LOUISVILLE, Ky., Aug. 8, 2016 – Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a clinical stage complement immunotherapy company, announced today the expansion of its executive team with the addition of Dr. Robert Kim as its Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Kim will help the company optimize its drug development strategy as its clinical programs progress toward late stage clinical testing.
“We are delighted to welcome Dr. Kim to Apellis. Bob is an experienced clinical drug developer whose deep knowledge and experience will help us prepare for our confirmatory trials in geography atrophy and the further expansion of our exciting clinical pipeline centered on the inhibition of complement factor C3,” said Cedric Francois, CEO of Apellis Pharmaceuticals.
“I am very excited to be joining Apellis, a trailblazer of new therapies for patients suffering from diseases arising from inappropriate activity of the complement system,” commented Dr. Kim.
Dr. Kim has over 30 years of clinical experience in ophthalmology. He received his undergraduate and MD degrees from Brown University. Dr. Kim completed his residency in ophthalmology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), post-doctoral training in molecular biology at the National Eye Institute, and retina fellowship training at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London before joining the faculty at UCSF. Prior to transitioning to industry, Bob completed a MBA at University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Bob started out in the life science industry in medical devices, first at Zeiss Humphrey Systems (now Carl Zeiss Meditec) working on the Stratus OCT and then at the German venture capital firm, Earlybird. He then transitioned to drug development at Genentech, where he managed the Lucentis Phase 3 clinical program through to its first approval in wet age related macular degeneration; GSK where, as VP of Clinical Ophthalmology, he helped build an early stage clinical pipeline; Novartis/Alcon where he was VP and Head of Pharmaceutical Product Development; and most recently at retina startup Vision Medicines, where he was Chief Medical Officer and Head of R&D. He is currently Associate Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology at UCSF, where he continues to see patients.
About Apellis
Apellis is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of a platform of novel therapeutic compounds for the treatment of a broad range of autoimmune diseases based upon complement immunotherapy. Apellis is designing its compounds to modulate excessive or inappropriate activation of the complement component of the immune system and to resolve the dysfunction in the immune system associated with over-activation of the complement system. Apellis is currently evaluating its lead product candidates in Phase I and Phase II clinical trials in paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH), geographic atrophy in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
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