MorphoSys AG announced that Malte Peters, M.D., the company's Chief Research and Development Officer and Management Board member, has decided to retire at the end of 2022. His successor will be Tim Demuth, M.D., Ph.D., current Chief Medical Officer of Pieris Pharmaceuticals Inc. Tim will start his new role on October 1, 2022. He will report to MorphoSys' CEO, Jean-Paul Kress, M.D., and be a member of the company's Executive Committee.

At this time, Malte will step down from his operational responsibilities. Malte joined MorphoSys in 2017. Tim Demuth is a seasoned biopharma executive with broad leadership experience in drug development, with a focus in oncology.

Prior to being named the Chief Medical Officer of Pieris, he was Vice President and Head of Global Clinical Development Oncology at Merck KGaA, where he was responsible for the early- and late-stage oncology pipeline of small molecules, antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates, as well as for the end-to-end development strategy for oncology. Previously, he led the Clinical Development Unit of Hematology Biopharma Development at Sandoz AG, a division of Novartis AG. Dr. Demuth held various other leadership roles at Novartis AG, Italfarmaco S.p. A and Merck & Co.

He received M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany and was trained in Mainz and at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany. He has also served as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, Arizona.