A leading clinical-stage immunotherapy company focused on developing innovative treatments for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, Alpine Immune Sciences, Inc., has announced the appointment of M. Christina Yi to Chief Technology Officer effective August 21, 2023. Ms. Yi has more than 25 years of biopharmaceuticals leadership experience, including manufacturing, quality, and supply chain. She succeeds Wayne Gombotz, Ph.D., who will retire in August.

“Christina is an accomplished industry leader and will be a key addition to our executive team as we prepare for a broad development plan for povetacicept. Her expertise and leadership will be important to Alpine as we continue to advance our pipeline to provide meaningful new therapeutic options for patients living with autoimmune and inflammatory diseases,” said  Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mitchell Gold. “We thank Wayne for his significant contributions and leadership during his tenure at Alpine. He has been a great member of the Alpine executive team as we moved several of our platform programs into the clinic under his leadership. We appreciate his dedication to Alpine over the last five years and wish him well during his retirement.”

Ms. Yi joins Alpine from Provention Bio, Inc., a Sanofi company, where she served as Chief Operations Officer and played a critical role in the achievement of U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval and subsequent commercial launch of Tzield™ (teplizumab-mzwv), a first-in-class therapy for type 1 diabetes. Prior to that, she served as Chief Operating Officer at Vaxxinity and Chief Operations Officer at Dendreon Pharmaceuticals LLC. Earlier in her career, she held roles of increasing responsibility at Amgen in Quality for three commercially successful products. She received a B.S. in cell and molecular biology from the University of Washington, Seattle.

“I have been closely following the Alpine story and I am excited to be part of the company as they prepare to pursue a broad development plan for povetacicept across a number of auto-antibody mediated inflammatory diseases,” said Christina Yi.

In conjunction with her employment, effective August 21, 2023, Ms. Yi has been granted an option to purchase 185,000 shares of common stock. The option will vest with respect to 25 per cent of the shares underlying the option on the one-year anniversary of her employment start date with the Company; the remaining 75 per cent of the shares underlying the option will vest in equal monthly installments over the 36-month period following the one-year anniversary of Ms. Yi’s employment start date, subject to her continued service to Alpine through each relevant vesting date.

In addition, pursuant to the terms of Alpine’s change of control and severance policy, if there is a change of control and, upon or during the 12 months after the change of control, Ms. Yi’s employment is terminated either (i) by Alpine without cause or (ii) by Ms. Yi for good reason, the option will become fully vested and exercisable. The option has a ten-year term and an exercise price of US$13.44, equal to the per share closing price of Alpine’s common stock as reported by Nasdaq on August 21, 2023. The stock options were granted outside Alpine’s 2018 Equity Incentive Plan as an inducement material to Ms. Yi entering into employment with Alpine in accordance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5635(c)(4). The terms and conditions of the option are generally consistent with those in Alpine’s 2018 Equity Incentive Plan.