HELSINKI, Finland, November 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Oncos Therapeutics Ltd., a company developing novel cancer immune therapeutics, announced today that it has appointed Frans Wuite, M.D., M.B.A, as President and Chief Executive Officer and Pekka Simula, M.Sc. (Tech) as Chief Operating Officer.
Frans Wuite brings more than 25 years of leadership experience that spans from start-up to large international companies within the biopharmaceutical industry to Oncos Therapeutics. Prior to joining Oncos, Wuite served in key leadership roles at companies in rapid growth phases. These included Warren and Araim Pharmaceuticals Inc, which he co-founded; Amgen Europe, where he spearheaded the commercial development and launch of Aranesp that rapidly became Amgen’s biggest product; and the leadership of Pharmacia-Leiras, a marketing and sales joint venture in 13 European countries.
Pekka Simula, the founding CEO of Oncos since 2008, has successfully built Oncos into a clinical stage company. In his new role as Chief Operating Officer, Simula will be responsible for the company’s overall program management covering research, clinical development, process development, and manufacturing.
Prior to co-founding Oncos, Simula was Global Program Manager at Varian Medical Systems (VAR) responsible for the development and market roll-out of the company’s entire oncology product suite and also held a central role in development of RapidArc™, the latest revolution in radiation oncology. Before Varian, he worked as Project Director for CRF Health, a leading electronic Patient Reported Outcomes technology and services provider for clinical trials, and as Project Manager for Accenture.
About Oncos Therapeutics
Oncos Therapeutics develops personalized cancer immunotherapeutics based on its proprietary oncolytic adenovirus technology. The Company has clinical experience on 10 purposefully engineered vaccines. These have a direct oncolytic effect due to selective virus replication in tumor cells as well as systemic effects through vascular dissemination to metastases and induction of a strong immune response against tumor cells mediated by exposure of tumor antigens by oncolysis. In addition, most of Oncos product candidates have a transgene that result in cytokine production in only cancer cells, e.g. GM-CSF, further enhancing the immune response against tumor cells. Oncos’ oncolytic vaccine portfolio will be focused on carefully selected cancer types that respond poorly to conventional therapies.
Based on efficacy and safety signals obtained in an Advanced Therapy Access Program (ATAP) with 290 cancer patients, for whom standard of care therapies had failed, CGTG-102 was selected as Oncos’ lead product. Clinical experience with 115 CGTG-102-treated patients in ATAP has yielded important information on e.g. optimal dosing and scheduling of the product. CGTG-102 has an orphan indication as its initial target indication: First line treatment of inoperable Soft Tissue Sarcoma. CGTG-102 is currently in Phase 1 of clinical development in Europe and the United States. For more information please visit http://www.oncos.com.
