CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 25, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cue Biopharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:CUE), an innovative immunotherapy company developing a novel, proprietary class of biologics engineered to selectively modulate the human immune system to treat a broad range of cancer and autoimmune diseases, announced today that Anish Suri, Ph.D. has been appointed as Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Suri, who most recently served as Senior Director of Janssen Immunosciences in Belgium, brings more than 20 years of experience to Cue Biopharma’s leadership team with a focus on immuno-oncology, autoimmune disorders, inflammation and translational medicine.

“Having a senior scientific leader with Anish’s background and expertise enhances the core strengths of our leadership team and further enables our strategic mission of developing next-generation, precision immunotherapies, offering new hope to patients with serious or life-threatening conditions,” said Daniel Passeri, M.Sc., J.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Cue Biopharma. “As CSO, Anish brings experienced scientific insight and leadership in essential areas for the next stages of our corporate evolution, including building and leading high-performance, multi-disciplinary teams, executing on research strategies, and driving translational applications that aim to transform our scientific discoveries into innovative medicines and marketable products.”

“We look forward to working closely with Anish as we continue to build our translational research and clinical capabilities, including studies of our biologic drug candidates in ex vivo assays from patient clinical samples. With Anish’s guidance and oversight, these studies will continue to strengthen our ability to design and conduct biologically and clinically informative Phase I studies,” said Kenneth Pienta, M.D., acting Chief Medical Officer of Cue Biopharma.

“I am delighted to join Cue Biopharma and look forward to working with a very talented group of colleagues. They are developing an innovative biologics platform which offers a transformational opportunity for precise immune modulation that ultimately may provide significant benefits to patients. I look forward to guiding and overseeing the discovery and preclinical development activities, and shaping translational research efforts,” said Dr. Suri. 

Dr. Suri is an immunologist with more than 20 years of experience in basic and translational research focused on immuno-oncology, autoimmune disorders, transplantation rejection, and inflammation. Prior to joining Cue Biopharma, he held roles of increasing responsibility at Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies, most recently as Senior Director at Janssen Immunosciences. Prior to Janssen, he was responsible for providing strategic guidance to immuno-oncology and immunology drug discovery programs at Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute. Prior to his work in the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Suri was Assistant Professor of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in immunology from Washington University.

About Cue Biopharma
Cue Biopharma is an innovative immunotherapy company developing a novel, proprietary class of biologics engineered to selectively modulate the human immune system to treat a broad range of cancers and autoimmune disorders. We design biologics to engage and modulate the activity of disease-associated T cells in the patient’s body, with the goal of offering significant therapeutic benefits while potentially minimizing or eliminating unwanted side effects.

We believe our biologics allow us to target antigen-specific T cell populations in a variety of indications using a simple peptide switch within previously-validated drug frameworks developed from the Cue Biologics Platform. This flexibility could truncate the drug selection and development process, moving effective therapeutics from discovery to clinical validation more rapidly and cost-efficiently than current industry standard timelines and costs.

Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, we are led by an experienced management team and scientific and clinical advisory board (SAB/CAB) with deep expertise in the design and clinical development of protein biologics, immunology and immuno-oncology.

For more information, visit www.cuebio.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
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Investor Contact:
John Woolford
Westwicke Partners
443-213-0506

Media Contact:
Cory Tromblee
Sam Brown Inc.
617-571-7220

Source: Cue Biopharma, Inc.