Xencor Inc (NASDAQ: XNCR), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing engineered monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of autoimmune diseases, asthma and allergic diseases and cancer, announced yesterday that it has named Ellen G Feigal MD as its new director.

Dr Feigal is presently a partner at NDA Partners. She is also adjunct faculty at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University, where she teaches FDA drug law and medical research ethics and law. She was formerly senior vice president of research and development at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine; executive medical director, global development, at Amgen; and chief medical officer at Insys Therapeutics. She was a founding director of the American Course on Drug Development and Regulatory Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Prior to UCSF, she was director of medical devices and imaging at the Critical Path Institute and vice president of clinical sciences at the Translational Genomics Research Institute. From 1992 to 2004, she held leadership roles at the National Cancer Institute, where she directed the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis after serving as deputy director of the division and as a senior investigator in the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program.

Bassil Dahiyat, PhD, president and chief executive officer at Xencor, said, 'Dr Feigal's exceptional career as an oncologist in clinical development spans 30 years across leadership roles in industry, academia, public service and non-profits, and she has accrued a unique perspective from this wealth of experience. We are excited to benefit from her contributions to the board as we advance our pipeline of XmAb antibodies in autoimmune disease and oncology, grow our pipeline with novel bispecific antibodies and continue to expand the potential of our bispecific antibody technologies.'