ABOUT
US

ABOUT US

NEUVOGEN is an immuno-oncology company applying a systems biology approach to develop the next generation of whole cell therapeutic cancer vaccines designed to improve and prolong the lives of people suffering with life-threatening solid tumors.

MISSION

NEUVOGEN’s mission is to serve patients with cancer by developing transformative therapies to meaningfully extend their lives.

VISION

NEUVOGEN’s vision is to revolutionize cancer treatment by harnessing the full power of a patient’s immune system to eliminate cancer from their body.

LEADERSHIP

NEUVOGEN brings together highly-accomplished biotech professionals, including experienced immuno-oncology and vaccine researchers and clinicians.

OUR
LEADERSHIP

Management Team

Mr. Todd Binder is Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors of NEUVOGEN since its inception, and leads the company’s overall strategy to serve patients through the development of treatments for cancer. Prior to NEUVOGEN, he served as Chief Financial Officer of ZetaRx, a CAR T-Cell company where he gained a deep understanding of the promise of cellular immunotherapies. While at ZetaRx, he and the management team developed the lead program that Juno, now Bristol-Myers Squibb, is taking to market. Previously, Mr. Binder advised and invested in preclinical and clinical stage biotechnology companies. Mr. Binder learned the key value drivers for successful investments and companies in biotech while working as a Principal at Coastview Capital LLC. He has served as an Officer in the US Army, and as a consultant at McKinsey and Company, and has served in a number of line management positions. Mr. Binder holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, and dual BA degrees in Economics and History from Pomona College. Mr. Binder also serves as a Board Member of Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope.

Mr. George Montgomery has more than three decades of experience raising capital and providing strategic advisory to entrepreneurial biotech and medical technology companies. He has served as managing director at WestRiver Group, and is a member of the board of directors for Ashvattha Therapeutics Inc. He served as Chief Financial Officer and member of the Executive Committee at Coherus BioSciences, and is a former board member of Lumen Bioscience, Viome, Crossover Health, BEFORE Brands Inc., and Boston Pharmaceuticals. Prior to his executive roles, George worked in healthcare banking for over twenty years, and was a Managing Director at JPMorgan H&Q and Cowen & Company and worked at CSFB. He received his bachelor’s degree from Yale University and an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Gilbert is the former Chief Medical Officer of Juno Therapeutics and Chief Medical Officer of JW Therapeutics, during which time he was responsible for development, approval and medical support for three CAR-T products in at least five hematological indications and development of CAR-T and TCR-T in oncology and autoimmune indications. Dr. Gilbert has also been Head of Global Oncology Clinical Development for Schering-Bayer Pharmaceuticals, where he was responsible for worldwide development of more than a dozen clinical assets, including biologicals and chemotherapy, in hematology, oncology and autoimmunity.

Dr. Mark Bagarazzi is Chief Medical Officer at NEUVOGEN where he is responsible for providing leadership and setting the overall strategic direction for the research and clinical development programs as well as managing regulatory advancement of the lead assets and pipeline. He has served as advisor to top biopharmaceutical companies on clinical development and regulatory affairs. Prior to NEUVOGEN, Dr. Bagarazzi was Chief Medical Officer of Inovio Pharmaceuticals, and oversaw the clinical development and regulatory advancement of their novel biologic and medical device platforms from preclinical to pivotal Phase III trials. Previously, Dr. Bagarazzi was Director of Worldwide Regulatory Affairs for Vaccines/Biologics at Merck Research Laboratories where he was responsible for the licensure of RotaTeq® and lead the development team for Merck’s vaccine for the prevention of herpes zoster, ZOSTAVAX®. Prior to joining industry, Dr. Bagarazzi was an assistant professor of pediatrics at Drexel College of Medicine where he served as director of the Pediatric HIV/AIDS program at St Christopher’s Hospital for Children where he trained in pediatrics. He subsequently completed a fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Bagarazzi received his medical degree with honors from New Jersey Medical School and holds a BS in electrical engineering magna cum laude from New Jersey Institute of Technology. He has authored or co-authored dozens of scientific papers, with a focus on the subject of vaccines. Dr. Bagarazzi currently reviews Gene Therapy protocols for Castle IRB and is on the Gene Therapy Advisory Board for the WIRB Copernicus Group.

