Atreca Taps Genentech's Stephen Gould to Serve as CSO

San Carlos, California-based Atreca announced that Stephen Gould, Ph.D., will be its next chief scientific officer. Most recently, Gould was executive director of translational oncology at Genentech.

In his previous role, Gould led a team focused on developing tumor-specific antibodies to fight both hematologic and solid tumors. He also led the development of two approved medicines. Prior to joining Genentech, Gould served as senior director of oncology at Curis.

This comes only two weeks after the company reorganized, slashing its workforce by more than 25%. At that time, the company said the reorganization and job cuts would extend its cash runway through the end of 2023.

“While we are taking steps to significantly streamline our operations, we remain committed to the development of ATRC-101 and ATRC-301, the advancement of earlier-stage assets, and the discovery of additional novel tumor-targeting lead antibodies using our platform,” said John Orwin, Atreca’s chief executive officer. “We look forward to sharing additional monotherapy and combination data from the ongoing Phase Ib clinical trial of ATRC-101, as well as key preclinical toxicology data from the ATRC-301 program, later this year.”

As of March 31, Atreca had $125.8 million in cash and cash equivalents. Earlier this year, the company inked a licensing agreement with Zymeworks, leveraging ZymeLink technology to develop antibody-drug conjugates. It is a two-year research program, with an option for a third year. Atreca has the option of acquiring up to three commercial licenses to develop unique ADC programs during that period.

The company said it still plans to present updated data by the end of the year from the Phase Ib trial of ATRC-101 as a monotherapy, in combination with Merck’s anti-PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda (pembrolizumab). They also expect non-human primate toxicology data in the ATRC-301 development program in the second half of the year.

ATRC-301 is an antibody-drug conjugate targeting EphA2. ATRC-101 is an IgG antibody with driver antigen engagement that targets the novel ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complex. It is being evaluated in solid tumors.