Asgard Therapeutics strengthens its Board of Directors and Advisory Board with leading experts in drug development and cancer immunotherapy

• Highly experienced biopharma executive Dr Cristina Csimma joins Asgard's Board of Directors, while esteemed immunologists Prof Ignacio Melero and Prof Brian Brown join Advisory Board
• Appointments strengthen Asgard's team as it progresses IND-enabling studies for its lead asset AT-108 – a first-in-class, off-the-shelf cell reprogramming therapy that leads to personalized and potent anti-cancer immune responses

LUND, Sweden, June 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Asgard Therapeutics, a privately held biotech company pioneering in vivo direct cell reprogramming for cancer immunotherapy, today announces the appointments of Dr Cristina Csimma as an independent member of its Board of Directors, and Prof Ignacio Melero and Prof Brian Brown to its Clinical and Scientific Advisory Board. The appointments mark a significant step on Asgard's transition to a drug development company, as it advances its lead asset AT-108 towards clinical trials.

Cristiana Pires, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Asgard Therapeutics, said: "Asgard's ability to attract such highly renowned figures as Cristina, Ignacio and Brian, demonstrates the huge potential of our technology and shows how fast the company is developing. Following the appointment of Shane Olwill as Chief Development Officer earlier this year, Asgard is now well positioned to advance its lead asset AT-108 towards clinical trials."

With decades of experience in global drug development, new company formation, value creation and strategic guidance, Dr Cristina Csimma brings significant expertise in venture capital and the US biotech capital market to Asgard's Board of Directors. Cristina also holds board director positions at Syncona Limited (a FTSE 250 company), and New York Blood Center Ventures.

Dr Cristina Csimma, incoming independent Board of Directors member, said: "Asgard's unique approach, using in vivo direct cell reprogramming as a cancer immunotherapy, is a truly exciting technology. I'm delighted to be joining the company's Board of Directors and contribute to bringing its therapeutic potential to patients."

Prof Ignacio Melero is a leading expert in intra-tumoral immunotherapies who has served as Principal Researcher in over 65 clinical trials of cancer immunotherapies, including industry-sponsored studies. He co-chairs the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the Clínica Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, where he is a full professor. In 2023 he was appointed as Kidani Professor of Cancer Immuno-Therapeutics at the University of Oxford. One of Prof Melero's key research areas is bench-to-bedside and vice versa translational research, including biomarker discovery and validation, as well as actionable targets and mechanisms. An important focus of his recent work has been pioneering studies on cross-priming and the cross-presentation of tumor antigens, which is a critical functional property of the cell subset induced by AT-108.

Prof Ignacio Melero, incoming Clinical Advisory Board member, said: "Asgard's elegant strategy of using in vivo cell reprogramming to provoke a personalized, but off-the-shelf immunotherapy is both highly original and backed by strong preclinical data. I look forward to supporting the team on their mission of bringing it to patients."

Prof Brian Brown is an expert in cancer immunology and gene delivery, including both viral and non-viral mediated approaches. He has invented several widely used genomics and gene therapy technologies, including microRNA-based targeting, small RNA sequencing adapters, bispecific antibody-targeted nanoparticles, and Perturb-map spatial functional genomics. His lab has identified genes and molecular programs important for the control of tumor microenvironment composition and immunotherapy resistance, and he has made important contributions to understanding the body's immune response to gene therapy. He is Director of the Icahn Genomics Institute and Vice Chair of the Department of Immunology at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.

Prof Brian Brown, incoming Scientific Advisory Board member, said: "Asgard's immunotherapy will be a game-changer in the fight against cancer. This is a first-in-class approach that has the potential to address a key challenge of cancer immunotherapy that other treatments have not been able to overcome. I am very excited to be supporting and advising the company as it progresses AT-108 toward clinical development, as well as its broader pipeline of in vivo engineering approaches."

The appointments come three months after Asgard welcomed experienced immunology drug development specialist Shane Olwill as Chief Development Officer.

Asgard is currently preparing for clinical trials of AT-108 by progressing IND-enabling studies and CMC development. Key proof-of-concept data on AT-108 were published last September in the high-impact, peer-reviewed journal Science^[1].

Notes to Editors

About Asgard Therapeutics

Asgard Therapeutics is a privately held biotech company pioneering in vivo direct cell reprogramming for cancer immunotherapy. The company builds on ground-breaking and proprietary reprogramming technologies to develop gene therapy products designed to set in motion efficient and personalized immune responses. Backed by top investors, Asgard Therapeutics aims to establish a pipeline of off-the shelf cancer immunotherapies that trigger personalized anti-cancer immune responses for the benefit of cancer patients in need. For more information, please visit: www.asgardthx.com     

About AT-108

AT-108 is a first-in-class, off-the-shelf gene therapy that directly reprograms tumor cells into a rare subset of dendritic cells critical for mounting efficient cytotoxic T cell responses, cDC1 cells (conventional dendritic cells type 1). Reprogramming forces the tumor cells to present their tumor antigens, ultimately leading to a personalized anti-tumor immune response. It is based on a replication-deficient adenoviral vector that delivers three proprietary reprogramming factors into tumor cells, rewiring their gene expression signatures and thus "programming" them to become antigen-presenting cDC1-like cells.

^[1] http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn9083