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Senior Preclinical Development and Translational Medicine Expert to Join Arovella

Written by: Editor
Published on: 25 Jan 2022

Arovella

  • Dr Mini Bharathan joins Arovella to lead the preclinical activities for its newly acquired DKK1 peptide targeting technology and its CAR19-iNKT cell therapy.
  • Dr Bharathan has more than 15 years’ experience working in the field of immunology and has spent the last 12 years specialising in the development of cell therapies, working at Intrexon, the US Department of Health (NIH/NCI), Immatics, Celgene, Celularity and Cellectis.
  • Dr Bharathan joins Arovella from Cellectis, where she was a Director of Translational Medicine and Clinical Development. Cellectis is a clinical stage cell therapy company using its pioneering gene-editing platform to develop allogeneic cell therapies.

PERTH, AUSTRALIA 25 January 2022: Arovella Therapeutics Limited (ASX: ALA), a biotechnology company focused on developing its invariant Natural Killer T (iNKT) cell platform and its oral spray delivery technology to treat cancer and conditions that affect the central nervous system, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Mini Bharathan as its VP of Development and Translational Medicine for its iNKT cell therapy platform effective 1 February 2022. Arovella recently announced that it secured the exclusive, global licence from MD Andreson to a novel monoclonal antibody targeting a DKK1 peptide, which can be used as a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) for cell therapy. Dr Bharathan’s role will encompass leading the nonclinical studies for its DKK1 technology to advance the therapy into clinical studies.

Dr Bharathan joins Arovella from Cellectis, a biotechnology company that is using its pioneering geneediting platform to develop allogenic therapies, which entails collecting the starting material for the cell therapy from a healthy donor as opposed to the patient suffering from the cancer.

During her time at Cellectis, Dr Bharathan served as the Director of Translational Medicine and Clinical Development where she coordinated the development programs for key products, recommended patient stratification and biomarker strategies and oversaw the development and validation of novel clinical stage assay methodologies, patient selection markers and biomarkers for multiple global allogenic CAR-T clinical trials. Dr Bharathan also held senior roles at Celgene, Celularity and Immatics, all focused on the development of cell therapies.

Dr Bharathan has more than 15 years’ experience in the field of immunology with more than 12 years focused on the development of cell therapies. Dr Bharathan is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and holds a PhD in immunology from Virginia Tech where she was the recipient of the Sigma Xi Outstanding Ph.D. Research Award. Dr Bharathan has co-authored numerous research articles and patents.

Arovella’s CEO and MD, Dr Michael Baker, commented: “Dr Bharathan is an exceptionally talented immunologist, with many years of experience taking cell therapies from preclinical stages and into and through clinical trials, particularly allogenic therapies. As we look to develop our iNKT cell therapy platform to advance our two cell therapy products into clinical trials, Dr Bharathan will provide immense value and we are delighted that she has decided to join Arovella.”