Mendus appoints NK cell pioneer Lewis Lanier to Scientific Advisory Board

MENDUS’ STRENGTHENS SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR NK CELL RESEARCH, AS LONGER-TERM PIPELINE PROGRAM COMPLEMENTING CLINICAL-STAGE LEAD ASSETS

Mendus AB (“Mendus” publ; IMMU.ST), a biopharmaceutical company focused on immunotherapies addressing tumor recurrence, today announced the appointment of Lewis Lanier, PhD, Professor Emeritus in Microbiology and Immunology at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), to the Mendus’ Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). Dr. Lanier is a world-leading expert on natural killer (NK) cells, and is renowned for his contributions to the characterization of how NK cells distinguish between healthy cells and infected or cancerous cells. He has published seminal work on key receptors that activate and inhibit NK cells, and has shown how they can be applied to fight cancer cells. Dr. Lanier complements the Mendus SAB, which comprises Inge Marie Svane, MD PhD, Sjoerd van der Burg, PhD, Tanja de Gruijl, PhD, and is being chaired by Ada Kruisbeek, PhD. Pawel Kalinski, MD PhD, will retire as SAB member.

“While our lead assets are advancing through clinical development and preclinical work supporting these programs is largely completed, Mendus research department continues to apply a data- and science-driven strategy to identify and prepare the basis for the next value drivers and will put a greater focus on the NK cell program,” commented Alex Karlsson-Parra, MD, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at Mendus. “There could hardly be any better guidance than having Lewis Lanier on our SAB as one of the most influential pioneers in the NK cell space. Together with Ada Kruisbeek and the other SAB members, Mendus is now well-equipped for the next phase of scientific innovation in the company. We also thank Pawel Kalinski, who leaves the SAB, for his very valuable contributions to bringing our lead programs vididencel and ilixadencel into advanced-stage clinical development.”

Dr. Lewis Lanier has served as the chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, the co-leader of the Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program at the UCSF’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI). He has published more than 400 scientific articles and is a Senior Editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, and has served as an Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Immunology, Annual Review of Immunology, Immunological Reviews, Tissue Antigens, Human Immunology, Immunogenetics, and Immunity. In recognition of his scientific contributions, he was awarded the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic Tumor Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute in New York in 2002, was given the Rose Payne Award for contributions to the field of Immunogenetics by the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics in 2005, was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, in 2010, and was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology by the American Society for Microbiology and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011.