CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 12, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mersana Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRSN), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing a pipeline of antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) based on its Dolaflexin® and other proprietary platforms, today announced that David A. Spellman has joined the company as Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Spellman brings two decades of strategic and operational finance experience in fast growing companies.
“I am pleased to welcome David to the Mersana team at this critical time in the company’s evolution as we advance our ADC clinical oncology programs and get closer to reaching patients with our medicines,” said Anna Protopapas, President and CEO, Mersana Therapeutics. “David’s proven leadership and experience in building global finance organizations to support aggressive growth will be critical as Mersana progresses our proof of concept clinical studies and scales up the organization for registration enabling studies.”
Mr. Spellman joins Mersana from Vertex where he has spent the past 12 years in roles of increasing responsibility across all aspects of their finance function. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Corporate, Commercial and International Finance responsible for global financial planning across the company. Prior to this role, Mr. Spellman spent two years in London as Vice President of International Finance and Accounting responsible for building the financial infrastructure to support Vertex’s rapid international expansion. In this role Mr. Spellman helped establish Vertex’s international headquarters, business operations and integrated finance teams in over a dozen countries and gain market access for Kalydeco® and Orkambi®. Prior to assuming the International Finance role, Mr. Spellman was Vice President of Accounting responsible for all aspects of global accounting and reporting for Vertex. Earlier in his career at Vertex, he was also instrumental in developing the financial tools to support the company’s business development and portfolio management decisions. Mr. Spellman also served in various financial management positions at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, most notably as a member of the VELCADE® commercial launch team, where he coordinated budgets and launch activities.
“I look forward to becoming part of Mersana’s leadership team at this exciting time and helping the team deliver on its vision for developing medicines for cancer patients,” said David A. Spellman. “I am impressed with the depth of research and development productivity that Mersana has achieved in such a short period of time and I am excited about the potential to advance these scientific breakthroughs.”
About Mersana TherapeuticsMersana Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company using its differentiated and proprietary ADC platforms to develop highly targeted drugs with increased tolerability and expanded opportunities to deliver meaningful clinical benefit to patients. Mersana’s lead product candidate, XMT-1522, is in Phase 1 clinical trials in patients with advanced tumors expressing HER2, including breast cancer, non-small-cell-lung-cancer (NSCLC) and gastric cancer patients. The Company’s second product candidate, XMT-1536, is in Phase 1 clinical trials in patients with tumors expressing NaPi2b, including ovarian cancer, NSCLC and other cancers. In addition, multiple partners are using Mersana’s platform to advance their ADC pipelines.
