NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--jCyte., a private biotechnology company dedicated to improving the lives of patients with retinal degenerative diseases, today announced the expansion of the role of Dr. Samir Mody. In addition to his Chief Commercial Officer responsibilities focused on preparing for the North American launch of jCell, Dr. Mody will now also assume leadership for the Global Pricing, Health Economics, and Reimbursement functions for jCyte.

Dr. Mody joined jCyte as its first Chief Commercial Officer in January, bringing over two decades of experience in leading global strategy, market access, health economics, and reimbursement teams at three of the world’s largest pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Over the course of his career, Dr. Mody and his globally dispersed teams have worked closely with public and private payers, governments, health technology agencies, hospitals, and clinicians around the world to secure optimal market access, reimbursement, and pricing for innovative treatments that went on to become blockbuster assets. Immediately prior to joining jCyte, Dr. Mody was Vice President, Cardiac Rhythm and Heart Failure Strategy, Healthcare Economics, and Reimbursement at Medtronic, where he and his team of 60 globally positioned Strategy, Health Economics and Reimbursement researchers, field personnel, and executives were tasked with developing the global strategy, securing global access, and maximizing reimbursement for Medtronic’s legacy business. Before Medtronic, Dr. Mody spent the bulk of his professional career in the pharmaceutical industry in a series of in-house and field leadership roles at Johnson and Johnson (J&J). While at J&J, Dr. Mody and his teams generated key data, presented to government and private payers and clinicians, justified optimal pricing through demonstration of value, and secured preferential market access for the largest brands within J&J’s pharmaceutical portfolio, working on multibillion dollar innovative small molecule and biological therapies like Procrit, Risperdal, Levaquin, Remicade, and Xarelto. Prior to spending more than a decade at J&J, Dr. Mody worked at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals as a Health Economist and Outcomes Researcher working on novel pain and infectious disease products.

Dr. Mody is an author on over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and over 150 national and international meeting presentations across a variety of disease states and conditions, including immunology, oncology, cardiology, HIV, infectious diseases, psychiatric disorders, pain, and geriatric medicine. He has also been a leader in the development and implementation of Value Based Healthcare strategies, having launched innovative payment and pricing programs around the world. Of particular note, Dr. Mody has always been a champion of a diverse and inclusive workforce and was a co-leader for Medtronic’s Asian Employee Resource Group.

Dr. Mody completed his Doctor of Pharmacy with Highest Honors and Distinction at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill and his Master of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, where he was named a Fuqua Scholar. He also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Health Economics and Outcomes Research at the University of South Carolina.

“I am excited to announce the expansion of Samir’s role to include the critical areas of Global Pricing, Health Economics, and Reimbursement since these areas will be directly correlated with the Company’s financial growth and shareholder value creation due to the business model required to commercialize jCell, our RMAT designated, first-in-class cell therapy,” said Dr. Shannon Blalock, Chief Executive Officer. “His decades of experience in working with global payers, significant expertise in the fields of health economics, pricing, and reimbursement, and real-world application of working on market access and alternate payment models make adding these responsibilities a natural evolution of Samir’s role. Dr. Mody’s unwavering commitment and focus on simultaneously ensuring patients can access jCell as quickly as possible while optimizing launch price by market will be critical to the long-term commercial success of jCell and our Company, which will expedite our ability to deliver our breakthrough therapy to the millions of patients with RP and other retinal degenerative diseases around the world as quickly as possible.”

jCell is a first-in-class investigational treatment for RP which has received FDA Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) designation. In addition to RMAT designation, jCell has received Orphan Drug designation from the FDA and the European Medicines Agency.

About jCyte, Inc.

jCyte, Inc. is a late-stage clinical development biotech company focused on developing its first-in-class regenerative cell therapy, jCell, for RP and other retinal degenerative disorders. The treatment is minimally invasive and given as an intravitreal injection. There are currently no FDA approved therapies for RP. The Company is pioneering a new era of regenerative therapies to address the significant unmet medical needs of patients suffering from a broad set of retinal degenerative diseases. For more information, visit www.jcyte.com.

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