Santa Clara, CA and TOKYO — April 12, 2013 — REGiMMUNE Corporation., a privately held biopharmaceutical company, announced today that it has appointed Mr. Nakamura, Dr. Misawa, Dr. Matsuishi and Mr.Hirai the as non-executive director.
Mr. Nakamura is currently the head at one of the venture investment sections and a member of the fund planning section in Daiwa Corporate Investment (DCI) . Prior to this position, he played a major role as a senior member of DCI’s buy-out investment unit from 2009, and realized a prominent return as a result of full set of hands-on assistances as a board member with an invested medium-sized firm. Previous to buy-out assignments, he was working at the due diligence & evaluation section to appraise investment targets and analyze risks, with a special focus on biotech sector. In the meantime, his articles regarding value-creation of bio-venture business were introduced by a major business magazine.
Before DCI, Mr. Nakamura led a consulting practice team dedicated to major Japanese enterprise clients at Stern Stewart, a US management consulting firm renowned for inventing a management tool, EVA, which stands for Economic Value Added. He also engaged in M&A advisory and financing services at Goldman Sachs and at Merill Lynch.He started his professional career in 1990 as a management consultant at Nomura Research Institute, a leading Japanese think tank.
He received an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, an MS in Aeronautics & Astronautics from Stanford University, and a BS in Applied Physics from Waseda University.
Dr. Misawa is currently one of the directors of investment group in Japan Asia Investment Co., Ltd. (JAIC). With over 10 years’ experience in healthcare investment, he leads biotech, medical device and medical service investments in JAIC and is a member of investment committee of a fund of funds in JAIC which invest to top tier Life Science VCs in Europe. He also plays a major role as investment committee member of some JAIC’s investment funds in China. Prior to join JAIC group, Dr. Misawa held academic positions as an assistant professor at Kurume University and University of Shizuoka, and a visiting research fellow at Baylor College of Medicine for 7 years. He received his BS, MS and PhD degrees in Biochemistry from Saitama University.
Dr. Matsuishi has over 30 years of experience in New Drug Development in multiple therapeutic areas. Prior to joining REGiMMUNE, he served as a director at TMRC Co., Ltd and having been engaged in developing anti-cancer drugs between 2009 and 2012. He was a co-founder of R&R Inc. and having served as the President and CEO from 2005 to 2009. Prior to that, he has served as a Director of Board at LTT Bio-Pharma, a DDS technology oriented pharmaceutical industry.
In addition, Dr. Matsuishi has worked for more than 25 years at Hoechst Japan KK (now Sanofi KK), successively holding important positions including Head of Discovery Research Laboratories, and has contributed to launching various biopharmaceuticals and diagnostics. He received his BS degree in Synthetic Chemistry from Kyushu University Faculty of Engineering and his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from Tokyo Medical University School of Medicine.
Mr. Hirai was admitted as an attorney in 1990 and admitted as a Japanese patent attorney in 1995. Mr. Hirai’s practice currently involves intellectual property matters, contact and litigation, including patent and trademark prosecution. Mr. Hirai possesses broad experience in negotiating and drafting international license agreements for various types of intellectual property, with a special focus on cutting-edge technology such as biotechnology and software.
Mr. Hirai has an LL.M degree from the University of Washington, School of Law. He spent 2 years at the University of Washington, including 9 months of research study at CASRIP as a research fellow. He concentrated on biotechnology, with a special focus on the comparative study of biotechnology protection in the United States and Japan and has written several articles on the issue of protection of biotechnology. Mr. Hirai also spent several months at an IP firm in Seattle and was involved in a U.S. IP practice.
After Mr. Hirai came back to Japan, he joined a major international law firm where he was involved international licensing matters and patent and trademark infringement cases. Mr. Hirai was also a legal counselor for the Office of Technology Transfer of the University of Tokyo.
He has held successive posts on a governmental committee concerning industry-academia-government collaboration. He lectures about technology transfer and Intellectual Property Law at universities and TLOs.
“We very much welcome those great mixture of 4 peoples to the board of REGiMMUNE at the same time; as we are moving up to the new stage of the company, it is important to add knowledge and experience in the biotechnology industry as well as a mature company,” commented Haru Morita, President and Chief Executive Officer. “We are thrilled that our lead drug candidate, RGI-2001, is showing successful outcome in its US clinical trial. So it’s time for us to gear up to establish strong team to lead our corporation.”
“I am very impressed with the strategy and progress REGiMMUNE is taking for its products, which is based on the work of Dr Yasuyuki Ishii,” stated Tetsuro Matsuishi. “It is great opportunity to join REGiMMUNE which is helping patients through its novel drugs for transplantation and autoimmune disease based on ground-breaking technology.”
About REGiMMUNE
REGiMMUNE is a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of immune regulatory therapeutics to treat life-threatening and debilitating conditions, including autoimmune diseases, transplantaton and inflammatory disorders. The company’s proprietary technology platform, reVax (reverse vaccination), works by modulating the immune system by enhancing antigen specific immune regulatory cells. This technique is expected to be useful in conditions such as graft-versus-host disease (GvHD), Type 1 diabetes(T1D) and inhibitor (anti-enzyme neutralizing antibody) formation associated with enzyme replacement therapy(RT), where control of an abnormal immune response is desirable. reVax is being utilized to advance several compounds through clinical development and eventual commercialization of a broad range of products for REGiMMUNE and its partners. The company is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and has a U.S. subsidiary in Santa Clara, California.