Immunocore Announces Re-organization of its Executive Management to Support Business Growth

Immunocore Limited has announced a re-organization of its executive management team. The changes are designed to support the continuing growth of Immunocore and its sister company, Adaptimmune. Both companies have recently experienced rapid growth based on encouraging clinical trials results.

James Noble, the founding Chief Executive Officer of both Immunocore and Adaptimmune, will become full-time Chief Executive Officer of Adaptimmune as of 31 March. Mr Noble will remain on the Immunocore board as a non-executive director to help steer the company’s future success.

Dr Jonathan Knowles, currently Executive Chairman of both Immunocore and Adaptimmune will serve as acting CEO of Immunocore until the company’s board appoints a permanent replacement.

Immunocore entered into three major partnerships during the second half of 2013 with GlaxoSmithKline, Genentech and MedImmune, the global biologics and research arm of AstraZeneca, which has further accelerated its planned expansion.

Adaptimmune has multiple clinical trials in progress in the United States, generating promising results. European trials will shortly commence and the company recently announced that it is taking a second T cell-based therapy into clinical trials in 2015, supported by a major grant from the Technology Strategy Board.

James Noble commented: “Both companies are at the stage where they each require a full-time CEO to lead further development. Having been part of the recent success in Immunocore, where we have secured three significant partnerships and progressed our clinical programme IMCgp100 into a Phase IIa trial in melanoma, I look forward to focusing on further accelerating the growth of Adaptimmune based on its recent clinical successes in a number of different cancers. The goal for Adaptimmune now is to finalize a major partnership while expanding its operations to drive the internal pipeline of the company.”

Jonathan Knowles said: “It is a real pleasure to be associated with the success of Immunocore and Adaptimmune in parallel, and I would like to acknowledge the very significant achievement of James in leading both companies up to this point. I am delighted that James has agreed to take on the full-time CEO position at Adaptimmune while remaining on the Immunocore board as a non-executive director. I look forward to continuing to work closely with James and the teams in Adaptimmune and Immunocore as we enter the next phase of growth for both companies and seek to bring breakthrough cancer therapies to patients.”