Dr. Bernadette Ferraro serves as the Vice President, Immuno-oncology at NEUVOGEN and is responsible for leading a multidisciplinary team of scientists developing cutting edge immunoassays that support the company’s immuno-oncology clinical development programs. Prior to NEUVOGEN, she led the Preclinical Immuno-oncology team at Inovio Pharmaceuticals, where she oversaw the preclinical development of several cancer immunotherapies and played a key role in supporting research efforts enabling partnerships. Previously, she spent more than a decade developing prophylactic and therapeutic products for several different disease targets with a strong focus on immunotherapies designed to activate the adaptive immune response for the treatment of cancer. She also is a co-inventor on several patents directed to infectious disease and cancer immunotherapy products. Dr. Ferraro holds a BS degree in Microbiology from the University of South Florida, an MPH in Epidemiology, and a PhD in Molecular Medicine from the University of South Florida College of Medicine. She completed her post-doctoral training in the laboratory of David B. Weiner at the University of Pennsylvania Pearlman School of Medicine.

Dr. Mark Backer has more than 35 years of technical management experience in the development and manufacturing of a wide variety of biopharmaceuticals including antibodies, proteins, viral-based vaccines and cell therapies. He was founding chairman of the vector manufacturing firm Molecular Medicine BioServices (now a division of Millipore Sigma, a Merck KGA company). Dr. Backer’s industry experience began in 1978, when he was the seventh employee of Genentech and initiated its pilot manufacturing operations. He led pioneering efforts in large-scale cell culture technology and ex-vivo expansion and transfection of hematopoietic stem cells. Dr. Backer is owner and manager of the consulting firm Alava Biopharm Partners LLC, supporting development of advanced therapies since 2013. He has served as Sr. VP, Technical Operations with Jennerex with responsibility for all CMC operations. He also served as CEO of Vaxart, creating a novel viral-based oral vaccine platform, VP Technical Development at Protein Design Labs, and served in positions of increasing responsibility at Aviron (now AstraZeneca Vaccines), Systemix, IDEC, and Eli Lilly. Dr. Backer received a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Washington, and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Stanford University.

Mr. Keith Pelton serves as Treasurer and Controller at NEUVOGEN where he is responsible for financial reporting and supporting Operations. Mr. Pelton is a finance professional with over 20 years of experience including mergers and acquisitions, public accounting, and healthcare finance, and has held positions at Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, and United Healthcare. Mr. Pelton also led finance and accounting at Coastview Capital, a Los Angeles-based biotechnology venture capital firm, for more than seven years. Mr. Pelton received a BA degree in Business Economics from the University of California Los Angeles.

Board Of Directors

Mr. Gordon Binder is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of NEUVOGEN. He was Chief Executive Officer of Amgen, Inc. the world’s largest biotech company, from 1988 through 2000. During Mr. Binder’s tenure as CEO, the company grew from 400 employees to 7,000 to rank within the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in worldwide revenues, the top 15 in U.S. sales, and the top 10 in market capitalization. He joined Amgen in 1982 as CFO, having previously served as CFO of System Development Corporation, a computer system and software company primarily serving the federal government, and in financial management positions at Litton Industries and Ford Motor Company. Mr. Binder served as Chairman of BIO, the biotechnology industry trade association and as Chairman of PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry trade association. He also served as a member of the Board of Directors of MIT, Caltech, AEI (the American Enterprise Institute) and Pepperdine University. After retiring from Amgen, Mr. Binder founded Coastview Capital LLC, a biotech venture capital firm. He is a graduate of Purdue University and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mr. Binder is the author of Science Lessons: What the Business of Biotech Taught Me About Management.

