ZIOPHARM Oncology to Participate at Upcoming CAR-TCR Summit

BOSTON, Sept. 01, 2017 -- ZIOPHARM Oncology, Inc. (Nasdaq:ZIOP), a biopharmaceutical company focused on new immunotherapies, today announced that the Company will participate at the upcoming CAR-TCR Summit 2017. The summit is being held September 5-8, 2017 at the Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center in Boston.

Laurence Cooper, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of ZIOPHARM, will participate in the Industry Leaders' Fireside Chat on Wednesday, September 6, 2017 beginning at 8:45 a.m. ET. In addition, research highlighting the Sleeping Beauty non-viral gene transfer system will be presented during an oral presentation session.

"Sleeping Beauty is one of the most clinically-advanced non-viral cell engineering platforms in development and holds the potential to enable personalized solutions and opens the door to point-of-care manufacturing approaches to rapidly generate T cells, help lower cost, and expand access to innovative therapies,” said Dr. Cooper. “Our human data reveal the therapeutic potential of these genetically modified T cells and the shortened production circumvents the complexities and high cost typically associated with viral-based approaches. Sleeping Beauty offers a scalable solution to redirecting T-cell specificity to both blood cancers and solid tumors using CARs and TCRs."

Details for the oral presentation are as follow:

Title: Sleeping Beauty: An Update on the Non-Viral Transduction Platform for CAR Therapies
Presenter: Partow Kebriaei, Professor, Department of Stem Cell Transplantation & Cellular Therapy, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Track: CAR-TCR Discovery Stream
Date and Time: Thursday, September 7, 2017, 3:20 p.m. – 3:50 p.m. ET

About ZIOPHARM Oncology, Inc.

ZIOPHARM Oncology is a Boston, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company employing innovative gene expression, control and cell technologies to deliver safe, effective and scalable cell- and viral-based therapies for the treatment of cancer and graft-versus-host-disease. The Company's immuno-oncology programs, in collaboration with Intrexon Corporation (NYSE:XON) and the MD Anderson Cancer Center, include chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) and other adoptive cell-based approaches that use non-viral gene transfer methods for broad scalability. The Company is advancing programs in multiple stages of development together with Intrexon Corporation's RheoSwitch Therapeutic System® (RTS®) technology, a switch to turn on and off, and precisely modulate, gene expression in order to improve therapeutic index. The Company's pipeline includes a number of cell-based therapeutics in both clinical and preclinical testing which are focused on hematologic and solid tumor malignancies.

Forward-Looking Safe-Harbor Statement

This press release contains certain forward-looking information about ZIOPHARM Oncology, Inc. that is intended to be covered by the safe harbor for "forward-looking statements" provided by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts, and in some cases can be identified by terms such as "may," "will," "could," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," and "believes." These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the Company's plans and expectations regarding its securities offerings, fundraising activities and financial strategy, the progress, timing and results of preclinical and clinical trials involving the Company's drug candidates, and the progress of the Company's research and development programs. All of such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of the Company, that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: our ability to finance our operations and business initiatives and obtain funding for such activities, whether chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) approaches, Ad-RTS-hIL-12, TCR and NK cell-based therapies, or any of our other therapeutic candidates will advance further in the preclinical or clinical trials process and whether and when, if at all, they will receive final approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or equivalent foreign regulatory agencies and for which indications; whether chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) approaches, Ad-RTS-hIL-12, TCR and NK cell-based therapies, and our other therapeutic products will be successfully marketed if approved; the strength and enforceability of our intellectual property rights; competition from other pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies; and the other risk factors contained in our periodic and interim reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to, our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016 and our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2017. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements that speak only as of the date hereof, and we do not undertake any obligation to revise and disseminate forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof, or to reflect the occurrence of or non-occurrence of any events.

Trademarks
RheoSwitch Therapeutic System® and RTS® are registered trademarks of Intrexon Corporation.

Contact:

David Pitts
Argot Partners
212-600-1902
[email protected]