– USA, MA – Summit Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: SMMT) today announced the appointment of Ken Clark, JD, to its Board of Directors, effective immediately.
“Ken’s strategic expertise, particularly with his vast experience as a leader and advisor in the biotech space, will provide immeasurable value to Summit as we continue to advance the particularly aggressive goals for our company,” said Chairman and CEO, Bob Duggan, . “Ken’s extensive and unique expertise will help guide Team Summit’s world-class executives in carrying out our strategic objectives. Ken has over 35 years of experience across biotech companies large and small from pre-clinical to commercial entities: we are excited for Ken to join our efforts to make a positive, meaningful impact on the health of patients facing serious unmet medical needs.”
“Bob and I have known Ken for more than 15 years and have had the pleasure of working with him throughout this time, including two major transactions at Pharmacyclics. One received an award as the best partnership in 2011, and the other was Pharmacyclics’ $21 billion acquisition by AbbVie, one of the largest bio/pharma acquisitions of its kind. His knowledge and advice in the field are remarkable. We are proud to have him as a member of our Board going forward,” added Dr. Maky Zanganeh, COO and a member of Summit’s Board of Directors. “As we have discussed, we have the goal of seeking to expand our pipeline product portfolio into additional therapeutic areas that target the cause or effect of the disease, while sparing the rest of the human body, and minimizing the trauma experienced by patients. Ken will serve as a trusted advisor in this process, and his vast experience will be an asset in our journey.”
In conjunction with Mr. Clark’s appointment, Ramses Erdtmann has agreed to make his Summit Board seat available.
“We would like to thank Ramses for his meaningful contributions to our Board and Team Summit over the past two years. Ramses has provided very valuable counsel to the leadership of Team Summit and me personally, and we are a better organization today as a result of his presence,” said Mr. Duggan. “We wish Ramses the best of success as he pursues his additional executive endeavors. We have no doubt he intends to make a great impact in the biopharmaceutical space.”
About Kenneth Clark
Mr. Clark is currently a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati based out of the firm’s Palo Alto, CA, office.
At WSGR, Ken advises biotech companies in strategic partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, and financing transactions, in addition to a range of other matters. He has previously served as a member of the boards of directors for multiple publicly traded companies, including Pulse BioSciences, Inc. and Pharmacyclics, Inc., in addition to serving two terms on WSGR’s Board of Directors. Ken received his undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University and earned his Juris Doctorate from the University of Texas School of Law.
“The mission of Summit to meaningfully improve the quality and potential duration of patients’ lives, while acting as an ally to physicians and the greater healthcare ecosystem, is one I admire and am excited to be a part of going forward,” said Mr. Clark. “I look forward to again working with Bob and Maky, as well as some of the pre-eminent leaders at Team Summit, in building the company into an organization that achieves its priority: making a positive impact on society by taking full responsibility for bringing medicinal therapies to patients suffering from unmet medical needs.”
About Summit Therapeutics
The overriding objective of Summit Therapeutics is to create value for patients, hospital caregivers, and community-based healthcare providers, as well as healthcare payers around the world. We seek to create value by developing drugs with high therapeutic efficacy – curing the cause of the patient’s condition with minimal or zero disease recurrence or antimicrobial resistance, for the longest extent possible – and minimizing the trauma caused to the patient and healthcare ecosystem by minimizing serious side effects, disease recurrence, and inaccessibility to our treatments as a result of financial or other barriers. Summit Therapeutics, empowered by its Discuva Platform, the Company’s innovative antibiotic discovery engine, and supported by BARDA and CARB-X funding, intends to be the leader in patient-friendly and paradigm-shifting treatments for infectious diseases and other significant unmet medical needs while being an ally to physicians. Our new mechanism pipeline product candidates are designed to become the patient-friendly, new-era standard of care, by working in harmony with the human microbiome to treat prospective patients suffering from infectious diseases, initially focusing on Clostridioides difficile infection. Currently, Summit’s lead product candidate, ridinilazole, is a novel, first-in-class drug engaged in a global Phase III trial program versus vancomycin, for use as first-line therapy for the treatment of initial and recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection, and to show superiority in sustained clinical response. Commercialization of ridinilazole is subject to regulatory approvals. SMT-738, the second candidate within Summit’s portfolio, is currently in the IND-enabling phase for the treatment of multidrug resistant infections, specifically those caused by carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae.
For more information: https://www.summittxinc.com/
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