Date: 2017-10-23
Type of information: Nomination
Compound: member of the scientific and medical advisory board
Company: Cytosen Therapeutics (USA - TX)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Type agreement: nomination
Action mechanism:
Disease:
Details:
- • On October 23, 2017, CytoSen Therapeutics announced the appointment of five new members to the company’s scientific and medical advisory board. Drs. Michael Caligiuri, Zhijian “James” Chen, Todd Fehniger, Helen Heslop, and Jeffrey Miller will join Drs. Dean Lee and Stefan Ciurea on the board as medical and scientific advisors. CytoSen is advancing a cellular immunotherapy solution, based on natural killer (NK) cells of the innate immune system. CytoSen’s unique approach combines immunology and nanotechnology that may potentially enable future production of cell therapies closer to the point-of-care with turnkey reliability and application to a broad range of cancers.
- Michael A. Caligiuri is the director of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and CEO of Ohio State’s James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute. He has designed and conducted many clinical studies for leukemia and lymphoma patients and has more than 400 original publications, abstracts and review articles on immunology or leukemia. One of the research areas of Dr. Caligiuri’s laboratory is the development and normal role of the body’s large granular lymphocytes called natural killer cells so as to exploit their properties to develop effective therapies against cancer and immune deficiency.
- Zhijian “James” Chen is the George L. MacGregor Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Science, director of the Inflammation Research Center, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and an HHMI Investigator. Dr. Chen’s research into complex cellular biochemistry has led to the discovery of pathways and proteins that trigger immune and stress responses. His research led to several discoveries that have contributed to understanding innate immune sensing and signaling of cytosolic nucleic acids.
- Todd A. Fehniger, associate professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, is a physician-scientist with interests that span basic, translational, and clinical aspects of immunology and oncology. With more than 20 years of experience in the field, his research program focuses on understanding basic mechanisms of natural killer (NK) cell development and function, translational approaches to elucidate new ways to enhance NK cell anti-tumor activity, and clinical studies applying advances in NK cell biology as novel immunotherapy strategies for patients with cancer, especially hematologic malignancies.
- Helen Heslop is professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, and the director of the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston Methodist Hospital and Texas Children’s Hospital. She is also associate director for Clinical Research at the Dan L Duncan Cancer Center. Dr. Heslop is a physician scientist engaged in translational research focusing on adoptive immunotherapy with gene-modified effector cells, to improve hemopoietic stem cell transplantation and cancer therapy. She has extensive experience in developing and conducting transplant studies and cell and gene therapy studies.
- Jeffrey S. Miller is a professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota and the deputy director of the University of Minnesota Masonic Comprehensive Cancer Center. He has more than 20 years of experience studying the biology of NK cells and other immune effector cells and their use in clinical immunotherapy. He has more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, serves on the editorial board for Blood, and is a reviewer for a number of journals and NIH grants. In 2015, he was awarded an Outstanding Investigator Award by the National Cancer Institute.
Financial terms:
Latest news:
Is general: Yes
