3 December 2018 - - US-based biotechnology company Five Prime Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: FPRX) has made some changes to its board of directors, the company said.

Mark McDade, who has served as a member of Five Prime's board of directors since July 2006 and lead independent director since March 2016, has retired from the board.

Furthermore, Lewis T. "Rusty" Williams, M.D., Ph.D. will transition from executive chairman of the board to board member and William Ringo will become chairman of the board effective January 1, 2019.

Williams founded Five Prime in December 2001 and has served as a member of the board since January 2002. Williams also served as president and chief executive officer of the company from January 2002 to July 2003 and from August 2011 to December 2017.

He served as executive chairman of the board from July 2003 to January 2012, as chairman of the board from March 2016 to January 2018 and as executive chairman of the board since January 2018.

Williams will continue to serve as chair of Five Prime's scientific advisory board.

Ringo has served as an independent member of the board since October 2014. From June 2010 until December 2016, Ringo served as a senior advisor to Barclays Healthcare Group.

From April 2008 until his retirement in 2010, Ringo was senior vice president of business development, Strategy and Innovation at Pfizer Inc., a public pharmaceutical company, and was responsible for guiding Pfizer's overall strategic planning and business development activities.

Prior to joining Pfizer, he served as an executive in residence at Warburg Pincus and Sofinnova Ventures and as president and chief executive officer of Abgenix, Inc., a biotechnology company acquired by Amgen, Inc.

Ringo also served for 28 years at Eli Lilly and company in numerous executive roles, including Product group president for oncology and critical care, president of internal medicine products, president of the Infectious Diseases Business Unit and vice president of sales and marketing for US Pharmaceuticals.

Ringo previously served on several boards of directors, including InterMune, Inc., Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Mirati Therapeutics, Inc., and Sangamo BioSciences, Inc.

He currently serves on the boards of directors of Assembly Biosciences, Inc., Immune Design Corp., and Dermira, Inc. Ringo received a B.S. in business administration and an M.B.A. from the University of Dayton.

Five Prime Therapeutics discovers and develops innovative therapeutics to improve the lives of patients with serious diseases.

The company's comprehensive discovery platform, which encompasses virtually every medically relevant extracellular protein, positions it to explore pathways in cancer, inflammation and their intersection in immuno-oncology, an area with significant therapeutic potential and the focus of the company's R and D activities.

Five Prime has entered into strategic collaborations with leading global pharmaceutical companies and has promising product candidates in clinical and late preclinical development.