Hummingbird Bioscience Announces Key Leadership Appointments

Kon Yew Kwek, BM BCh, DPhil, appointed Chief Medical Officer

Lisa Ooi, PhD, appointed Chief Operating Officer

SAN FRANCISCO and SINGAPORE, July 29, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hummingbird Bioscience, a precision biotherapeutics company discovering and developing transformative biologics for hard-to-treat diseases, today announced the internal appointments of Kon Yew Kwek, BM BCh, DPhil, and Lisa Ooi, PhD, as Chief Medical Officer and Chief Operating Officer, respectively.

Dr. Kwek is promoted to Chief Medical Officer, from Senior Vice President of Clinical Development. Dr. Kwek joined the company in 2022 and brings two decades of experience from Akeso Biopharma, Eli Lilly and IQVIA and clinical practice. Dr. Kwek will lead the company’s clinical development from Singapore.

“Our clinical-stage assets, HMBD-001 and HMBD-002, are in clinical trials in the U.S., Australia, and Singapore. And now, we are accelerating the development of these therapies by expanding our trial sites to more countries and focusing on selected tumor types, which we believe may benefit from these therapies. I look forward to the next milestones in our clinical programs and progressing more of our pre-clinical pipeline to the clinic,” said Dr. Kwek.

Dr. Ooi is promoted to Chief Operating Officer, from Senior Vice President of Strategy. Dr. Ooi joined the company in 2022 and brings two decades of experience from Singapore’s government agencies and biopharma industry, including: Economic Development Board, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), ASLAN Pharmaceuticals and Bayer.

“I am delighted to lead the team’s strategy towards its next phase of growth, building upon our strong scientific capabilities and commitment to deeply understanding tumor biology. With our proprietary antibody and dual-payload ADC platform technologies, I look forward to what we will achieve in the coming year,” said Dr. Ooi.

About Hummingbird Bioscience

Hummingbird Bioscience is a precision biotherapeutics company discovering and developing transformative biologics for hard-to-treat diseases. To address key challenges with current antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) therapies, Hummingbird Bioscience is building a pipeline of next-generation ADCs using its proprietary antibody discovery and linker/payload platforms. The company has a pipeline of ADCs in preclinical development and other novel biologics including monoclonal antibodies, HMBD-001 (anti-HER3 mAb) and HMBD-002 (anti-VISTA mAb) in Phase I and a recently out-licensed ADC (HMBD-501) that will enter the clinic this year. The Hummingbird Bioscience approach combines computational and systems biology with wet lab drug discovery in a multi-disciplinary, collaborative environment spanning initial discovery through clinical development. The company harnesses this integrated approach across target identification and patient selection, enabling the team to increase the efficiency of translating novel scientific insights while reducing the inherent risk in drug discovery and development. At Hummingbird Bioscience, the commitment to rigorous science, teamwork, and intellectual integrity underpins our passion to accelerate the journey of new drugs from concept to clinic.

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