Adaptimmune Announces New Additions to Manufacturing Senior Management

PHILADELPHIA and OXFORD, United Kingdom, Jan. 22, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Adaptimmune Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ:ADAP), a leader in the use of TCR engineered T-cell therapy to treat cancer, today announced that it has augmented its manufacturing leadership to prepare for clinical and commercial scale up with the additions of William Buecheler as Vice President, Manufacturing Operations, and Phil Bassett as Head of Process Development.

Mr. Buecheler is responsible for Adaptimmune's global manufacturing operations, including contract and in-house manufacturing activities, and is leading the implementation of scale up plans designed to achieve commercial manufacturing capability. Mr. Bassett is responsible for process development activities including leading Adaptimmune’s T-cell and lentivirus process development.

“Adaptimmune is in the midst of scaling up its manufacturing expertise, which significantly enhances our ability to run multiple clinical studies of our TCR therapies and, eventually, commercialize our products,” said James Noble, Chief Executive Officer. “As such, manufacturing excellence is key to our long term success. Hiring the best in the field of manufacturing is critical to us, and Bill and Phil are already making significant contributions.”

Bill Buecheler brings to Adaptimmune over 25 years of industry experience in manufacturing operations, facility planning and expansion, leadership of FDA pre-approval inspection and document preparation, and manufacturing process improvements. He joins Adaptimmune from Novartis Pharmaceuticals, where he acted as the Director and Process Unit Head, with responsibility for overall manufacturing operations of the Cell and Gene Therapy Process Unit. As a member of the senior leadership team, his responsibilities included manufacturing efforts to support the scale up operations for Novartis’ CTL019 chimeric antigen receptor product for treatment of ALL and CLL patients. Prior to joining Novartis, he worked and consulted for numerous pharmaceutical and biotech companies in areas including facility build out and expansion, change control, process improvement, cycle time reduction and critical path project management. Mr. Buecheler earned his Master of Business Administration degree from Syracuse University.

Phil Bassett brings with him over 15 years of process manufacturing experience in CMO, small biotech and large biopharma environments. Most recently, Mr. Bassett served as Head of Manufacturing Development for the Cell Therapy Catapult, a UK-based Center of Excellence in cell therapy, where he was responsible for technology transfer and providing late stage commercial manufacturing, scale-up and process industrialization expertise. Prior to the Cell Therapy Catapult, he served at UCB Celltech as the Associate Director and Head of Fermentation Process Sciences, managing the upstream development team working on clinical and commercial processes, and leading process development, scale up and technology transfer efforts. He also spent several years in roles of increasing responsibility with Cobra Biomanufacturing plc, a UK-based international contract development and manufacturing organization providing biologics for pre-clinical and clinical supply.

About Adaptimmune

Adaptimmune is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on novel cancer immunotherapy products based on its T-cell receptor (TCR) platform. Established in 2008, the company aims to utilize the body’s own machinery - the T-cell - to target and destroy cancer cells by using engineered, increased affinity TCRs as a means of strengthening natural patient T-cell responses. Adaptimmune’s lead program is an affinity enhanced T-cell therapy targeting the NY-ESO cancer antigen. Its NY-ESO TCR affinity enhanced T-cell therapy has demonstrated signs of efficacy and tolerability in Phase 1/2 trials in solid tumors and in hematologic cancer types, including synovial sarcoma and multiple myeloma. In June 2014, Adaptimmune announced that it had entered into a strategic collaboration and licensing agreement with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for the development and commercialization of the NY-ESO TCR program in partnership with GSK. In addition, Adaptimmune has a number of proprietary programs. The company has identified over 30 intracellular target peptides preferentially expressed in cancer cells and is currently progressing 12 through unpartnered research programs. Adaptimmune has over 200 employees and is located in Oxfordshire, U.K. and Philadelphia, USA. For more information: http://www.adaptimmune.com

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA). These forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties. Such risks and uncertainties could cause our actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, and include, without limitation: the success, cost and timing of our product development activities and clinical trials and our ability to successfully advance our TCR therapeutic candidates through the regulatory and commercialization processes. For a further description of the risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, as well as risks relating to our business in general, we refer you to our Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 13, 2015. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date the statements were made and we do not undertake any obligation to update such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. 

Adaptimmune Contacts

Will Roberts
Vice President, Investor Relations
T:  (215) 825-9306 
E: will.roberts@adaptimmune.com

Margaret Henry
Head of PR
T: +44 (0)1235 430036
Mob: +44 (0)7710 304249
E: margaret.henry@adaptimmune.com

Released January 22, 2016