Immunocore

Immunocore, a biotech company based in Oxford, UK, which develops biopharmaceuticals for cancer and viral disease, has found a new chief in Eliot Forster.

The new CEO joins the company from Creabilis, where he was Chief Executive since 2010. Before that, Forster was CEO of Us Biotech Solace Pharmaceuticals.

He has also worked as Head of Development and Operations for the EU and Asia at Pfizer, where he helped bring Celebrex (celecoxib) and Relpax (eletriptan) to market. Before joining Pfizer he worked at GlaxoSmithKline.

Forster is currently Chairman of the MedCity project, launched in April 2014 to grow a world-leading life sciences cluster in London and the southeast of England, and will continue in that role.

He takes over from James Noble, the founding CEO of Immunocore who stepped down last March to become full-time CEO of sister company Adaptimmune.

Privately-owned Immunocore has a staff of around 125 and has discovery partnerships with Genentech, GSK, MedImmune (the biologics division of AstraZeneca), and Eli Lilly. It works with T-Cell Receptors linked to antibody fragments called bi-specific proteins or ImmTACS.