pioneering the development of next-generation, fully personalised engineered T cells therapies for a broad spectrum of cancers.

The company's engineered T cells target mutated proteins found in cancer cells due to cancer-associated DNA mutations, or neo-antigens, that render tumor cells vulnerable to detection by T cells. Neogene's proprietary technology platform aims to identify TCR genes with specificity for neo-antigens from tumor biopsies.

Neogene's novel approach intends to deliver a tailored set of TCR genes for each individual patient, which will be engineered into patient-derived T cells directing them towards neo-antigens in tumor cells, with the goal of providing a fully personalized engineered T cell therapy for cancer.