PDC*line Pharma welcomes Dr Channa Debruyne to its management team as medical director
Liège, Belgium, and Grenoble, France, September 9, 2019 – PDC*line Pharma, a clinical stage biotech company developing a new class of potent and scalable active immunotherapies for cancers, announces today that Dr Channa Debruyne joined the company in August as medical director, to lead the clinical research team.
A seasoned expert in clinical and scientific research into chemotherapeutic products and cancer vaccines, Dr Channa Debruyne will take over the management of the ongoing trial in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The objectives of the phase I/II study (PDC-LUNG101) are to assess safety, tolerability, immunogenicity and preliminary clinical activity of the drug candidate, PDC*lung01, associated or not with anti-PD-1 treatment in NSCLC. A total of 66 evaluable HLA-A*02:01 positive NSCLC patients will be included in the study at three clinical centers in Belgium and six sites in France. PDC*line Pharma obtained authorizations to start the trial in both countries in Q2, 2019.
“We are very pleased to welcome Dr Channa Debruyne, who will play a key role in the development of PDC*line Pharma’s clinical plan. She has the experience and expertise we are looking for to strengthen our management team,” said Eric Halioua, president & CEO at PDC*line Pharma. “With more than 25 years international experience in clinical and scientific research in chemotherapeutic products and cancer vaccines, she will lead the ongoing phase I/II trial with our cancer vaccine candidate (PDC*lung01) for NSCLC.”
Dr Channa Debruyne said: “It is with great pleasure that I join PDC*line Pharma. I look forward to working in close collaboration with the PDC*line Pharma management team to bring this cancer vaccine with a breakthrough technology to patients.”
Dr Channa Debruyne MD is a Belgian board-certified medical doctor and specialist in pharmaceutical medicine. She started her career at the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) as medical advisor and monitor for the Lung and the Head and Neck Cancer Collaborative group. From 1994 until 2002, she supported the collaborative groups in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of large phase II and phase III international clinical trials (including some registration trials). In addition, she was involved in the coordination, training and monitoring of Clinical Research Associates. She then moved to the UK and worked at the European Medical Agency (EMA) as scientific evaluator in the orphan drug sector for almost five years. There, she was involved in validating, assessing and presenting applications to the Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products (COMP). In 2007, she joined the pharmaceutical company GSK Vaccines to lead the MAGE-A3 development and clinical teams for the phase III trial in NSCLC (MAGRIT study), as well as the phase III melanoma study (DERMA). In 2017, she joined the University Hospital in Leuven as director of the Clinical Trial Center.
