December 19, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
MARSEILLE, France – Mondher Mahjoub, the head of AstraZeneca ’s oncology programming has jumped ship and will now helm France-based Innate Pharma .
Mahjoub takes the reigns of Innate, which develops immuno-oncology therapies, on Dec. 30. He will succeed company cofounder Hervé Brailly, who will move on to become chairman of the Innate’s supervisory board. Mahjoub leaves his role as therapeutic area head of oncology at AstraZeneca. Mahjoub’s strategic oversight, clinical expertise and commercial experience will prove invaluable to Innate Pharma as it lays the foundation to become a fully-integrated immuno-oncology company, the company said in a statement.
“Immuno-oncology is transforming in depth the way we can treat cancer patients. Building on a unique and differentiated expertise in innate immunity, Innate Pharma has been a pioneer in immuno-oncology. The team has demonstrated its impressive ability to deliver in research, discovery and exploratory development, and the Company has now reached a key inflection point to emerge as a major player for the second wave of immuno-oncology agents,” Mahjoub said in a statement.
Oncology has been a key driver for AstraZeneca. Mahjoub’s departure could be a temporary setback as the company undergoes a growth strategy and restructuring that the company anticipates will save about $1.1 billion by the end of 2017. In November, AstraZeneca saw a setback for one of its cancer drugs. AstraZeneca said it will not seek early approval for durvalumab as a treatment for the cancer. The announcement came two weeks after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration placed a partial clinical hold on new patient enrollment to the company’s Phase III clinical trial of durvalumab for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.
AstraZeneca has not announced a replacement for Mahjoub, but a company spokesperson told Reuters that an announcement would soon be made.
Mahjoub joined AstraZeneca in 2013. Prior to that, he served as senior vice president for global product strategy of oncology at Genentech . In addition to those roles, Mahjoub has had a long history working with oncological product development with companies like Aventis, Sanofi and Genentech’s parent company, Roche .
Innate started 2016 with a developmental agreement with Sanofi. Sanofi said it will use Innate Pharma’s proprietary technology to develop innovative bispecific antibody formats engaging natural killer (NK) cells to kill tumor cells through the activating receptor NKp46. NKp46, which is expressed on all natural killer cells, is the most specific marker of human NK cells and plays a major role in their tumor cell recognition. NKp46-bispecific NK cell engagers bind with one arm to an antigen at the surface of tumor cells, and with another arm to the NKp46 receptor on NK cells. This leads to activation and specific tumor-killing by NK cells, an immune cell population representing a significant proportion of all cytotoxic lymphocytes in the body.
In April, the company announced plans to develop a CD73 checkpoint inhibitor to complement Innate’s first-in-class anti-CD39 program. CD73 and CD39 are two enzymes which play a major role in promoting immunosuppression through the pathway degrading adenosine triphosphate (ATP) into adenosine.
In November, Innate announced preliminary data of its Phase I/II study of the combination of lirilumab and Opdivo for treatment of advanced platinum refractory squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck was less than impressive.
In addition to the appointment of Mahjoub, Innate also tapped a new chief financial officer, Laure-Hélène Mercie.
Shares of Innate Pharma are up more than 7 percent in trading. Shares are trading at €14.43.
