Date: 2017-04-25
Type of information: Resignation
Compound: member of the board of directors
Company: Sangamo Therapeutics (USA - CA)
Therapeutic area: Rare diseases - Genetic diseases
Type agreement: resignation
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- • On April 25, 2017, Sangamo Therapeutics announced that its founder and Chairman Edward Lanphier is not standing for re-election as a director nominee of Sangamo's Board of Directors at the 2017 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. The announcement comes after a year-long transition period following Lanphier's retirement from Sangamo management in June 2016 after 21 years as President and Chief Executive Officer.
- Edward Lanphier founded Sangamo in 1995 as a company focused on regulation of gene expression based upon zinc finger DNA binding protein technology. He fostered scientific innovation within the company, enabling development of methods for highly efficient and specific genome editing. Sangamo's scientists were the first to demonstrate the advantages of this approach in plant and animal species, leading to new methods for the production of novel transgenic animal models and crop modification techniques and laying the foundation for research into human therapeutic uses.
- Under Lanphier's leadership, Sangamo scientists were the first to evaluate the safety and efficacy of genome editing techniques in human clinical trials, including the company's legacy clinical research into cell therapies for HIV. Technologies developed through this program now hold promise as a potential cell therapy approach for cancer and monogenic diseases, including sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia. Lanphier also championed the development of in vivo genome editing techniques for their potential to cure genetically tractable diseases. Sangamo's zinc finger nuclease (ZFN) technology is the most advanced genome editing technology in development and with its demonstrated efficiency, precision and specificity has earned clearance from the FDA for in vivo human clinical studies. This year Sangamo is conducting the first ever in vivo genome editing clinical trials evaluating ZFN-mediated therapeutic genome editing approaches for the treatment of hemophilia B and two rare lysosomal storage disorders, MPS I and MPS II.
- Lanphier served as a member of the board of directors of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM) from 2012 through 2016 and as chairman from 2014 until 2016. During his term as chairman, ARM grew to include more than 245 members and was recognized as the leading international advocacy organization for gene and cell therapies and the broader regenerative medicine sector. Lanphier heralded the promise of curing diseases through genome editing while also advocating for responsible use of the technology, leading the charge in calling for open debate and discussion of germline genome editing with an editorial published in Nature in March 2015.
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