Immunocore Appoints Dr Eliot Forster as Chief Executive Officer
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Dr Forster brings almost 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, and is joining from Creabilis where he has served as Chief Executive Officer since 2010. Prior to joining Creabilis, Dr Forster was Chief Executive Officer of US biotechnology company, Solace Pharmaceuticals Inc.
His other previous roles include Head of Development and Operations for the EU and Asia at Pfizer, where he was responsible for drug development activities across multiple geographies and brought several drugs to market, including Celebrex® (celecoxib) and Relpax® (eletriptan). Before joining Pfizer he was at GlaxoSmithKline.
Dr Forster has also served as a non-executive director to a number of growing biotechnology companies and holds a PhD in neurophysiology from Liverpool University and an MBA from Henley Management College.
He is currently Chairman of the MedCity project, launched in April 2014 to grow a world-leading life sciences cluster in London and the greater south east, and will continue in that role.
Dr Forster will succeed James Noble, the founding CEO of Immunocore and its sister company, Adaptimmune. Mr Noble stood down as CEO of Immunocore in March 2014 to become full-time CEO of Adaptimmune and grow the company. Mr Noble remains a non-executive director of Immunocore.
Executive Chairman of Immunocore, Dr Jonathan Knowles, said: “I am delighted to welcome Eliot Forster to Immunocore, and as a member of the Board. His significant drug development experience will be invaluable to Immunocore as we continue to deliver within our partnerships and advance our proprietary ImmTAC pipeline.”
James Noble commented: “I am very pleased to hand the baton over to Eliot and I wish him every success with taking the company forward.”
“I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead Immunocore at this exciting point of transition as it advances its lead programme, IMCgp100, in Phase II clinical trials in patients with late stage melanoma,” said Dr Forster. “Through substantial scientific achievement, the company has created an innovative and robust platform technology to tackle cancer and viral disease, and I look forward to working together with the team to build one of Europe’s premier biotechnology companies.”
