Checkmate Pharmaceuticals Announces Appointment of Kleem Chaudhary as Chief Business Officer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Checkmate Pharmaceuticals Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused upon activation of innate immunity to treat cancer, today announced the appointment of Kleem Chaudhary, PhD, as Chief Business Officer.

“I am delighted to welcome Kleem to the Checkmate team and am pleased that he has chosen to join Checkmate at this exciting time. His business development and licensing experience as well as his strategic acumen will play an important role as we build a leading immuno-oncology company focused upon advancement of our lead compound, CMP-001, that is currently in clinical trials in combination with anti-PD-1/L1 antibodies for multiple solid tumor types,” commented Barry Labinger, President and CEO of Checkmate Pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Chaudhary has over 16 years of experience within the biotech and large pharmaceutical industry with broad experience in strategic business development and drug discovery. He has held roles of increasing responsibility across multiple organizations including, most recently as Head of Business Development & Licensing at Biogen and previously as a transaction leader in Business Development at Takeda. He began his business development career at Novartis, where he was a team leader and led deals across multiple therapeutic areas. Prior to Novartis, he was the head of a medicinal chemistry lab at Gilead Sciences. Dr. Chaudhary holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BSc in chemistry from the University of Winnipeg.

“I am excited about the strength of the clinical data already in hand for CMP-001 and joining the Checkmate team to help establish and implement the strategy to maximize value as we advance CMP-001 into late stage development,” commented Dr. Chaudhary.

About Checkmate Pharmaceuticals

Checkmate Pharmaceuticals is a clinical stage company that is leveraging its expertise in the field of CpG oligonucleotides to discover and develop immunotherapies designed to increase the efficacy of existing immunotherapies and to provide new treatment options for patients and their healthcare providers. Checkmate’s lead product candidate, CMP-001, is an investigational cancer immunotherapeutic that has been shown to reverse resistance to PD-1 therapy in some patients. Checkmate is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, MA. Additional information regarding Checkmate is available at www.checkmatepharma.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191031005694/en/