Mr. Todd Binder is Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors of NEUVOGEN since its inception, and leads the company’s overall strategy to serve patients through the development of treatments for cancer. Prior to NEUVOGEN, he served as Chief Financial Officer of ZetaRx, a CAR T-Cell company where he gained a deep understanding of the promise of cellular immunotherapies. While at ZetaRx, he and the management team developed the lead program that Juno, now Bristol-Myers Squibb, is taking to market. Previously, Mr. Binder advised and invested in preclinical and clinical stage biotechnology companies. Mr. Binder learned the key value drivers for successful investments and companies in biotech while working as a Principal at Coastview Capital LLC. He has served as an Officer in the US Army, and as a consultant at McKinsey and Company, and has served in a number of line management positions. Mr. Binder holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, and dual BA degrees in Economics and History from Pomona College. Mr. Binder also serves as a Board Member of Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope.

Mark W. Frohlich, MD, has led the development of cellular immunotherapies for cancer for more than two decades. He served as Executive Vice President of Portfolio Strategy at Juno Therapeutics. Previously, he was Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development of Dendreon Corp, where he led teams responsible for the U.S. and European approval of Provenge, the first FDA licensed cellular immunotherapy for cancer. Prior to joining Dendreon, he served as Medical Director of Xcyte Therapies Inc., where he pursued the development of an autologous T-cell therapy for cancer. Dr. Frohlich was an Assistant Adjunct Professor of Medicine (Hematology/Oncology) at the University of California, San Francisco, where he was active in translational and clinical research, and worked closely with Dr. Eric Small, a lead investigator in the phase 3 trials of Provenge. He is a board-certified medical oncologist, trained at the University of California, San Francisco. He received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School after graduating from Yale College with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Economics.

Mr. Denny Lanfear is a member of the Board of Directors at NEUVOGEN. He serves as Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Coherus BioSciences, the world’s largest biosimilar company. He is a biosimilar pioneer and biopharmaceutical leader with a proven track record of successful entrepreneurial vision and achievement. In 2010, after decades working in the biopharmaceutical industry, Mr. Lanfear founded Coherus BioSciences with the vision of improving the public’s access to high-quality, life-changing medicines. Under his leadership, Coherus BioSciences was transformed from an unfunded startup into the industry’s leading pure play biosimilar company, with over $1.25 billion in funding being raised since its inception. Coherus has experienced outstanding success with the launch of its first drug, UDENYCA® (pegfilgrastim-cbqv). A dedicated entrepreneur, Mr. Lanfear founded and served as CEO at two other companies before Coherus: Saronyx, Inc., a drug development software services company, and the biopharmaceutical company InteKrin Therapeutics. Mr. Lanfear has held various senior leadership roles at Amgen Inc., serving as Vice President of Process Development and Vice President of Market Development. During his 13-year tenure at Amgen he also acquired substantial operations experience, and was tasked with integrating more than 2,500 operations and staff worldwide after the company’s explosive growth. Mr. Lanfear’s product development experience includes various leadership positions with multiple product development programs including growth factors, somatotrophins, and neurotrophins, having directed efforts from preclinical studies to Phase 3 clinical trials. Mr. Lanfear holds BS degrees in Chemical Engineering and Biochemistry from Michigan State University and an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Kendall M. Mohler serves as NEUVOGEN’s science advisor and operational board member. Dr. Mohler is Chief Development Officer at Accelerator Life Science Partners, bringing more than three decades of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, including several years of leading scientific research and development teams in the areas of autoimmune disease, inflammation, and oncology. He works closely with all Accelerator Life Science Partner I portfolio companies, where he provides oversight over key scientific research and product development activities. Prior to joining Accelerator, Dr. Mohler served as Senior Vice President of Research and Chief Scientific Officer of Juno Therapeutics Inc. He also served as Chief Science Officer at ZetaRx, a predecessor company that was acquired by Juno. Prior to Juno, Dr. Mohler co-founded Trubion Pharmaceuticals Inc., and served as their Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President, overseeing the development of several first-in-class product candidates and supporting several partnerships with global pharmaceutical companies. Prior to Trubion, Dr. Mohler served as Vice President of Biological Sciences of Immunex Corporation, where he led research and development activities in the areas of transplantation, autoimmunity & inflammation. He was the preclinical lead for Enbrel’s® (etanercept) research and development activities and successfully shepherded the product from inception of the development program through BLA approval. Dr. Mohler has published more than 35 manuscripts and is a named inventor on multiple issued patents and pending patent applications. He received a PhD in Immunology from the University of Texas Health Science Center and a BS from the University of Kansas.

