GAITHERSBURG, Md., May 16, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Altimmune, Inc. (Nasdaq:ALT), a clinical-stage immunotherapeutics company, today announced the promotion of Sybil Tasker, M.D., FACP, FIDSA, to the position of Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Tasker joined the company in April 2016 as Senior Vice President, Clinical Research and Development, with responsibility for overseeing Altimmune’s clinical research and development programs.
Bill Enright, President and Chief Executive Officer of Altimmune, stated, “Dr. Tasker has played a critical role in the advancement of our immunotherapeutic and vaccine product candidates, and we are delighted to recognize her contributions to our success during the past year. Her expertise in the treatment of infectious diseases and the clinical evaluation of novel vaccine candidates will be invaluable as we continue our NasoVAX™ influenza vaccine, NasoShield™ and Sparvax-L™ anthrax vaccines and HepTcell™ chronic hepatitis B immunotherapeutic development programs and advance our Oncosyn™ cancer immunotherapeutics into human clinical studies.”
Before joining Altimmune, Dr. Tasker was Senior Director of Clinical Development at Genocea Biosciences where she led the GEN-003 therapeutic vaccine program. Previously, Dr. Tasker had positions of increasing responsibility in infectious-disease product development strategy at two global CROs and was the senior U.S. Navy physician and technical advisor to the Department of Defense on a wide variety of infectious-disease policy issues, including HIV, tropical disease, vaccination, infection control, bioterrorism and pandemic preparedness. Dr. Tasker is board-certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases and received an A.B. in biochemistry from Princeton University, a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University and an M.D. from Columbia University.
About Altimmune
Altimmune is a clinical-stage immunotherapeutics company focused on the development of products to stimulate robust and durable immune responses for the prevention and treatment of disease and on the development of two next-generation anthrax vaccines that are intended to improve protection and safety while having favorable dosage and storage requirements compared to other anthrax vaccines. The company has two proprietary platform technologies, RespirVec and Densigen, each of which has been shown to activate the immune system in distinctly different ways than traditional vaccines.