AlgoNomics appoints Philippe Stas as CEO
Founder Dr. Ignace Lasters remains CSO and director of the company.
Ghent, Belgium - December 17, 2007 - AlgoNomics NV, the immunoprofiling company, announced today the promotion of Philippe Stas to Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Ignace Lasters, who previously held the position of CEO, will continue as Chief Scientific Officer and assume a role as director of the company.
Mr. Stas will concentrate on the continued global expansion of AlgoNomics as a specialty service provider for immunogenicity screening.
Since 1990, Mr. Stas was active in antibody engineering projects, immunology and bioinformatics research at the Brussels University VUB. Prior to joining AlgoNomics for its creation in 1999, Mr. Stas started his career at PE Genscope, a subsidiary of Perkin Elmer. Mr. Stas holds an M.Sc.E. in biotechnology and a Master in information technology. Most recently, Mr. Stas served as the company’s Chief Operating Officer and is the chairman of the Belgian Association of Bioindustries bio.be.
Dr. Lasters, CSO of AlgoNomics: “Philippe has done an outstanding job in turning AlgoNomics into a leading immunoprofiling company. As CEO he will work out the important strategic options enabling future growth and success of the company.”
“This year has been exciting with the successful launch of our in vitro immunogenicity screening platform Epibase-IV,” comments Mr. Stas. “We will continue to build on our extensive know-how in addressing immunogenicity of protein therapeutics, and will advance the company through global expansion and a continued evaluation of novel technologies.”
About Epibase-IV
The Epibase-IV in vitro screening platform assesses the immunogenicity of therapeutics by measuring their effect on donor’s and patient’s T-cells. The ex vivo platform is currently applied for the immunogenicity screening and immunomonitoring of biotherapeutics, such as therapeutic antibodies, biosimilars and vaccines.
About Epibase
AlgoNomics’ patented Epibase® in silico screening tool is currently widely applied for the immunogenicity screening and optimization of biotherapeutics, such as therapeutic antibodies, biosimilars and vaccines.
Epibase® estimates to what extent a given therapeutic protein may lead to an immune response in patients. The computer based platform focuses on T-cell epitope identification. The uniqueness of Epibase® resides in its capability to identify the T-cell epitopes specific for HLA types covering most of the human population (including Caucasian, Oriental and Afro-American), including the majority of HLA sub-types for which little or no experimental data is available.
About immunogenicity
All therapeutic proteins show some level of immunogenicity, a side effect where the patient recognizes the drug as a "foreign" substance. This causes the patient's immune system to mount a defence against the therapeutic drug, resulting in significant reduction of efficacy and a rapid clearance of the drug from the circulation. The process is driven by the presence of T-cell epitopes in the protein – fragments binding to HLA receptors and inducing a T-cell response. There is a growing consensus about the need for early adoption and standardisation of immunogenicity assessments for biologicals.
About AlgoNomics
AlgoNomics is a Belgium based biotech company providing immunogenicity screening services to support the development of biotherapeutics in the broad field of immunotherapy. AlgoNomics owns a rich, proprietary platform for structure-based protein and peptide design. The technology platform contains innovative tools to unravel protein-protein and protein-peptide interactions.
AlgoNomics’ premier product is the Epibase® and Epibase-IV platforms for T-cell epitope identification in different population groups, applied in the discovery of vaccines and therapeutic proteins.
For more information about AlgoNomics visit www.algonomics.com
Further information:
AlgoNomics N.V.
Philippe Stas
Chief Executive Officer
Technologiepark 4
B-9052 Gent – Belgium
Tel.: +32.(0)9.241.11.00
Fax.: +32.(0)9.241.11.02
Philippe.Stas@algonomics.com
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