What Happened?
Cambridge, MA-based Avak Kahvejian as Chief Executive Officer
About the Company
Rubius Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company pioneering a new era of cellular medicines. Our proprietary RED PLATFORM™ was designed to genetically engineer and culture Red Cell Therapeutics™ that are selective, potent and ready to-use cellular therapies for the potential treatment of several diseases across multiple therapeutic areas. Our initial focus is to advance RCT™ product candidates for the treatment cancer and autoimmune diseases by leveraging two distinct therapeutic modalities — potent cell-cell interaction and tolerance induction. We are currently enrolling patients in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of RTX-240; the trial has two Phase 1 arms enrolling adult patients with advanced solid tumors: an ongoing monotherapy dose escalation arm in adults with relapsed/refractory or locally advanced solid tumors and a combination therapy dose escalation arm with pembrolizumab in adults with relapsed/refractory or locally advanced solid tumors. In April 2022, the combination arm with pembrolizumab was expanded to focus on non-small cell lung cancer and renal cell carcinoma patients. We are also enrolling patients in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of RTX-224 for the treatment of patients with certain advanced solid tumors, including non-small cell lung cancer, cutaneous melanoma, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, urothelial (bladder) carcinoma and triple-negative breast cancer.
About the Person
Avak Kahvejian joined Flagship Ventures in 2011 as a Partner in VentureLabsTM, bringing nearly 7 years of operational experience in the biomedical tools space. Prior to Flagship, Avak was at Helicos BioSciences, a Flagship VentureLabsTM company which developed and commercialized the worlds first single molecule sequencing technology. At Helicos since 2004, Avak held various business development, product management, marketing and sales roles. Most recently, as Vice President, Business Development for Helicos, he focused on establishing strategic partnerships in the areas of high-throughput sequencing and molecular diagnostics, leveraging the technologys unique capabilities.
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