Stem Cell Therapeutics Strengthens its Board of Directors
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Stem Cell Therapeutics Corp. has announced that Mr. Luke Beshar and Dr. Thomas Reynolds have been appointed to the Company's Board of Directors.
Luke Beshar is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of NPS Pharmaceuticals. He joined the company in 2007 and has been responsible for financial management, investor relations, information technology, technical operations, supply- chain management, facilities, project management, contracts & outsourcing, and alliance management.
Mr. Beshar has utilized his 30 years of experience and strategic and financial expertise to help transform NPS into a global biopharmaceutical company that is bringing innovative therapies to patients with rare diseases around the world. Under his financial leadership, NPS secured approximately $400M of capital and its market capitalization increased from $180 million to more than $3 billion.
Prior to joining NPS, Mr. Beshar served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Cambrex Corporation, a global life sciences company. At Cambrex, his accomplishments included raising approximately $600 million of new capital, building a high performance global finance team, and leading a process of evaluating strategic alternatives, which resulted in the sale of non-strategic operations for $460 million and an $11 per share special dividend to shareholders.
Mr. Beshar began his career with Arthur Andersen & Co. and is a certified public accountant. He obtained his bachelor's degree in Accounting and Finance from Michigan State University and is a graduate of The Executive Program at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia.
Dr. Thomas Reynolds served as Chief Medical Officer of Seattle Genetics from March 2007 until his retirement in February 2013. While at Seattle Genetics, he was responsible for building and leading an integrated clinical development, regulatory and medical affairs organization, highlighted by the development and approval of ADCETRIS®.
From 2002 to 2007, Dr. Reynolds served at ZymoGenetics (acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2010), most recently as Vice President, Medical Affairs, where he oversaw the clinical development and regulatory filing of RECOTHROM®.
Previously, he was Vice President, Clinical Affairs at Targeted Genetics, and before that he was at Somatix Therapy (acquired by Cell Genesys in 1997). Dr. Reynolds received his M.D. and Ph.D. in Biophysics from Stanford University and a B.A. in Chemistry from Dartmouth College.
Stem Cell Therapeutics (SCT) has also announced that two long-serving directors, Mr. Dean Peterson and Dr. James DeMesa, have retired from the Board.
"We are appreciative of the strong support and contributions from Dean and James in the past, particularly in the recent period when we jointly undertook to transform the company. Dean Peterson was the architect behind the reformation of the company and helped recruit the board that has undertaken this task. We are grateful to him and James for their integrity and enthusiasm" remarked SCT's Chairman, Dr. Calvin Stiller. "The addition of Mr. Beshar and Dr. Reynolds, two highly accomplished professionals, to the Board provides us with invaluable skills and expertise in finance and clinical development, areas of critical importance to our future success. The composition of the current Board reflects our new strategic goals, our new focus on immunotherapy and oncology, as well as our new US institutional investor-base and capital markets aspirations."
"We have promising assets, an exceptional management team, a board second to none, and we are well funded. As I leave the board I have an elevated level of confidence in our successful pursuit of value creation," commented Mr. Peterson.
The company also announced that the Board of Directors has granted options to purchase 200,000 common shares of the Corporation to each of the newly appointed directors. The options were issued at an exercise price of $0.63 per share for a ten-year term. The grant of options is subject to acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange.
