Poseida Therapeutics Announces Board Change

Poseida Therapeutics, a clinical-stage cell and gene therapy company advancing a new class of treatments for patients with cancer and rare diseases, has announced that Eric Ostertag has resigned as Executive Chairman and will retire from the Board of Directors effective February 3, 2023. However, Dr. Ostertag will continue as a consultant to the Company to advise on technical and scientific matters.

“I founded Poseida eight years ago as a spinout of a genetic engineering company called Transposagen to revolutionize cell and gene therapeutics by moving away from more traditional, first-generation virus-based approaches,” Dr. Ostertag said. “After leading and growing Transposagen and then Poseida as CEO for approximately 20 years, I decided to transition to the Executive Chairman role in February 2022. I have decided now is the time for me to focus more on my family and retire from this role. It has been an honor to lead the many talented employees who have built Poseida into a leading genetic engineering Company and a privilege to create therapeutics that have the potential to help numerous patients with unmet medical need. I am confident that the Poseida Board, Poseida leadership and all the extremely talented Poseida employees are well positioned to continue advancing Poseida’s cell and gene therapies with the capacity to cure.”

“It has been my privilege to work closely with Eric since I joined the executive team at Poseida five years ago. On behalf of our Board and the Company, I would like to thank Eric for his vision and truly differentiated approach to developing new treatment options for patients with cancer and rare genetic disease,” said Mark Gergen, Chief Executive Officer of Poseida. “All of us at Poseida are grateful to Eric and look forward to engaging with him in a consulting capacity and to have the continuing benefit of his expertise as we move forward.”

As Poseida’s founding CEO, Dr. Ostertag directed the Company’s spin out from Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals, Inc., a biotechnology company. Dr. Ostertag also founded Transposagen, where he was CEO from 2003 to 2015. Dr. Ostertag earned his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Under his leadership, Poseida has grown substantially, raised significant private capital and successfully completed its IPO in 2020. The Company has also built a significant global intellectual property portfolio; received FDA clearance on four Investigational New Drug (IND) applications for novel cell therapies, dosed over 100 patients in clinical trials; and established multiple collaborations, including collaborations in cell therapy with Roche and in gene therapy with Takeda.