Nkarta Therapeutics has appointed Lisa Arjes as vice president of regulatory affairs and clinical quality. Ms. Arjes joins the company with 25 years of experience in engineering, quality, project management, drug supply and regulatory affairs in the biopharmaceutical industry.

“As we advance our novel NK cell therapies toward the clinic, we are pleased to have Lisa leading our regulatory affairs and quality efforts, which are growing and expanding in the organization,” said Paul Hastings, president and chief executive officer, Nkarta Therapeutics. “With Lisa’s guidance, we are planning several Investigational New Drug (IND) Applications within the next twelve months. These include two for NKX101 that will allow dose finding Phase 1 clinical trials in hematological malignancies as well as solid tumors, and an IND for our CAR19-NK program to enable us to begin clinical trials in B-cell malignancies. We believe our innovative and differentiated approach to cell therapy, using natural killer cells, will potentially offer patients a more potent, better tolerated cell therapy option.”

Lisa Arjes joins Nkarta from Revolution Medicines where she was responsible for building the company’s regulatory and quality assurance departments. Prior to Revolution Medicines, she was director of regulatory affairs at Medivation, Inc. (acquired by Pfizer) where she developed and implemented global regulatory strategies for oncology programs in all phases of development. She also held positions as associate regulatory program director and manager of clinical supply chain at Genentech, Inc.