Scientific Advisory Board

Christian Ottensmeier MD PhD FRCP graduated and began his training at the Westfälische Wilhelms-University Münster, Germany. After a training fellowship in the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA, he moved to Southampton in 1994, where he completed his oncology training. Following completion of his PhD on the molecular immunology of B-cells in the laboratory of Professor Freda Stevenson, he became a Consultant in Medical Oncology in Southampton University Hospitals and Senior Lecturer at the University of Southampton in 2001. In 2007 he was appointed to a chair in Experimental Cancer Medicine in Southampton and in 2019 to an Associate Professorship at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, CA, USA. He joined the University of Liverpool and the Liverpool Head and Neck Institute as Professor of Immuno-Oncology in August 2020. His clinical commitments are to the Clatterbridge Cancer Center NHS Foundation Trust, where he develops his practice to deliver more effective immunotherapy for patient benefit.  He mainly works in head and neck cancer and lung cancer.  Christian’s core academic interest links to his clinical practice: to understand and modulate adaptive immune responses in patients, to inform the development of immunotherapies to treat solid cancers. His laboratory studies how best to induce tumour-antigen specific immunity through vaccination and how to overcome immune suppressive features of the tumour microenvironment. As a result, his work focuses on three linked but distinct areas of investigation: the study of antigen-specific immune responses in patients, assay development and validation, both underpinning mechanistic studies in human to understand adaptive immune responses to tumour antigens. This work is underpinned by systematic tissue collection, to which ~2000 patients have been recruited since 2014. In parallel to investigator initiated studies, he contributes to a broad portfolio of clinical trials in solid cancers; he has co-developed a number of national NCRI studies in melanoma and lung cancer. He has served on a mulitple national and international peer review committees as well as on advisory boards and DSMBs for industry led studies; he is a member Cancer Immunoguiding panel of the European “CIMT” collaborative, a member of EATI and of the editorial boards for the Journal of Translational Immunology, Cancer Immunology & Immunotherapy, and the newly founded open source BSI Journal “Immunotherapy Advances”.

Mark W. Frohlich, MD, has led the development of cellular immunotherapies for cancer for more than two decades. He served as Executive Vice President of Portfolio Strategy at Juno Therapeutics. Previously, he was Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development of Dendreon Corp, where he led teams responsible for the U.S. and European approval of Provenge, the first FDA licensed cellular immunotherapy for cancer. Prior to joining Dendreon, he served as Medical Director of Xcyte Therapies Inc., where he pursued the development of an autologous T-cell therapy for cancer. Dr. Frohlich was an Assistant Adjunct Professor of Medicine (Hematology/Oncology) at the University of California, San Francisco, where he was active in translational and clinical research, and worked closely with Dr. Eric Small, a lead investigator in the phase 3 trials of Provenge. He is a board-certified medical oncologist, trained at the University of California, San Francisco. He received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School after graduating from Yale College with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Economics.

