Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals plc announced the appointment of Dr. Koen van Besien as Medical Director. Dr. van Besien is Chief of the Division of Hematology and head of the Wesley Center for Immunotherapy at University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center, a cellular therapy facility that generates CAR-T and CAR-NK among other cell therapies. He has been associated with the Company as a scientific adviser from its founding and, now that the Company is moving close to clinical trials, company is delighted that he is able to step up to a position where he will be actively engaged in refining the protocol for the trials and its implementation.

Dr. van Besien is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Leukemia and Lymphoma and a member of the editorial boards of several journals including Bone Marrow Transplantation and Biology of Bloodand Marrow Transplantation. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers. Most recently, Dr. van Besien was Director of the Stem Cell Transplant Program at New York Presbyterian Hospital and a professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Dr. van Besien graduated from Medical School at the University of Leuven, Belgium and holds a PhD from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He completed his hematology/oncology fellowship at Indiana University and in Bruges, Belgium. Dr. van Besien has served on the faculty of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

He also directed transplant programs at the University of Illinois for four years and at the University of Chicago for a decade.