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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 28, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  Intellia Therapeutics, Inc., (NASDAQ:NTLA) has named Laura Sepp-Lorenzino, Ph.D., as its new executive vice president and chief scientific officer. Dr. Sepp-Lorenzino brings decades of leadership and research and development experience, and joins Intellia to head its drug research organization. Andrew Schiermeier, Ph.D., executive vice president of development and corporate strategy, will continue to lead the drug development organization.

“We are very pleased that Dr. Sepp-Lorenzino has joined the Intellia team to help us implement our full-spectrum genome editing strategy,” said Intellia President and Chief Executive Officer John Leonard, M.D. “Laura is a highly regarded scientific leader in the biopharmaceutical and biotech industries with an impressive track record in delivering new innovations to the clinic. She has led premier scientific organizations with groundbreaking work in nucleic acid therapies, infectious diseases, rare diseases and cancer. We welcome her deep expertise in genomics, cellular and molecular biology, and preclinical and clinical drug discovery and development.”

Dr. Sepp-Lorenzino’s Professional and Academic Credentials

Dr. Sepp-Lorenzino’s career spans more than three decades in the biopharmaceutical industry and academia. She joins Intellia from Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where she was vice president, head of Nucleic Acid Therapies, Research Leadership, and member of the External Innovation team. At Vertex, she focused on developing an integrated nucleic acid therapies strategy through internal programs and key research collaborators. Prior to working at Vertex, Dr. Sepp-Lorenzino was vice president, entrepreneur-in-residence and head of the Hepatic Infectious Disease Strategic Therapeutic Area at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. During her time at Alnylam, she developed and implemented the company’s hepatic infectious disease strategy, championed extra-hepatic oligonucleotide delivery, helped secure long-term research partnerships and built a strong pipeline of RNA interference (RNAi) drug candidates. Dr. Sepp-Lorenzino spent 14 years at Merck & Co., Inc., where she held numerous leadership and laboratory positions in the drug discovery organization. At Merck Research Laboratories, she became an industry pioneer in advancing RNAi as a novel therapeutic modality.

Dr. Sepp-Lorenzino received her postdoctoral training and was assistant lab member at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute’s prestigious Department of Medicine and Program in Molecular and Cell Biology. She completed both her master’s degree and doctorate in biochemistry at New York University, and received her professional degree in biochemistry from the University of Buenos Aires, School of Pharmacy and Biochemistry.

She holds professional affiliations with key scientific organizations, including the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society, the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy, and the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, as well as a number of professional societies. Dr. Sepp-Lorenzino has given more than 30 lectures since 2011 and published more than 80 journal articles. As a leading mind in the field, she has been a peer reviewer for more than 11 scientific journals, including Nature Biotechnology.

“Having the opportunity to join the Intellia team when the company is on the cusp of entering clinical trials with a CRISPR/Cas9 therapy is exciting,” said Dr. Sepp-Lorenzino. “The explosive growth of genome editing promises new ways to address serious and rare genetic diseases. I look forward to making many contributions to the company’s R&D programs and complementing its talented scientists with my experience.”

About Intellia Therapeutics

Intellia Therapeutics is a leading genome editing company focused on developing proprietary, curative therapeutics using the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Intellia believes the CRISPR/Cas9 technology has the potential to transform medicine by permanently editing disease-associated genes in the human body with a single treatment course, and through improved cell therapies that can treat cancer and immunological diseases by replacing patients’ diseased cells. The combination of deep scientific, technical and clinical development experience, along with its leading intellectual property portfolio, puts Intellia in a unique position to unlock broad therapeutic applications of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology and create a new class of therapeutic products. Learn more about Intellia Therapeutics and CRISPR/Cas9 at intelliatx.com and follow us on Twitter @intelliatweets.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains “forward-looking statements” of Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (“Intellia”) within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, express or implied statements regarding Intellia’s ability to advance and expand the CRISPR/Cas9 technology to develop into human therapeutic products, as well as our intellectual property portfolio; our ability to achieve stable or effective genome editing; our ability to administer our CRISPR/Cas9 product candidates; the potential timing and advancement of our preclinical studies, including continuing non-human primate studies for our ATTR program and other programs, and clinical trials; the timing and potential achievement of milestones to advance our pipeline, including nominating development candidates and filing INDs; the modularity of our platform and our ability to replicate or apply results achieved in our preclinical studies, including those in our ATTR and AML programs, in any future studies, including human clinical trials; the potential development of our proprietary LNP/AAV hybrid delivery system to advance our complex genome editing capabilities; our ability to initiate and conduct successful IND-enabling toxicology studies of NTLA-2001, our lead ATTR development candidate, and subsequently submitting an IND application in 2020 that will be accepted by the regulatory agencies; our growth as a company and the anticipated contribution of the members of our board of directors and our executives to our operations and progress; the impact of our collaborations on our development programs; the potential timing of regulatory filings regarding our development programs; our expectations regarding our uses of capital, expenses, future accumulated deficit and other financial results during the first quarter of 2019; and our ability to fund operations into the first half of 2021. 

Any forward-looking statements in this press release are based on management’s current expectations and beliefs of future events, and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from those set forth in or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: risks related to Intellia’s ability to protect and maintain our intellectual property position; risks related to Intellia’s relationship with third parties, including our licensors; risks related to the ability of our licensors to protect and maintain their intellectual property position; uncertainties related to the initiation and conduct of studies and other development requirements for our product candidates; the risk that any one or more of Intellia’s product candidates will not be successfully developed and commercialized; the risk that the results of preclinical studies will not be predictive of future results in connection with future studies; and the risk that Intellia’s collaborations with Novartis or Regeneron or its other  collaborations will not continue or will not be successful. For a discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties, and other important factors, any of which could cause Intellia’s actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see the section entitled “Risk Factors” in Intellia’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K as well as discussions of potential risks, uncertainties, and other important factors in Intellia’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All information in this press release is as of the date of the release, and Intellia undertakes no duty to update this information unless required by law.

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Source: Intellia Therapeutics, Inc.