09.30.21 | news

HiberCell Appoints Jonathan Lanfear as COO

Expands Board of Directors with Appointment of Cindy Jacobs, PhD, MD

NEW YORK, September 30, 2021—HiberCell, a clinical stage biotechnology company developing therapeutics to treat cancer relapse and metastasis, today announced the appointment of Jonathan Lanfear as chief operating officer with a focus on leading and driving HiberCell’s emerging global reach. Mr. Lanfear is an accomplished biopharmaceutical executive with more than 25 years of strategic, operational, and transactional experience within the pharmaceutical industry. HiberCell also welcomed Cindy Jacobs, PhD, MD as a member of the company’s board of directors.

“Bringing Jonathan onto our leadership team and adding Cindy to our board of directors significantly strengthens and expands our strategic capabilities and opportunities as an oncology-focused company,” said Alan Rigby, PhD, chief executive officer of HiberCell. “Jonathan and Cindy provide additional operational experience that will be necessary as we move our third molecule into clinical development.”

As chief operating officer, Jonathan will use his considerable experience to create innovative value and to accelerate our mission of “imagining a world in which cancer does not win” through the development and acquisition of critical enabling technologies and assets. Prior to joining HiberCell, Jonathan held numerous senior leadership positions in business development and strategy within the Center for External Innovation and Global Business Development organizations at Takeda Pharmaceuticals as well as in Worldwide Business Development & Strategy while at Pfizer. While leading these multidisciplinary organizations that included business development, operations, finance, legal and R&D functions, Jonathan led numerous acquisitions, company spinouts, and impactful deals of all types across several therapeutic areas including oncology, neuroscience, gastroenterology, and rare disease.  He has also served on the board of directors of several private companies and is currently a board member of publicly traded Molecular Templates (MTEM).

“HiberCell combines its differentiated therapeutic approach that is focused on the biology of adaptive stress in cancer, leveraging critical insights gained via the utilization of AI/ML capabilities, which positions the company for success in oncology,” said Jonathan Lanfear, chief operating officer at HiberCell. “I’m looking forward to leading a focused effort to expand HiberCell’s global reach through strategic partnerships and licensing of the company’s R&D that specifically targets high-quality genomic, multi-omic, and deeply characterized phenotype datasets in cancer and other stress-driven pathologies.”

“As a member of the HiberCell Board of Directors, Dr. Jacobs will use her key expertise in biopharma and drug development to help the company move its expanding pipeline of adaptive stress inhibitors forward,” said Rigby. Dr. Jacobs currently serves as president and chief medical officer at Achieve Life Sciences and has a 30+ year track record of research and product development with more than 20 INDs that led to six new product or label expansion market approvals.

To learn more about HiberCell’s clinical pipeline and leadership team, visit www.HiberCell.com.

About HiberCell

HiberCell is a clinical stage biotechnology company dedicated to the advancement of novel therapeutics that overcome the foundational molecular barriers that prevent patients from living longer, cancer-free lives. HiberCell’s approach utilizes AI/ML to integrate multi-omic and phenotypic profiles of tumors to generate deep insights that connect these data to clinical outcomes. Leveraging these data, HiberCell identifies and validates the causal features of cancer that can be targeted with their novel therapies with the goal of addressing the most common causes of cancer mortality: resistance, relapse and metastasis. To that end, HiberCell is developing therapeutics that resolve ‘stress’ through mechanisms that involve stimulating innate and adaptive immunity to reprogram an immunosuppressive tumor immune microenvironment or modulating the stress-mediated adaptive response that is essential for cancer cell survival.