Zymeworks Inc. announced the appointment of Dr. Alessandra Cesano to its board of directors effective February 8, 2024. Dr. Cesano succeeds Dr. Kenneth Hillan, who will step down effective from February 8, 2024 after a successful 7-year tenure as a director of Zymeworks. Dr. Cesano currently serves as a director at Puma Biotechnology and Summit Therapeutics.

Since July 2019, she has served as the Chief Medical Officer of ESSA Pharmaceuticals, a pharmaceutical company developing therapies for the treatment of prostate cancer. Prior to joining ESSA, Dr. Cesano was the Chief Medical Officer of NanoString Technologies Inc. from July 2015 to July 2019, where she focused on development of translational and diagnostic multi-plexed assays for the characterization and measurement of mechanisms of immune response and resistance. Dr. Cesano has also held management positions at Amgen Inc., Biogen Inc. (formerly Biogen Idec) and SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, where she helped to advance various oncology drugs through late-stage development and FDA approval.

She currently serves as associate editor for the Biomarker section of the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancerand co-chair of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) regulatory committee. She has been an author on more than 140 publications. Dr. Cesano received an M.D. summa cum laude, a board certification in oncology and a Ph.D. in tumor immunology from the University of Turin, Italy.

Dr. Cesano was also appointed to serve as a member of the research and development committee and nominating and corporate governance committee of the board of directors. In addition, Mr. Miller was appointed as the chair of the nominating and corporate governance committee.