On March 1, 2021 Kadmon Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:KDMN) reported the appointment of Simon Cooper, MBBS, as Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer, effective March 1, 2021 (Press release, Kadmon, MAR 1, 2021, View Source [SID1234575864]). In this role, Dr. Cooper will oversee the Company’s medical and clinical activities relating to the potential regulatory approval of belumosudil for chronic graft-versus-host disease and lead the Company’s clinical team to advance the development of additional product candidates.
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Dr. Cooper succeeds John Ryan, M.D., Ph.D., who will remain with the Company and transition to the role of Executive Medical Director, Clinical and Regulatory Development, where he will continue to advise on clinical, regulatory and medical affairs.
"Dr. Cooper brings more than 23 years of successful clinical expertise to Kadmon, having served in leadership roles in the development and approval of several immunologic therapies," said Harlan W. Waksal, M.D., President and CEO of Kadmon. "Dr. Cooper is a leader with a proven track record of managing high-performing, cross-functional teams. We believe that his involvement in multiple pharmaceutical product approvals and subsequent commercial launches will be invaluable to Kadmon as we prepare for our potential launch of belumosudil, if approved, and continue to ramp up additional pipeline progress."
Dr. Cooper’s background in immunology-focused biological drug development is marked by several key leadership roles spanning the ranks of major pharmaceutical corporations, capped off with his most recent role as Chief Medical Officer of Anokion, a private biopharmaceutical company developing therapies for autoimmune diseases. Dr. Cooper joined Anokion in January 2019 from AbbVie, where he most recently served as Asset Strategy Leader with responsibility for the development of SKYRIZI (risankizumab), an anti-IL-23 antibody, across multiple indications. Prior to joining AbbVie, Dr. Cooper was Vice President, Global Project Head, Immunology and Inflammation at Sanofi, where he was involved in the development of KEVZARA (sarilumab), an IL-6R antibody approved to treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA). He played a key role in its worldwide submission in RA and was a lead contributor in the product’s global launch. Earlier in his career, Dr. Cooper was Global Program Medical Director at Novartis, Executive Director, Clinical Research for Human Genome Sciences (now part of GlaxoSmithKline), and Clinical Science Leader at Roche. In these roles, he was instrumental in the development and approvals for BENLYSTA (belimumab), COSENTYX (secukinumab) and RITUXAN (rituximab). He earned his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne Medical School, United Kingdom (UK) before completing his higher medical training at Oxford University (UK).