27 February 2023 - - US-based clinical stage gene editing company Precision BioSciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: DTIL) has made a promotion and organizational changes within the company's Senior Leadership Team, the company said.

The company announced the promotion of Neil Leatherbury to senior vice president, Head of Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls reporting directly to Michael Amoroso, president and chief executive officer.

Leatherbury leads Precision's teams responsible for gene delivery, analytical development, process development, manufacturing, supply chain and manufacturing science and technology.

In addition, the company announced that Derek Jantz, Ph.D., Co-Founder and chief scientific officer, has announced his intentions to gradually step away from his current day-to-day responsibilities at the company to pursue other personal and professional interests while continuing to support the company's external relationships, including existing and potential business development partners. He will assume an advisory role as Co-Founder, chief science Advisor.

In this capacity, Dr. Jantz is expected to provide ongoing platform advice and support to the company's executive team, as well as the board of directors' Science and Technology Committee, while also providing continuity to ongoing collaborations and assisting with development of new partnerships.

Co-founder Jeff Smith, Ph.D. continues to lead the company's research strategy and day-to day management of the research function in his role as Chief Research officer, reporting directly to the CEO, as previously announced in September 2022.

In addition to these ongoing responsibilities, Jeff will assume primary leadership of the company's joint steering committees with Lilly and Novartis and will serve as the primary scientific lead for potential new business development partners.

Leatherbury joined Precision BioSciences in 2017 and has served in a variety of roles within Precision BioSciences' CMC organization, including his most recent role as the vice president of CMC.

Neil brings more than 25 years of life science experience to this role with experience in CMC operations, pharmaceutical development and product development.

Prior to joining Precision BioSciences, Neil worked at Mirna Therapeutics, Azaya Therapeutics, Smith & Nephew and Procter & Gamble.

Dr. Smith is one of the true pioneers in genome editing and has made some of the key observations that led to the first successful engineered editing nucleases.

Jeff received his graduate degree from Johns Hopkins University, where he developed and characterized custom nucleases for genome engineering.

Continuing his work in protein engineering at Duke University, Jeff helped create the foundation for Precision's ARCUS genome editing technology. He is an inventor on more than 75 foundational, issued patents involving the production and use of genome editing tools.

Precision BioSciences is a clinical stage biotechnology company dedicated to improving life with its novel and proprietary ARCUS genome editing platform.

ARCUS is a highly precise and versatile genome editing platform that was designed with therapeutic safety, delivery, and control in mind.

Using ARCUS, the company's pipeline consists of multiple ex vivo "off-the-shelf" CAR T immunotherapy clinical candidates and several in vivo gene editing candidates designed to cure genetic and infectious diseases where no adequate treatments exist.