Harpoon Therapeutics announced Haibo Wang as its SVP of business development this week.
Wang, who joins Harpoon from Hummingbird Bioscience, has a background of 15 years in biopharma business development and finance, as well as mergers and acquisitions.
At Hummingbird, Wang was VP of business development. Before that, he served as director of business development at Amgen and helped facilitate the company’s acquisitions of Teneobio and Five Prime Therapeutics. Wang also helped strike clinical collaborations for Amgen’s cancer pipeline, including one with biotech BeiGene.
Wang’s career also includes time spent as a mergers and acquisitions consultant at Deloitte.
“We are pleased to welcome Haibo as senior vice president of business development at Harpoon,” Julie Eastland, president and CEO of Harpoon Therapeutics, said in a statement. “Haibo’s extensive experience and strategic acumen will play a pivotal role in driving our business growth and forging impactful partnerships.”
Harpoon, which focuses on immunotherapies for cancer, is currently developing T cell engagers that trigger a patient’s T cells to target certain antigen-expressing cells, using its platform, Tri-specific T cell Activating Construct (TriTAC).
In March 2022, the pharma decided to discontinue its once-leading candidate for prostate cancer and invest in other therapies.
Its pipeline currently consists of three immunotherapies currently in Phase 1 trials – HPN328 (DLL3) for small cell lung cancer, HPN217 (BCMA) for multiple myeloma, and HPN536 for ovarian cancer and other solid tumors. Harpoon is also doing preclinical work on four other therapies, including one in gastrointestinal cancers.
In April, Harpoon presented preclinical results on both HPN217 and HPN328, saying the latter had “potential for long-term anti-tumor immunity and durable responses in patients.”
“With our Phase 1 trial ongoing and further studies planned, we look forward to continuing our clinical development efforts for these two promising programs,” Luke Walker, Harpoon’s chief medical officer, said in a statement at the time.
At the end of June, the company announced it completed patient enrollment for its Phase 1 dose escalation trial for HPN217, noting that it was “an important step towards potentially bringing this therapy to patients with advanced disease who have progressed after prior treatments.”
Eastland noted that Wang’s appointment to SVP of business development will be a part of the company’s efforts to move HPN217 and HPN328 into development.
“We are confident that [Wang’s] expertise and understanding of targets such as BCMA and DLL3 will contribute significantly to our mission to transform cancer treatment through the power of T cell engagers,” Eastland added.
