SOTIO Appoints Dr. Harald Fricke as Chief Medical Officer

February 5, 2019
Source: Press Release, Prague

SOTIO, a biotechnology company owned by PPF Group, announces today the appointment of Harald Fricke, M.D., Ph.D. as Chief Medical Officer (CMO). Dr. Fricke has more than 30 years of experience in the field of immuno-oncology research and clinical development of new cancer therapies. At SOTIO, he will be responsible for clinical strategy and leading the expansion of SOTIO’s clinical-stage pipeline. 

Radek Spisek, CEO of SOTIO, commented: “We are very excited to welcome Dr. Fricke to our team. His long-term experience and successful track record in scientific research, drug development and regulatory strategy in immune-oncology will be extremely valuable for SOTIO.”

Commenting on his appointment, Dr. Fricke said: “I am joining SOTIO at a pivotal moment as SOTIO is initiating two important clinical trials: the first-in-human study with SO-C101, SOTIO’s IL-15 superagonist, and the pivotal trial with DCVAC/OvCa, an active cellular immunotherapy product for patients with ovarian cancer hold great promise. I am impressed by the clinical results of the two Phase II trials with DCVAC in 1st and 2nd line ovarian cancer and the preclinical data of SO-C101. I am excited to join SOTIO’s team and look forward to contributing with my knowledge and experience to advance SOTIO’s broad product pipeline.”

Dr. Harald Fricke graduated from the Medical University of Lübeck (Germany). He received a postgraduate clinical certification in internal medicine and specialized in nephrology and clinical immunology. During his time as a post-doc at the Institute of Chemical Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) (1987-1990), he worked on the role of idiotypic networks in autoimmunity. After his habilitation at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich (Germany) in 1996, he moved to the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr. Harald Fricke has worked at SmithKline Beecham, GlaxoSmithKline, Baxter and Fresenius Biotech where he held management positions with increasing global R&D responsibility and in 2006 he was a Co-Founder of Apogenix (Heidelberg, Germany). Under his leadership as COO and CMO of Apogenix, an innovative platform was discovered and developed, which resulted in an extensive portfolio of immuno-oncology product candidates. In his scientific work, autoimmunity and tumor immunology are his specialist areas of expertise.