People on the Move
Adaptimmune
James Noble, the CEO of biopharma company Adaptimmune and its sister firm Immunocore, has stepped down from his role at the latter company. He will continue as CEO of Adaptimmune and as a non-executive board member at Immunocore.
Jonathan Knowles, currently Executive Chairman of both businesses, will serve as an interim CEO at Immunocore until the board appoints a permanent replacement.
Adaptimmune and Immunocore grew out of Avidex Limited, now part of MediGene, which in 1999 worked with the University of Oxford on novel T-cell receptors. Adaptimmune and Immunocore broke away in 2008 to address two different ways of exploiting their T-cell technology. Adaptimmune has the rights to engineered T-cells, while Immunocore has rights to the technology in the form of soluble proteins called ImmTACs.
The companies said they were both at the stage where they require a full-time CEO. Adaptimmune announced last week it is taking a second T cell-based therapy into clinical trials in 2015. Immunocore entered partnerships in late 2013 with GSK, Genentech and MedImmune, the biologics arm of AstraZeneca.