New Head of Oncology for Alentis

BASEL, Switzerland — (01 November 2021) Alentis Therapeutics, the Swiss biotech developing breakthrough treatments for fibrotic diseases, announced today that Alberto Toso has joined the team as Head of Oncology, effective this month.

“I‘m truly excited to continue my fight against cancer at Alentis. I believe the team has the potential to deliver transformative drugs that cancer patients need so urgently.”

Welcoming Mr. Toso to the company, Dr. Roberto Iacone, CEO of Alentis said, “Alberto is a tremendous addition to our team with innovative leadership, very deep expertise in Oncology and unwavering commitment to fight cancer.”

Alberto brings more than six years of industrial drug development experience in Immune Oncology (IO) and Targeted therapy. He was most recently a department head in the molecular targeted therapy group, Oncology at Roche, Basel, Switzerland. In this role, he was responsible for leading different projects for IO at different stages of development. Alberto brings expertise in developing new drugs as well as a rationalized approach for combination strategies related to small and large molecules in Oncology.

During his post doc at the Institute of Oncology Research in Bellinzona, Switzerland, he developed and characterized mouse models for prostate cancer. His works in Oncology have been published in such top scientific Journals as, Nature, Nature Communications and Cell Reports.

Alberto holds a PhD in Biochemistry from ETH in Zurich, Switzerland.

Alentis’ unique therapeutic approach focuses on the inhibition of Claudin-1 outside the tight junction and its downstream signalling acting on cell fate and plasticity. Alentis’ lead molecules ALE.F02 and ALE.C04 are highly selective anti-Claudin-1 mAb that recognize pathological overexpressed and conformation-dependent Claudin-1 epitopes in fibrotic disease and cancer. In preclinical studies, the lead molecule ALE.F02 modulates the function of non-junctional Claudin-1, preventing, and possibly reversing, the growth of fibrotic tissue within the liver and kidney by changing the plasticity of key cell types mediating fibrosis. Safety studies in non-human primates have supported translatability of the approach into patients. Alentis expects to initiate its first clinical trial in Q4 2021.

About Alentis Therapeutics

Alentis Therapeutics is a Swiss-based biotech that focuses on developing breakthrough treatments for fibrotic diseases. The company was founded in 2019 based on ground-breaking research in the laboratory of Prof. Thomas Baumert MD at the University of Strasbourg and the French National Institute of Health (Inserm).

The Company’s lead candidates are monoclonal antibodies that are highly selective for Claudin-1, a novel, previously unexploited target with a unique mechanism of action that plays a key role in the pathology of liver fibrosis and fibrosis-driven cancers. Alentis has programs exploring the potential of Claudin-1 inhibition in the treatment of fibrosis including liver, kidney & lung. These represent very large and expanding markets with high unmet medical need. Unlike current therapies in fibrosis, which mostly address the disease indirectly, Alentis’ pioneering approach has the potential to directly modify and reverse the course of disease progression.

Alentis is headquartered in Basel’s pharma-biotech hub in Switzerland with a subsidiary for R&D in Strasbourg, France.

For more information, visit https://alentis.ch/

Contacts

Nathalie Graf-Tschupp
Office Manager
info@alentis.ch