Vaccitech names Nadège Pelletier as chief scientific officer

The clinical-stage biopharma Vaccitech (Nasdaq:VACC) has appointed Nadège Pelletier as its new chief scientific officer. She will lead scientific teams in drug discovery and platform development at the company and will oversee its technical strategy.

Vaccitech is a UK-based biotech that develops vaccines and immunotherapies.

“It’s an exciting time to be joining Vaccitech,” Pelletier said in a news release.

Pelletier comes to Vaccitech with more than 15 years of experience in the pharma industry and academia.

Specializing in immunology and infectious diseases, she most recently worked as the senior principal scientist, autoimmunity, transplantation and inflammation at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR). At Novartis, Pelletier served as project leader in autoimmunity, inflammation and infectious diseases. She was accountable for building solid preclinical packages and developing biomarker strategies and translational plans.

Before that, Pelletier worked as a principal scientist and investigator at Roche. In that role, she worked on preclinical and clinical projects to promote immune balance in autoimmunity and chronic infectious diseases. She also worked on advanced immune modulation strategies for chronic hepatitis B and respiratory infections.

She holds a Ph.D. in immunology from the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1.

Vaccitech’s former chief scientific officer, Tom Evans, is retiring. He will continue working for the company as a scientific consultant.

Vaccitech was founded in 2016.

The company partnered with the University of Oxford to develop ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, a COVID-19 vaccine that AstraZeneca (LON:AZN) eventually helped commercialize. ChAdOx1 eventually won emergency use authorization in several countries and was administered to millions of people worldwide.

Vaccitech is also developing a range of therapeutic and prophylactic therapies.

In the former category is VTP-300, a hepatitis B virus therapeutic in a Phase 2 study. The company also has a human papillomavirus therapeutic known as VTP-200 and a prostate cancer known as VTP-800/850 in Phase 2 studies.

Vaccitech also has MERS and zoster vaccines in clinical development.