Kenneth Lamontagne

Executive Director, Business Development & Licensing (BD&L) at Legend Biotech

Speaker

Ken joined Legend Biotech in August of 2019 as the Executive Director of BD&L. He is responsible for leading and supporting business development activities that include in- and out-licensing of products and technologies that support Legend Biotech’s corporate strategy. Supporting alliance management activities related to Legend’s collaboration with Janssen Biotech. Developing strong relationships with key opinion leaders in the Cell Therapy space. Before joining Legend Biotech, Ken led the Therapy Acceleration Program (TAP) at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Ken was responsible for the venture philanthropy arm of LLS; investing in promising blood cancer assets from academia and biotech. Ken championed eight deals including early programs from biotech and Academic Centers of Excellence. TAP has three successful FDA approved assets: Celator Pharmaceuticals (now Jazz Pharmaceuticals) with VYXEOS for AML, Kite Pharma (now Gilead Sciences) with YESCARTA for NHL and Stemline Therapeutics with ELZONRIS for BPDCN. Ken has extensive experience in large pharma working at J&J (Oncology Biology) and most recently at Novartis in the Cell & Gene Therapy Unit (CGTU). Ken was on the CGTU commercial team; which was responsible for the launch of KYMRIAH, the first FDA approved CAR-T therapy. Ken received his Ph.D. from SUNY at Stony Brook, while doing his Ph.D. thesis at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He has an MBA from the Executive MBA Program at Rutgers University.