Valbonne, France-based biotech TxCell has appointed Dr Li Zhou as vice president of cell engineering with its research department.
Dr Zhou will lead the team’s discovery and engineering activities on Chimeric Antigen Receptor in Treg cells (CAR-Treg) for immunotherapy of severe chronic autoimmune and inflammatory diseases and organ transplantation.
He joins from ZMKS International Cancer Therapy Biotechnologies, a Chinese immuno-oncology company, where he served as chief scientific officer and director of research and development.
Prior to this, Dr Zhou was lab head, investigator at the Novartis Biologics Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the US between 2009 and 2016.
He also brings experience from Massachusetts General Hospital, where he served as team leader in its Centre for Computational and Integrated Biology from 2002 to 2009.
François Meyer, head of research at TxCell, said: “With this key appointment, TxCell is demonstrating its commitment to be at the forefront of cellular immunotherapy.
“Cell engineering significantly broadens the potential therapeutic applications of TxCell’s technology and we have recently intensified the research efforts on our ENTrlA CAR-Treg platform.
“Li brings a wealth of technical and strategic expertise in T-cell engineering, which will be of great value to TxCell as we develop novel and next-generation Treg-based therapies.”