Rubius Therapeutics (RUBY) Appoints Noubar Afeyan as Board Chair

Rubius Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: RUBY) today announced the appointment of Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., co-founder and member of the board of directors of Rubius Therapeutics and chief executive officer of Flagship Pioneering, as chairman of its board of directors. David Epstein who has served as chairman since 2017 will remain a member of the board.

“Since we founded Rubius Therapeutics in FlagshipLabs in 2014, my conviction in the transformative potential of the RED PLATFORM to benefit patients has significantly grown,” said Dr. Afeyan. “With the first-in-human monotherapy clinical results for RTX-240, our lead oncology candidate, we have begun to validate our broad immune stimulation modality and the RED PLATFORM for the treatment of cancer. Under Pablo’s leadership, the Rubius team has established preclinical proof of concept for our autoimmune approach in type 1 diabetes with data from two rigorous preclinical models. Given the programmable nature of the platform, I expect we will enable additional therapeutics modalities to modulate the immune system. I look forward to helping the team build upon the strong foundation that has been created.”

Dr. Afeyan is founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, a company that conceives, creates, resources and develops first-in-category bioplatform companies to transform human health and sustainability. He is also co-founder and chairman of Moderna, the pioneering company of mRNA medicines which developed and supplied novel vaccine technology to address the global COVID-19 pandemic. During his 35-year career as inventor, entrepreneur and CEO, he has co-founded and developed over 70 life science and technology startups. Currently, he sits on several private and public company boards, including Moderna, Omega Therapeutics, Generate Biomedicines, Rubius Therapeutics and Tessera Therapeutics.

“Noubar’s experience in building bioplatform companies will be instrumental as we embark on our next phase of growth with several clinical milestones within the next 12 months and continue our strong pace of innovation to elucidate the full potential of the RED PLATFORM over the next several years,” said Pablo J. Cagnoni, M.D., president and chief executive officer. “We are grateful for David’s guidance and support for the past five years, which has been invaluable in building a strong foundation for Rubius. We look forward to continuing to leverage his deep pharmaceutical and biotechnology experience as a member of our board of directors.”

“Since I joined the Rubius board of directors as chairman, we have made remarkable progress in advancing an entirely new class of medicines to treat patients with limited therapeutic options,” said Mr. Epstein. “From building our own manufacturing capabilities to advancing a broad clinical pipeline of cancer therapeutics and establishing preclinical proof of concept in type 1 diabetes, we are only just beginning to realize the full power and potential of the RED PLATFORM.”

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