Applied Molecular Transport Appoints Industry Veteran Shawn Cross as Chief Financial Officer and Promotes Bittoo Kanwar, M.D. to Chief Medical Officer

Applied Molecular Transport, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, announced the appointment of Shawn Cross as the company’s chief financial officer and the promotion of Bittoo Kanwar, M.D. to chief medical officer.

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., April 21, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Applied Molecular Transport (“AMT”), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, today announced the appointment of Shawn Cross as the company’s chief financial officer and the promotion of Bittoo Kanwar, M.D. to chief medical officer. Mr. Cross, an industry veteran with operational and investment banking experience, is the company’s first CFO and will lead the company’s finance strategy and oversee financial operations. As chief medical officer, Dr. Kanwar who joined AMT in 2019 as SVP, Clinical Development will continue to lead clinical development activities and oversee the clinical program for AMT-101.

“We are very pleased to have Shawn join AMT as chief financial officer and promote Bittoo to chief medical officer,” said Tahir Mahmood, Ph.D., chief executive officer and co-founder of AMT. “This is a pivotal time for AMT as we advance our clinical programs and steer the maturity of our company. Shawn brings a wealth of capital markets and biopharma strategic advisory experience and Bittoo has been vital in driving the success of AMT to date. We believe both Shawn and Bittoo will provide executive leadership required for us to continue our growth trajectory and achieve our goals in bringing novel oral biologic treatments to patients.”

“This is an exciting time to be joining AMT,” said Shawn Cross, chief financial officer of AMT. “I am committed to helping the company build on its current momentum and continue towards its goal of transforming patient care for those suffering from autoimmune, inflammatory and metabolic diseases.”

Shawn Cross brings over 20 years of biopharmaceutical strategic advisory and capital market experience to AMT. Prior to this appointment, Mr. Cross was at JMP Securities where he served as managing director and co-head of healthcare investment banking. Previously, Mr. Cross held various investment banking roles at top financial institutions in New York, London and San Francisco including managing director in healthcare investment banking at Deutsche Bank Securities, managing director and head of biopharmaceutical investment banking at Wells Fargo Securities, amongst others. Mr. Cross also brings operational experience from his time on the executive management team at GT Biopharma, a targeted immunotherapies company. Mr. Cross holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and a B.S. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Bittoo Kanwar, M.D. leads clinical development activities at Applied Molecular Transport, where he is overseeing the current clinical program for AMT-101 and developing clinical strategy for the company’s technology platform and pipeline assets. Previously, Dr. Kanwar was VP of Clinical Development at Protagonist Therapeutics where he led programs in Ulcerative Colitis (UC) and Crohn’s Disease. He began his industry career at Gilead Sciences where he supported programs in liver fibrosis/NASH, Hepatitis B and C, and served as the Clinical Domain Lead for Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Prior to his career in industry, Dr. Kanwar was an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), focused on researching the role of the gut adaptive immune response in both HIV infection and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Dr. Kanwar obtained his M.D. from the University of Iowa, completed his residency at Rush University Hospitals in Chicago and a fellowship in pediatric gastroenterology from UCSF and holds a B.S. from the University of Minnesota.

About Applied Molecular Transport Inc.
Applied Molecular Transport Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company leveraging its proprietary technology platform to design and develop a pipeline of novel oral biologic product candidates to treat autoimmune, inflammatory, metabolic, and other diseases. AMT’s proprietary technology platform allows it to exploit existing natural cellular trafficking pathways to facilitate the active transport of therapeutic payloads across the intestinal epithelium (IE) barrier. Active transport is an efficient mechanism that uses the cell’s own machinery to transport materials across the IE barrier. AMT believes that its ability to exploit this mechanism is a key differentiator of its approach. AMT is developing oral biologic product candidates in patient-friendly tablet and capsule forms that are designed for either targeting local gastrointestinal tissue or entering systemic circulation to precisely address the relevant biology of a disease. AMT is building a portfolio of oral product candidates based on its technology platform including its lead product candidate, AMT-101, an oral GI-selective IL-10 that has completed a Phase 1b clinical trial in patients with UC. AMT further plans to initiate Phase 2 clinical trials of AMT-101 in UC and related inflammatory indications. AMT’s technology platform enables it to design and develop various oral biologic therapeutic modalities, such as peptides, proteins, full-length antibodies, antibody fragments, and RNA therapeutics, with potentially significant advantages over existing marketed and development-stage drugs. To learn more, please visit
www.appliedmt.com.

Contacts:

Sylvia Wheeler
Principal, Wheelhouse Life Science Advisors
swheeler@wheelhouselsa.com

Alexandra Santos
Senior Partner, Wheelhouse Life Science Advisors
asantos@wheelhouselsa.com

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