Dr. Gilbert is the former Chief Medical Officer of Juno Therapeutics and Chief Medical Officer of JW Therapeutics, during which time he was responsible for development, approval and medical support for three CAR-T products in at least five hematological indications and development of CAR-T and TCR-T in oncology and autoimmune indications. Dr. Gilbert has also been Head of Global Oncology Clinical Development for Schering-Bayer Pharmaceuticals, where he was responsible for worldwide development of more than a dozen clinical assets, including biologicals and chemotherapy, in hematology, oncology and autoimmunity.

Dr. Herbst is nationally recognized for his leadership and expertise in lung cancer treatment and research. He is best known for his work in developmental therapeutics and the personalized therapy of non-small cell lung cancer, in particular the process of linking genetic abnormalities of cancer cells to novel therapies.

Prior to his appointment at Yale, Dr. Herbst was the Barnhart Distinguished Professor and Chief of the Section of Thoracic Medical Oncology in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (UT-MDACC) in Houston, Texas. He also served as Professor in the Department of Cancer Biology and Co-Director of the Phase I Clinical Trials Program.

Dr. Herbst’s primary mission is the enhanced integration of clinical, laboratory, and research programs. He has worked over several decades as a pioneer of personalized medicine and immunotherapy to identify biomarkers and bring novel targeted treatments and immunotherapies to patients, serving as principal investigator for numerous clinical trials testing these agents in advanced stage lung cancers. This work led to the approval of several therapies (such as gefitinib, cetuximab, bevacizumab, axitinib), which have revolutionized the field and greatly enhanced patient survival. He and his Yale colleagues were among the first to describe the PD-1/PD-L1 adaptive immune response in early phase trials and to offer trials of PD-L1 inhibitors atezolizumab and pembrolizumab to lung cancer patients. His leadership in targeted therapeutics resulted in a 2020 ASCO plenary talk and publication of results of the third-generation EGFR-inhibitor osimertinib for the treatment of resected EGFR-mutant NSCLC in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In 2015 and again in 2020, his team at Yale was awarded a Lung Cancer SPORE (P50 grant) by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which has identified new immunotherapies and mechanisms of sensitivity and resistance to EGFR targeted therapies. His work has also been funded by ASCO, AACR, the United States Department of Defense, and by a AACR/ Stand Up to Cancer Dream Team grant.

His work on “umbrella” trials has galvanized the field of targeted therapy and cancer drug approvals at the FDA. Nationally, he works closely with public-private partnerships to develop large master protocol clinical studies. He was co-leader for the BATTLE-1 clinical trial program, co-leads the subsequent BATTLE-2 clinical trial program. and is principal investigator (PI) of the Lung Master Protocol (Lung-MAP). He testified on this before the House of Representatives 21st Century Cures committee and served as a prominent figure in this area, for nine years as a member of the National Academy of Medicine’s Cancer Policy Forum, for which he organized several meetings focused on policy issues in personalized medicine and tobacco control. He is currently the Vice Chair for Developmental Therapeutics for the Southwestern Oncology Group (SWOG) Lung Committee and PI of the SWOG 0819 trial.

After earning a B.S. and M.S. degree from Yale University, Dr. Herbst earned his M.D. at Cornell University Medical College and his Ph.D. in molecular cell biology at The Rockefeller University in New York City, New York. His postgraduate training included an internship and residency in medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. His clinical fellowships in medicine and hematology were completed at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, respectively. Subsequently, Dr. Herbst completed a M.S. degree in clinical translational research at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Dr. Herbst is a highly respected clinician­ scientist who has been a champion of translational medicine for decades, recently authoring a high-profile review of the 20-year progress in lung cancer. He has authored or co-authored more than 350 publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles, abstracts, and book chapters. His work has appeared in many prominent journals, such as the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Clinical Cancer Research, Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine. Work published in Nature was awarded the 2015 Herbert Pardes Clinical Research Excellence Award by the Clinical Research Forum. His abstracts have been presented at the annual meetings of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the World Conference on Lung Cancer, the Society of Nuclear Medicine Conference, and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer.

