Dartmouth drug discovery company IMV is replacing its CEO.
Former Chief Executive Frederic Ors stepped down Wednesday, with Chief Business Officer Andrew Hall slated to serve as interim CEO until the Board of Directors hires a permanent replacement for Ors.
IMV is developing “a new class of targeted cancer immunotherapies” and has developed compounds that allow for the delayed release of anti-cancer drugs, aiming to administer medications in a way that is more compatible with patients’ immune systems.
“During Fred’s tenure, IMV successfully established the company’s proprietary technology (DPX) as a novel immune-oncology platform,” said Chairman Andy Sheldon in a press release. “He led the company to demonstrate the value of this approach through the successful completion of clinical trials with the platform’s first development product, maveropepimut-S, proving clinical benefit for patients with both solid and liquid tumors.”
IMV, which trades on the Nasdaq, has seen its share price decline steadily in recent months. According to Bloomberg.com, the shares closed Wednesday at US$1.69, down from a 52-week high of US$5.73 set last summer.
In December, IMV issued two statements on clinical trials involving one of its products, Survivac. It said the compound had been used in stand-alone trials in the treatment of ovarian cancer that had proven resistant to other treatments. The statement said almost 80 percent of the patients showed clinical benefits.
Three days later, the company revealed the results of clinical trials conducted in partnership with the pharmaceutical giant Merck. They had been using Survivac to deliver Merck’s drug Keytruda on difficult-to-treat cases of lymphoma, which results in clusters of tumors on lymph nodes. The companies said the subject patients reported median progression-free survival of 230 days, compared to 70 days in other patients.
In July, it said it is planning two Phase 2B trials in the coming months that it hopes will be key steps in bringing Survivac to the market in a few years.
