10 January 2019 - - The board of directors of US-based biotechnology company Agilvax, Inc. have elected Dr. David T. Hung as a director, the company said.

Hung joins the board with more than 25 years of leadership and management experience in the life sciences industry.

Previously, he was the founder, president, and chief executive officer of Medivation from 2004 through 2016 when it was acquired by Pfizer for approximately USD 14bn.

Medivation developed Xtandi for the treatment of metastatic and non-metastatic prostate cancer from invention to FDA approval in seven years, one of the fastest development times in biopharmaceutical history.

In 2016, Xtandi had become the world's leading prostate cancer therapy, with nearly USD 2.5bn in annual revenue.

At Medivation, Hung built a pipeline of cancer therapies addressing significant unmet needs including a potentially best-in-class poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor (talazoparib) which was recently approved for germline BRCA-mutated, HER2-negative, locally advanced and/or metastatic breast cancer.

From April 2017 to February 2018, Dr. Hung was chief executive officer and a director of Axovant Sciences, Inc.

He received an M.D. alpha omega alpha from the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, and an A.B. summa cum laude in Biology from Harvard College.

Agilvax discovers and develops targeted antibody-based therapeutics for the treatment of various cancers.

The company's lead product, AX09, produces antibodies that specifically inhibit the function of xCT, a protein that is over expressed on many different tumor types including breast cancer, hepatocellular cancer, lung cancer, and pancreatic cancer.

Agilvax is developing AX09 initially for the treatment of metastatic triple negative breast cancer.