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Role to focus on business development as Genocea expands its immunotherapy pipeline and explores additional applications of its ATLAS™ neoantigen identification platform

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 10, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Genocea Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: GNCA), a biopharmaceutical company developing personalized cancer immunotherapies, today announced the hiring of industry veteran Girish Aakalu, Ph.D., as its new Chief Business Officer. In this role, Dr. Aakalu will lead the company’s business development efforts.

“With his track record of success and strategic acumen, Girsh is a great addition to the Genocea leadership team,” said Chip Clark, President & CEO of Genocea. “Business development continues to play a key role in our plans for leadership in the cancer immunotherapy field, and we believe that Girish will help us maximize our pipeline opportunities and capitalize on the myriad of possible applications of our ATLAS™ platform, which uses each patient’s immune response machinery to identify and characterize antigens, rather than relying on predictive approaches.”

Dr. Aakalu brings a broad skillset to Genocea, spanning business development, corporate and R&D strategy, product portfolio management, commercial planning, and alliance management, following positions at the Ipsen Group, a global specialty biopharmaceutical company, which included Vice President: Global Head of External Innovation, and positions at Pfizer, Inc., which included Executive Director: Head of Strategy, Innovation & Operations for Pfizer’s External R&D Innovation team. His previous roles also include business development and oncology pipeline market planning positions at Genentech, Inc. and life science consulting experience at L.E.K Consulting. He received a B.A. in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology from the California Institute of Technology.

About Genocea Biosciences, Inc.
Genocea's mission is to help conquer cancer by designing and delivering targeted cancer vaccines and immunotherapies. While traditional immunotherapy discovery methods have largely used predictive methods to propose T cell targets, or antigens, Genocea has developed ATLAS™, its proprietary technology platform, to identify clinically relevant antigens of T cells based on actual human immune responses. Genocea is currently studying the safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy of its lead neoantigen cancer vaccine, GEN-009, in a Phase 1/2a clinical trial. For more information, please visit www.genocea.com.

Genocea Forward-Looking Statement
This press release includes forward-looking statements, including statements relating to Genocea’s pre-clinical and clinical programs as well as plans to partner its ATLAS technology platform, within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Genocea cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties that change over time. Applicable risks and uncertainties include those identified under the heading "Risk Factors" included in Genocea's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017 and any subsequent SEC filings. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release and Genocea assumes no duty to update forward-looking statements, except as may be required by law.

Contact:
Jennifer LaVin
617-715-6687
jennifer.lavin@genocea.com