Immunocore appoints Dr Mohammed Dar as Head of Clinical Development and Chief Medical Officer
Mohammed Dar will lead the continued clinical development of tebentafusp (IMCgp100) and other key programmes in Immunocore’s growing pipeline
(Oxfordshire, UK and Pennsylvania and Maryland, US, 7 May 2019) Immunocore Limited, a leading T cell receptor (TCR) biotechnology company, today announces that Dr Mohammed Dar has been appointed as Head of Clinical Development and Chief Medical Officer, effective April 16, 2019.
Commenting on the appointment, Bahija Jallal Chief Executive Officer of Immunocore, said: “Immunocore is approaching a crucial point in the Company’s development, with our lead product candidate, tebentafusp, moving through pivotal studies. Mohammed has a complete breadth of experience in leading clinical teams through early and late stage development. We’re delighted to have such a distinguished physician, scientist and industry leader join us as we progress tebentafusp and our other promising candidates through clinical development.”
Mohammed will be responsible for clinical, operational, biostatistics and medical affairs functions across all therapeutic areas. This includes Immunocore’s wholly-owned lead programme, tebentafusp, in addition to the growing pipeline in oncology, infectious diseases, which includes target indications such as Hepatitis B and HIV, and autoimmune diseases.
“The potential of Immunocore’s unparalleled science and TCR platform is very impressive,” said Mohammed Dar, Head of Clinical Development and Chief Medical Officer of Immunocore. “I am thrilled to have joined Immunocore at such an exciting time for the Company and I look forward to working with the scientific leadership team to drive this compelling science forward.”
Mohammed has over 15 years of pharmaceutical industry experience in the field of oncology. Before joining Immunocore, Mohammed was Vice President, Clinical Development Oncology, R&D at MedImmune (AstraZeneca) and spent 10 years at GSK in roles of increasing responsibility focused on early clinical development in oncology. While at MedImmune, he led the clinical trials and teams supporting the approval of anti-PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor, durvalumab, and anti-CD22 immunotoxin, moxetumomab. Mohammed received his Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his M.D. and Internal Medicine training from Duke University School of Medicine. He went on to complete his Fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at the National Cancer Institute.
Mohammed joins two other world-class development leaders at Immunocore, Mark Moyer, Head of Regulatory, Safety and Project Management, and Koustubh Ranade, Head of Translational Medicine. Mark is one of the most experienced immuno-oncology development leaders with over 30 years of drug development experience at companies including Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) and Sanofi. As regulatory oncology head at BMS, he was accountable for 37 BLAs/MAAs, including for nivolumab, ipilimumab and elotuzumab. Koustubh was most recently Vice President of Translational Medicine at MedImmune for all therapeutic areas, where he contributed to four product approvals, including durvalumab. With over three decades of research experience at Genentech, BMS, Stanford and NIH, Koustubh is a co-inventor on many patents, has published extensively in top-tier journals and has edited a book on genomics.
