Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced that it has appointed Kamil Ali-Jackson to the company's Board of Directors. Ms. Ali-Jackson brings nearly four decades of biopharmaceutical industry experience to Rigel, including expertise in negotiating licensing, joint-venture, and M&A transactions to drive strategic growth. Ms. Ali-Jackson currently serves as the chief legal officer, chief compliance officer, and corporate secretary for publicly traded Aclaris Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that she co-founded in 2012 and led the team which took the company public in 2015. She will be retiring from her role at Aclaris on January 3, 2022. Ms. Ali-Jackson has extensive transaction experience with companies such as Merck & Co., Inc., Endo Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Inc., including negotiating acquisitions of intellectual property assets and licensing agreements for drug products in various stages of development across multiple therapeutic areas. She was the lead negotiator for the acquisition of intellectual property rights for Merck's billion-dollar human papillomavirus vaccine and legal counsel for its gastroenterology product franchise, which led to the creation of a multi-billion joint venture between Merck and Astra AB that then became part of AstraZeneca. Previously, Ms. Ali-Jackson co-founded and served as chief legal officer, chief compliance officer, and general counsel for several other private biopharmaceutical or specialty pharmaceutical companies, including Ceptaris Therapeutics, Inc. and Ception Therapeutics, Inc., both of which were successfully acquired in multimillion-dollar acquisitions. She is currently a member of the board of directors, audit and compensation committees, and is the chair of the nominating and corporate governance committee of PDS Biotechnology Corporation, a publicly-traded clinical-stage immunotherapy company, as well as on the board of other private companies.