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Nektar Appoints Dr. Brian Kotzin as Interim Chief Medical Officer and Head of Development
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 5, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ: NKTR) announced today that it has appointed Brian Kotzin, MD as Interim Chief Medical
About this update from Nektar Therapeutics
[{"type":"text","content":"SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 5, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ: NKTR) announced today that it has appointed Brian Kotzin, MD as Interim Chief Medical Officer, Head of Development effective immediately. Since 2017, Dr. Kotzin has served as Senior Vice President, Clinical Development and Head of Immunology at Nektar. Wei Lin will be leaving the company to pursue another opportunity.\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \n\"We are pleased that Dr. Kotzin will take on this key role on our development team at Nektar,\" said Jonathan Zalevsky, Chief R&D Officer of Nektar Therapeutics. \"Since he joined Nektar in 2017, Dr. Kotzin has demonstrated strong leadership and strategic insight. He has extensive development experience and over 30 years of expertise in immunology and his strategic guidance will be invaluable to Nektar as we continue to execute on development activities for our immune-oncology and immunology pipeline.\"\nBrian Kotzin, MD added, \"I am honored to expand my role at Nektar and work alongside Dr. Zalevsky. This is an exciting time for the company with multiple registrational studies underway in a range of tumor types for BEMPEG, a broadening clinical program for NKTR-358 in a number of auto-immune disorders, and an emerging opportunity for NKTR-255 in both hematological malignancies and solid tumors.\"\nWhile at Nektar, Dr. Kotzin has spearheaded the NKTR-358 development program partnered with Eli Lilly & Co. and he has also served as a development program lead for early development of NKTR-255 and NKTR-262. Dr. Kotzin was previously at Amgen for 11 years, where he served as Vice President, Global Clinical Development and Head of the Inflammation Therapeutic area directing the global development efforts for Amgen product candidates, including all immunology programs. During his tenure at Amgen, he also served as Vice President of Translational Sciences and Head of Medical Sciences/Early Development, where he was responsible for the planning and execution of early-phase clinical development in all therapeutic areas as well as the discovery and implementation of pharmacodynamic biomarkers and clinical immunology support for clinical studies. Prior to joining Amgen, Dr. Kotzin served as Head of Clinical Immunology in the Department of Medicine and as director of the Autoimmunity Center of Excellence at the University of Col...