CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 09, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Genocea Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNCA), a biopharmaceutical company developing T cell-directed vaccines and immunotherapies, today announced that Ron Cooper has joined its board of directors, effective immediately. Mr. Cooper currently serves as president and chief executive officer at Albireo Ltd.
“We are delighted to welcome Ron to our Board,” said Chip Clark, president and chief executive officer of Genocea. “Ron’s broad Bristol-Myers Squibb experience of over 25-years will be invaluable to Genocea on a number of strategic, commercial and operational fronts as we continue to advance our programs.”
“I’m delighted to be joining Genocea at such an exciting time for the company,” said Mr. Cooper. “GEN-003 has shown impressive data and clinical progress and I’m looking forward to helping the team move that product toward commercialization and to further maximize the potential of the ATLAS platform across immuno-oncology and infectious disease applications.”
Mr. Cooper is currently president and chief executive officer of Albireo Ltd., a late-stage biopharmaceutical company developing therapeutics to treat orphan pediatric liver diseases. Prior to joining Albireo, he spent more than 25 years at Bristol-Myers Squibb (“BMS”), where he worked in five different countries and held positions of increasing responsibility in sales, marketing and general management, culminating as President of Europe. He was responsible for more than 30 countries with sales exceeding $4.5 billion. While at BMS, he was directly involved with numerous product successes, including Abilify®, Avapro®, Atripla®, Eliquis®, Orencia®, Pravachol®, Plavix®, Reyataz®, Sustiva®, Sprycel®, and Yervoy®. He has successfully completed more than a dozen business development transactions, including the creation of the first single tablet HIV/AIDS regimen partnership. Mr. Cooper is a graduate of St. Francis Xavier University in Canada.
About Genocea
Genocea is harnessing the power of T cell immunity to develop life-changing vaccines and immunotherapies. T cells are increasingly recognized as a critical element of protective immune responses to a wide range of diseases, but traditional discovery methods have proven unable to identify the targets of such protective immune response. Using ATLAS, its proprietary technology platform, Genocea identifies these targets to potentially enable the rapid development of medicines to address critical patient needs. Genocea’s pipeline of novel clinical stage T cell-enabled product candidates includes GEN-003 for genital herpes, GEN-004 for the prevention of infection by all serotypes of pneumococcus (development suspended pending further data analysis and consultation with our advisers), and earlier-stage programs in chlamydia, genital herpes prophylaxis, malaria and cancer immunotherapy. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.genocea.com.
CONTACT: For media: Liz Bryan Spectrum Science Communications O: 202-587-2526 lbryan@spectrumscience.com For investors: Jonathan Poole Genocea Biosciences, Inc. O: 617-876-8191 jonathan.poole@genocea.com
