ArsenalBio, a privately held programmable cell therapy company, announced that W. Nicholas Haining, BM, BCh, is to be appointed as Chief Scientific Officer, where he will lead the company’s multi-disciplinary research and early product development efforts, leveraging more than 20 years of leadership and experience in academic medicine and biopharma.

“ArsenalBio has laid out a vision and a roadmap for engineering the fate and function of T cells to help cure cancer. It will be a privilege to be part of the mission of transforming the best science into effective therapies for patients who need them most.”

“It has been an honor to work closely with Nick since we founded ArsenalBio, and I am delighted to partner with him as our new CSO and execute along with our talented leadership team,” said Ken Drazan, MD, ArsenalBio’s co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer (CEO). “Nick brings unparalleled expertise from his research in immuno-oncology and industry experience in precision oncology that adds valuable insights and depth to our team as we advance our internal and partnership pipeline.”

“I’m tremendously excited to be joining ArsenalBio as CSO,” said Dr. Haining. “ArsenalBio has laid out a vision and a roadmap for engineering the fate and function of T cells to help cure cancer. It will be a privilege to be part of the mission of transforming the best science into effective therapies for patients who need them most.”

Dr. W. Nicholas Haining BM, BCh, is a physician-scientist and one of the co-founders of ArsenalBio. Most recently he was the Vice President of Discovery Oncology and Immunology at Merck Research Laboratories. Dr. Haining received his undergraduate and medical degree from Oxford University and completed his medical training in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital, Boston and subsequently in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. As an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, his lab defined some of the key transcriptional and epigenetic regulators of T cell exhaustion and used in vivo genetic screens to identify immune vulnerabilities of cancer cells in mouse models. He also led a multi-disciplinary organization at Merck that focused on using innovative approaches to identify new therapeutic strategies for cancer and immunological disease.