Nektar nabs Genentech I-O leader Wei Lin to head up its oncology programs

Nektar Therapeutics has poached Genentech cancer immunotherapy leader Wei Lin, M.D., to head up its oncology program and serve as VP of clinical development as it moves forward with its phase 3 trial with its lead combination therapy.

During his seven years at Genentech, Lin was a global clinical and development leader for immunotherapies in lung, head and neck cancers, where he helped execute proof-of-concept and registration trials while assisting in expanding the pipeline through acquisitions and partnering opportunities.

Before that, he was a site head for Roche’s Asia Pacific oncology development operations in Shanghai and served on the faculty of MD Anderson Cancer Center. At Nektar, Lin will lead development strategy and oversee studies of the company's immuno-oncology candidates and its other programs.

“Dr. Lin has extensive experience leading global development teams and conducting clinical research at leading institutions,” said Mary Tagliaferri, M.D., Nektar’s senior VP of clinical development and chief medical officer, describing his experience as instrumental as the company looks to advance its immuno-oncology pipeline—which includes trials with Bristol-Myers Squibb, Takeda and Pfizer across several different indications, covering lung, kidney, bladder and prostate cancers, as well as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

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Nektar has been playing some defense for its lead candidate, NKTR-214, a CD122-biased agonist being studied in combination with BMS' Opdivo in multiple solid tumors, including melanoma.

At the annual meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) last week, the company unveiled new data demonstrating an overall response rate (ORR) holding at 53%, or 20 from a larger group of 38 evaluable first-line patients with stage 4 melanoma.

At ASCO’s annual meeting this past summer, the combination therapy had posted an ORR of 50% in 28 patients, a drop from previous studies that reported 85% responses, or 11 of 13 patients, in November 2017.

At SITC, Nektar described the results and additional preclinical data as evidence of durable responses in immunotherapy-naïve patients, and pledged to continue its phase 3 trial of NKTR-214 and Opdivo in first-line melanoma, which aims to enroll over 760 patients and is already underway.

Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional details on Nektar's clinical trial pipeline.