Humacyte Appoints Founder Laura Niklason MD, PhD as President and Chief Executive Officer
Jeffrey Lawson MD, PhD Appointed Chief Surgical Officer and Vice Chairman, to Enhance Product Positioning and Clinical Adoption
DURHAM, N.C. -- November 20, 2020 - Humacyte, an innovator in biotechnology and regenerative medicine, announced today that Laura Niklason MD, PhD has been appointed President and Chief Executive Officer. Jeffrey Lawson MD, PhD has been appointed the newly established role of Chief Surgical Officer and Vice Chairman.
Dr. Laura Niklason, a world leader in tissue engineering and cellular therapies, founded Humacyte in 2004. Dr. Niklason has been deeply involved in all key aspects of Humacyte’s growth, including scientific innovation and development, financing, clinical trials, manufacturing and the development and management of strategic partnerships. She led the first human implant of Humacyte’s human acellular vessel (HAV) in 2013. In taking on the CEO role at Humacyte, Dr. Niklason will depart her role as the Vice-Chair of Anesthesiology at Yale University. Among Dr. Niklason’s many accomplishments, she was cited by Time for creating one of the 50 Best Inventions of 2010, was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering and Women in Technology Hall of Fame, and named by Fortune magazine as one of 34 Leaders Who are Changing Health Care.
“Jeff is an inspiring leader in the organization and our industry. The Company is enriched by his enthusiasm, passion, and grit, and I look forward to continuing our decades of collaboration as he takes responsibility for expanding and accelerating our clinical applications and pathways,” said Dr. Niklason. “Humacyte has been my life’s work, and I look ahead with excitement and purpose at our potential to improve the lives of many patients. I’m grateful to our Board of Directors for the trust they’ve placed in me to lead the Humacyte team toward realizing the full extent of our revolutionary regenerative therapies.”
Dr. Lawson will serve as the Company’s first Chief Surgical Officer, a new role established to drive Humacyte’s clinical adoption and medical innovation. He will be Humacyte’s primary interface with the global surgical community, including physicians and surgeons around the world. Dr. Lawson will also seek to advance the use of Humacyte’s HAV under Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Compassionate Use authorization of the product, and to assist with Phase III pivotal trials intended to support a Biologics License Application under the FDA’s Fast Track designation with Accelerated Approval and Priority Review.
“Humacyte’s success reflects Laura’s pioneering vision. As long-time collaborators, I look forward to continuing to work in support of that vision to improve the lives of patients,” said Dr. Lawson. “Taking on the new role of Chief Surgical Officer provides a unique opportunity to expand on key relationships with the surgical community and with strategic partners, such as the Department of Defense, and to further Humacyte’s aggressive growth agenda.”
About Humacyte:
Humacyte, Inc., a privately held regenerative medicine company based in Durham, North Carolina, is pioneering the development and manufacture of off-the-shelf, universally implantable, bioengineered human tissues to improve the lives of patients and transform the practice of medicine. We believe our technology has the potential to overcome limitations in existing standards of care and address the lack of significant innovation in products that support tissue repair, reconstruction and replacement. We are leveraging our novel, best-in-class, scalable technology platform to develop proprietary, bioengineered, acellular human tissues that are designed to regenerate and have been demonstrated to become the patient’s own living tissue. Our goal is to develop and manufacture these tissues for the treatment of diseases and conditions across a range of anatomic locations in multiple therapeutic areas. These efforts, if approved, would benefit people with traumatic injuries, End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD), and peripheral arterial disease (PAD), and could potentially help patients needing vascular reconstruction and Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG). Humacyte was co-founded in 2004 by Laura Niklason, M.D., Ph.D., a world leader in cellular therapies/regenerative medicine; biomedical engineer Dr. Shannon Dahl; and molecular biologist Dr. Juliana Blum. Visit humacyte.com for more information.
All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included in this announcement are forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “will”, “anticipate”, “expect”, “believe”, “intend” and “should” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These statements relate to future events or Humacyte’s clinical development programs, reflect management’s current beliefs and expectations and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Humacyte’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different. Except as required by law, Humacyte assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
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Contact:
Media:
Nirav Suchak
ICR, PR for Humacyte
646.277.1257
Nirav.Suchak@icrinc.com