- Mr. Keiper has led the financial and business operations of the company for the last four years, and previously has led R&D groups through clinical and early development operations
- Donald Nicholson, Ph.D., moves on to other opportunities as part of a planned transition
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — October 4, 2018 — Nimbus Therapeutics, a biotechnology company applying deep computational chemistry expertise throughout drug discovery and development, has named Jeb Keiper, M.S., M.B.A., President and Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. Mr. Keiper succeeds Donald Nicholson, Ph.D., and will lead the company forward as it progresses multiple programs toward clinical development.
“After over four years of building Nimbus and this exceptional team, the company is now poised to start the next chapter of developing important medicines for patients with autoimmune disease, cancer, and metabolic diseases,” said Donald Nicholson, Ph.D. “In its next phase of growth, Nimbus will be led by a CEO with intimate knowledge of the company and a track record of successful leadership. Jeb’s deep business expertise and leadership experience made him an ideal partner to me and a logical successor. I am very much looking forward to starting the next entrepreneurial chapter of my career, and I am confident that Nimbus, the science and our employees are in great hands.”
Mr. Keiper joined Nimbus in 2014 and initially served as Nimbus’ Chief Business Officer, and along with Dr. Nicholson, set the strategic direction of the company. In the ensuing four years, Nimbus brought in over $775 million of partnership and financing into the company, including the Series B financing in March 2015, the sale of Nimbus’ clinical NASH program to Gilead in May 2016 for $400 million upfront, the strategic immunology alliance with Celgene announced in October 2017, and a round of private expansion capital in 2018. Mr. Keiper was also appointed Chief Financial Officer in 2017.
Prior to Nimbus, Mr. Keiper was VP of Business Development at GSK Oncology and spent a decade at GlaxoSmithKline in various BD leadership roles. He led the oncology portion of the $16 billion GSK-Novartis transaction announced in April 2014. In 20 years of industry experience, starting as a bench chemist at Pfizer R&D and working in various roles from consulting at McKinsey to business development at TransForm Pharmaceuticals, Mr. Keiper has a track record of leading teams of talented scientists and managers to achieve stretch objectives, including advancing new medicines into clinical development, filing NDAs, and constructing transformative deals and financings.
“Jeb has been a critical component of the success at Nimbus over the last four years, and we are confident that he will lead the company into the future and its continued successful development of the pipeline,” said Nimbus’ Chairman and co-founder Bruce Booth, D.Phil. “We thank Don for his passion and leadership in driving the accomplishments Nimbus has achieved to date and have immense respect for him as a scientist and a leader. I look forward to working with him on future innovative opportunities.”
“Nimbus has pioneered new ways of discovering and developing important medicines for patients leveraging a globally distributed, virtually-enabled operating model,” said Mr. Keiper. “Our success has challenged and reformed decades-old dogma on how to develop new small molecule medicines, and has been reflected in our partnerships with Gilead, Celgene, and Genentech. As we enter the next chapter, our ambition and business strategy remain the same: to continue innovating with computational methodologies for creating and advancing new medicines, and to couple those with cutting-edge discoveries in the mechanistic underpinnings of human disease.”
About Nimbus Therapeutics
Nimbus Therapeutics is a biotechnology company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA). Nimbus is pioneering the application of highly-advanced computational technologies to the design and development of novel treatments for substantial and underserved human diseases. The company’s focus on metabolic diseases, cancer and immune-inflammatory disorders reflects the mechanistic relationship between these disorders, and Nimbus’ ability to rapidly tackle well validated targets as well as those that have proven intractable to others. The company’s LLC/subsidiary architecture enables diverse and synergistic partnerships to deliver breakthrough medicines. To learn more, please visit www.nimbustx.com.
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