Notch Therapeutics Appoints Cellular Immunotherapy Veteran Chris Bond, Ph.D. as SVP, Preclinical and Translational Sciences

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, January 25, 2021— Notch Therapeutics Inc., a biotechnology company developing renewable stem cell-derived T cell therapies for cancer and other immune disorders, announced today the appointment of Chris Bond, Ph.D. as Senior Vice President, Preclinical and Translational Sciences. Dr. Bond joins Notch from Kite, where he most recently served as Vice President of Cellular Engineering.

“We are excited to welcome Chris, a highly regarded drug developer and team builder who brings to Notch great depth of experience and expertise in development of cell therapies, gene editing, and cell engineering spanning discovery through IND,” said David Main, President and Chief Executive Officer of Notch. “Adding Chris to our leadership team will bolster our preclinical pipeline and translational research capabilities to accelerate development of the company’s cell therapy candidates from discovery into clinical application.”

Chris Bond, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Preclinical & Translational Sciences
Chris Bond joins Notch with more than 18 years of experience working with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies including Genentech, OncoMed, Juno Therapeutics, Celgene, and Kite. Dr. Bond has extensive experience in the discovery and development of adoptive cell therapies, monoclonal antibodies, and cellular engineering and genome editing. At Juno and at Kite, he led the discovery and preclinical development programs for CAR T and TCR cell therapies targeting solid and hematological tumors. At Kite, Dr. Bond led the development of allogeneic cell therapy platforms leveraging T cells from both donor-derived sources and induced pluripotent stem cells. As part of his work with Juno and Kite, Dr. Bond led R&D collaborations with genome editing companies including Editas Medicine and Sangamo Therapeutics. Prior to his work in adoptive cell therapy, Dr. Bond led monoclonal and bi-specific antibody discovery and engineering programs targeting cancer stem cell antigens at OncoMed Pharmaceuticals. He is an inventor on numerous patents and has published papers in the fields of protein structure and engineering, immunology, and oncology. Dr. Bond received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Washington.

About Notch Therapeutics (www.notchtx.com)
Notch is a leader in the development of cellular therapeutics originating from pluripotent stem cells that are specifically engineered to address the underlying biology of complex disease systems. The company has unlocked the ability for large-quantity production of T cells and other cells from any source of stem cells to bring best-in-class cell therapy products to thousands of patients. The core of the Notch platform is the Engineered Thymic Niche (ETN), which enables precision control of cell fate during the differentiation and expansion of stem cells, with the potential to generate immunotherapies with decreased variability, increased potency, and engineered improvements. The ETN platform is the first technology that can reliably generate T cells from iPSC-derived progenitor cells using fully defined, non-xenogenic reagents, which has the potential to greatly improve the regulatory, clinical, and commercial attributes for these innovative medicines. The technology was invented in the laboratories of Juan-Carlos Zúñiga-Pflücker, Ph.D. at Sunnybrook Research Institute and Peter Zandstra, Ph.D., FRSC at the University of Toronto. Notch was founded by these two institutions, in conjunction with MaRS Innovation (now Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners) and the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) in Toronto.

Contact:
Mary Moynihan
M2Friend Biocommunications
802-951-9600
mary@m2friend.com