Rubius Therapeutics Appoints Natalie Holles to its Board of Directors and Greg Whitehead as Senior Vice President and Chief Quality Officer


CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 25, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rubius Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq:RUBY), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that is generating red blood cells and bioengineering them into an entirely new class of cellular medicines, today announced the appointment of Natalie Holles, president and chief operating officer of Audentes Therapeutics, as a member of the company’s board of directors and Greg Whitehead as senior vice president and chief quality officer. Rubius further announced that Roger Pomerantz, M.D., who has served as a board member since Rubius’ founding, has decided not to stand for reelection with his board membership ending by June 2019.

“It takes great people to build a great company, and I could not be more thrilled to welcome Natalie and Greg to the Rubius team,” said Pablo J. Cagnoni, M.D., president and chief executive officer of Rubius. “With Rubius on the cusp of treating the first phenylketonuria patients with RTX-134, Natalie’s extensive background in company-building, corporate development, strategic planning and commercial readiness, along with Greg’s expertise in leading quality teams from early manufacturing processes to regulatory interactions and global commercialization will be invaluable to us as we enter the clinic and plan for the future. On behalf of Rubius, I would like to thank Roger for his many contributions towards our success since the company’s founding. His strategic counsel has helped advance our company to where we are today.”  

Natalie Holles, Member, Board of Directors
Natalie has more than 20 years of experience in corporate development, strategic planning and operations leadership, with a particular focus on orphan diseases. She is currently president and chief operating officer of Audentes Therapeutics, Inc. Prior to joining Audentes, Natalie served as senior vice president, corporate development at Hyperion Therapeutics, Inc (acquired by Horizon Pharma in 2015). Earlier in her career, Natalie served as vice president, business development at KAI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (acquired by Amgen in 2012) and held corporate development and commercial roles at InterMune, Inc. (acquired by Roche in 2014) and Genentech, Inc. Natalie holds an M.A. in molecular, cellular and developmental biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellow, and an A.B. in human biology from Stanford University.

Greg Whitehead, Senior Vice President and Chief Quality Officer
Greg brings more than 25 years of quality related experience to Rubius. He joins the company from bluebird bio, Inc., where he most recently served as vice president, quality. During the four years he spent at the company, Greg oversaw a 10-fold expansion of the quality unit to support multiple gene therapy clinical trials and to prepare for commercial production in the U.S. and Europe. Under his leadership, he established a culture of quality dedicated to patient safety and data integrity. Prior to bluebird bio, Greg spent 10 years at Dendreon Pharmaceuticals, LLC, most recently serving as director, corporate quality. While there, he established the corporate quality vision and mission and the company’s strategic roadmap for continuous improvement in quality systems. Earlier, Greg was a supervisor of bioanalytic chemistry at BioPort Corporation in Michigan and lead medical technologist in the toxicology testing center at Sparrow Health System in Michigan. Greg received his B.S. in forensic science from Michigan State University.

About Rubius Therapeutics
Rubius Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a new class of medicines called Red Cell Therapeutics™. The Company’s proprietary RED PLATFORM® was designed to genetically engineer and culture Red Cell Therapeutics™ that are selective, potent and off-the-shelf allogeneic cellular therapies for the potential treatment of several diseases across multiple therapeutic areas. Rubius’ initial focus is to advance RCT™ product candidates for the treatment of rare diseases, cancer and autoimmune diseases by leveraging three distinct therapeutic modalities — cellular shielding, potent cell-cell interaction and tolerance induction. For more information, visit www.rubiustx.com, or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, known as the PSLRA.  All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this press release, including statements regarding our strategy, future operations, future financial position, future revenue, projected costs, prospects, plan, objectives of management and expected market growth are forward-looking statements. You can identify these forward-looking statements by the use of words such as “outlook,” “believes,” “expects,” “potential,” “continues,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “seeks,” “approximately,” “predicts,” “intends,” “plans,” “estimates,” “anticipates” or the negative version of these words or other comparable words. Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, there are or will be important factors that could cause actual outcomes or results to differ materially from those indicated in these statements. We believe these factors include but are not limited to those described under “Risk Factors” in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2018, as well as those described in our subsequent filings with the SEC. The forward-looking statements contained herein speak only as of the date hereof, and we make no commitment to update or publicly release any revisions to forward-looking statements in order to reflect new information or subsequent events, circumstances or changes in expectations.

Contacts:
Lori Melançon
Vice President, Corporate Communications and Investor Relations
+1 (617) 949-5296
lori.melancon@rubiustx.com

Media Contact: 
Dan Budwick
1AB
+1 (973) 271-6085
dan@1abmedia.com