Kiadis Pharma appoints chief medical officer

Biopharma company Kiadis Pharma has appointed Jeroen Rovers as its chief medical officer and he joins from Ceronco Biosciences where he was also CMO.

Prior to his position at Ceronco, Rovers was VP of medical affairs at Amsterdam-based Kiadis and had remained a consultant for the company until his re-appointment this week.

Rovers, whose areas of expertise include cell based therapeutics and advanced therapy medicinal products, has more that 15 years of experience in clinical development, during which time he held posts at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Netherlands and Organon.

He said: “I am extremely excited to have the opportunity to rejoin Kiadis Pharma and be able to focus on its T-cell based immunology product ATIR. I believe ATIR is a truly innovative product and has the potential to become a key part of the next generation treatments of blood cancers.”

Kiadis develops T-cell immunology treatments for blood cancers and is currently sponsoring phase II trials for its lead product ATIR, a medicinal product enabling stem cell transplantations using partially mismatched family members as donors for patients suffering from blood cancer.

Manfred Ruediger, CEO of Kiadis Pharma, said: “Jeroen's medical and clinical expertise, coupled with business development connections, will be extremely useful given the stage of our phase II programme and the interest we have been seeing in our field.

“We feel he will continue to make a valuable addition to our team and help us to make ATIR a reality for patients and to develop it to its full potential.”