Anchiano Therapeutics Ltd. (Nasdaq: ANCN) (“Anchiano”) recently announced that Mr. Stan Polovets has been elected chairman of its board of directors.
Mr. Polovets joined the board of Anchiano in April 2020. He previously served as CEO of AAR, a private equity firm with a global energy portfolio valued in excess of $25 billion, and represented TNK in its merger with BP to form one of the world’s largest oil companies and in the eventual sale of the merged company TNK-BP for $55 billion. A graduate of Stanford Graduate School of Business, Mr. Polovets also held management, advisory, M&A and various financial positions at ExxonMobil, KPMG, EY and The RAND Corporation.
“We warmly welcome Stan as our new Chairman,” said Frank G. Haluska, M.D., Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Anchiano. “In the short time he has been on the board, Stan has already made a tremendous impact on the Company. Stan brings a record of deep management, advisory, and strong M&A successes to the company, in addition to his extensive board experience. We look forward to his leadership.”
Stan Polovets said: “I am excited to lead this very committed group and have been impressed by the strength and depth of Anchiano’s organization and the potential of its unique assets. I look forward to supporting the Company’s work to develop and commercialize our existing pan-mutant-RAS and PDE10/b-catenin programs, and ultimately additional therapies, in cancer.”
Anchiano will be focusing its efforts to move the pan-RAS inhibitors toward the clinic. Oncogenic mutations in the RAS family of genes (KRAS, HRAS, and NRAS) which are present in approximately 30% of all cancers. Successful development of its pan-RAS-targeted therapy, with activity regardless of RAS isoform or mutation, has the potential for significant clinical impact across a variety of tumor types including lung, colorectal, pancreatic, melanoma and bladder cancer, and represents a substantial commercial opportunity.
Mr. Polovets brings extensive board experience to Anchiano. Prior to joining its board, Mr. Polovets served as lead non-executive director of Clal Industries and of L1 Energy, lead independent director at Taavura and Nesher, member of the Board of Overseers at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Chairman for Eastern Europe at Edelman, and director at oil companies Slavneft and TNK-BP. He currently serves as a member of the Board of Overseers of New York University (NYU) Tandon School of Engineering, NYU President’s Global Council, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mr. Polovets is a co-founder and chairman of The Genesis Prize Foundation, a prominent international philanthropic group, which recently contributed $1 million in grants to health care organizations, universities, and NGOs impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. These grants include funding support for research to mitigate medical complications of coronavirus by the medical staff at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and a competition for students at New York University Tandon School of Engineering to solve physical challenges presented by COVID-19.
About Anchiano
Anchiano is a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery, development, and commercialization of novel targeted therapies to treat cancer in areas of significant clinical need located in Cambridge, MA. The Company is developing small-molecule pan-mutant-RAS inhibitors and inhibitors of PDE10 and the b-catenin pathway.
For more information on the Company, visit www.anchiano.com.
Source: GLOBE NEWSWIRE
