Questions? +1 (202) 335-3939 Login
Trusted News Since 1995
A service for medical industry professionals · Friday, March 29, 2024 · 699,676,649 Articles · 3+ Million Readers

AIT Therapeutics Appoints Two Senior Executives in Research and Clinical Operations

Mark Rimkus Appointed VP of Clinical Affairs and Dr. Abdi Ghaffari Appointed VP of Research

Appointments Add Decades of Nitric Oxide Experience to Team

NEW YORK, Feb. 20, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AIT Therapeutics Inc. (OTC:AITB), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing inhaled Nitric Oxide (NO) for the treatment of patients with serious lung infections and pulmonary hypertension, today announced the appointment of two new executive team members.  Mark Rimkus joins AIT as Vice President of Clinical Affairs and will assist the company in areas such as clinical trial management, quality systems development, device design and device testing. Dr. Abdi Ghaffari joins AIT as Vice President of Research and will provide the company with pre-clinical and scientific expertise to develop the NO therapeutics platform. 

“These appointments announced today mark another significant step in AIT’s transformation into a company with approved therapies to help patients,” said Steve Lisi, Chairman and CEO of AIT.  “We are pleased to add both Mark and Abdi to the AIT team, both of whom bring a wealth of experience working with NO in both hospital and commercial environments.  I am confident that they will bolster and advance our efforts in making the AIT NO delivery system available to patients.”

Mark Rimkus, a professional bio-medical engineer and registered respiratory therapist, has over two decades of experience with inhaled NO systems at various companies and hospitals. He joins AIT from Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, where since 2016, he has been the Senior Engineer evaluating and advising the respiratory therapy department on new respiratory devices.  His duties there included planning and managing trials with new devices.  Mr. Rimkus has also served as Director-At-Large and Treasurer on the Council of the College and Association of Respiratory Therapists of Alberta in 2016 and 2017.  From 2012 to 2016 he was Respiratory Therapy Support Lead at the University of Alberta Hospital, and prior to that, OR Clinical Lead at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton.  Mr. Rimkus worked in industry as a Design Engineer at CBF Systems Inc. from 2008 to 2010 and as Operations Manager/Systems Engineer at PulmoNOx Medical Inc. from 2003 to 2006. In these roles he was responsible for  designing, building, and testing prototypes for industrial, consumer, and medical related devices.  From 1992 to 2003 he held Respiratory Therapist positions at Royal Alexandra Hospital and Stollery Children’s Hospital.  Mr. Rimkus received a B.S.E.E and B.Sc. from the University of Alberta, and a Respiratory Therapy Diploma from Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.

Abdi Ghaffari, Ph.D., joins AIT from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where most recently he was Assistant Professor  in the Department of Pathology & Molecular Medicine. He was previously a Post-Doctoral Fellow (2011-16) at Queen’s Cancer Research Institute, where he developed live imaging models to study the interactions between cancer and host immune cells.  Dr. Ghaffari received his Ph.D. from the Burn/Wound Healing Research Laboratory at the University of British Columbia. He also served as the Preclinical Development Lead at Novateur Ventures and R&D Lead at PulmoNOx Medical Inc.  During his early career research at PulmoNOx, he developed novel preclinical models to test the antibacterial and wound healing properties of NO.  Findings from these models paved the way to further development of inhaled NO as a novel antimicrobial drug in respiratory diseases.  He has authored numerous breakthrough peer reviewed papers, review articles and book chapters in the fields of NO, wound healing, and cancer and has been the recipient of a number of prestigious national academic awards.  

About AIT Therapeutics Inc.
AIT Therapeutics Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company using nitric oxide (NO) to treat serious lung infections and pulmonary hypertension.  The Company is currently applying its therapeutic expertise to treat lower respiratory tract infections that are not effectively addressed with current standards of care.  AIT Therapeutics is advancing its revolutionary NO respiratory targeted system in clinical trials for the treatment of bronchiolitis and nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM).  For more information, visit www.AIT-Pharm.com.

Forward-Looking Statement
This press release contains “forward-looking statements.”  Forward-looking statements include statements about our expectations, beliefs, or intentions regarding our product offerings, business, financial condition, results of operations, strategies or prospects. You can identify such forward-looking statements by the words “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “projects,” “believes,” “estimates,” “likely,” “goal,” “assumes,” “targets,” “potential,” and similar expressions and/or the use of future tense or conditional constructions (such as “will,” “may,” “could,” “should” and the like) and by the fact that these statements do not relate strictly to historical or current matters. Rather, forward-looking statements relate to anticipated or expected events, activities, trends or results as of the date they are made. Because forward-looking statements relate to matters that have not yet occurred, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and reflect our views as of the date they are made with respect to future events and financial performance. Many factors could cause our actual activities or results to differ materially from the activities and results anticipated in forward-looking statements, including risks related to: our approach to discover and develop novel drugs, which is unproven and may never lead to marketable products; our ability to fund and the results of further pre-clinical and clinical trials; obtaining, maintaining and protecting intellectual property utilized by our products; our ability to enforce our patents against infringers and to defend our patent portfolio against challenges from third parties; our ability to obtain additional funding to support our business activities; our dependence on third parties for development, manufacture, marketing, sales, and distribution of products; the successful development of our product candidates, all of which are in early stages of development; obtaining regulatory approval for products; competition from others using technology similar to ours and others developing products for similar uses; our dependence on collaborators; and our short operating history. We undertake no obligation to update, and we do not have a policy of updating or revising, these forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable law.

CONTACT
Steven Lisi, Chief Executive Officer
AIT Therapeutics, Inc.
Steve@AIT-Pharm.com

Bob Yedid
LifeSci Advisors, LLC
Bob@LifeSciAdvisors.com
(646) 597 6989

Primary Logo

Powered by EIN News


EIN Presswire does not exercise editorial control over third-party content provided, uploaded, published, or distributed by users of EIN Presswire. We are a distributor, not a publisher, of 3rd party content. Such content may contain the views, opinions, statements, offers, and other material of the respective users, suppliers, participants, or authors.

Submit your press release