He is a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and a member of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR), where serves as Chair of the AACR Scientific Policy and Government Affairs Committee. He has been a major proponent of efforts to promote tobacco control and regulation (including e-cigarettes), authoring multiple policy statements and leading frequent Capitol Hill briefings. In 2019, he was elected to the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) board of directors. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and an elected member of the Association of American Physicians. He is vice chair of the Southwestern Oncology Group’s (SWOG) Lung Committee.

For his lifetime achievement in scientific contributions to thoracic cancer research, Dr. Herbst was awarded the 2016 Paul A. Bunn, Jr. Scientific Award by the IASLC at their 17th World Conference on Lung Cancer in Vienna, Austria. A team of Yale Cancer Center investigators led by Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, was awarded the 2018 Team Science Award from the Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) for its pioneering work in advancing our understanding of Immunotherapy. In 2020, Dr. Herbst was awarded the AACR Distinguished Public Service Award for Exceptional Leadership in Cancer Science Policy. Dr. Herbst is the recipient of the 2022 Giants of Cancer Care® award for Lung Cancer and was honored by Friends of Cancer Research in 2022 as one of their 25 scientific and advocacy leaders who, through their work and partnership, have been instrumental over the course of the last 25 years in making significant advancements for patients.

Dr. Jaffee is an internationally recognized expert in cancer immunology and pancreatic cancer. She is Deputy Director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, Co-Director of the Skip Viragh Pancreatic Cancer Center and Associate Director of the Bloomberg Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. Her research focus is on developing novel immunotherapies for the treatment and prevention of pancreatic cancer. Her recent work has focused on developing novel biomarker driven immunotherapy clinical trials to dissect the complex inflammatory signals within the tumor microenvironment. Through collaborations with computational biologists, her team has identified a number of immune suppressive signals that regulate pancreatic cancer development and progression.

Dr. Jaffee is a Past President of AACR. She has served on a number of committees at the National Cancer Institute, including the co-chair of the Biden Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel which identified high impact research priorities for the NCI. She currently serves as Chief Medical Advisor to the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research. She is the inaugural director of the Convergence Institute for Integrating Technologies and Computational Sciences at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Jaffee is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the SITC Academy of Immuno-Oncology and a Fellow of the AACR Academy. Most recently, she was appointed chair of President Biden’s Cancer Panel.

Robert D. Schreiber, PhD is the Andrew M. and Jane M. Bursky Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He is also professor of molecular microbiology, founding scientific director of the Bursky Center for Human Immunology and Immunotherapy Programs and co-head of the Tumor Immunology Program of the Washington University Siteman Comprehensive Cancer Center. Schreiber is a cytokine biologist and tumor immunologist who studies naturally- and therapeutically induced immune responses to cancer. At a time when the field had discounted any role for the immune system in cancer development and control, Schreiber showed conclusively that the immune system is not only capable of preventing cancer outgrowth but also sculpting cancer immunogenicity by a process he called cancer immunoediting. Based on that work, Schreiber and colleagues went on to show that tumor specific mutant neoantigens are favored targets of cancer immunoediting and of immune checkpoint therapy and can be used to generate effective therapeutic anti-cancer responses in both mouse models of cancer and in human cancer patients. This work has formed the foundation for a personalized cancer immunotherapy approach that is being used and tested in multiple institutions across the world.

During his career, Dr. Schreiber has received many distinguished awards and honors including, among others, the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute (CRI); the Charles Rodolphe Brupbacher Prize for Cancer Research; the Balzan Prize; the Lloyd Old Prize from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and CRI; the 2023 Richard V. Smalley Memorial Award from the Society for the Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), the 2023 AACR-Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship Award and the 2024 Takeda/New York Academy of Sciences Innovators in Science Award in Cancer Immunology (Senior Scientist).

Schreiber is a Fellow of The American Association for the Advancement of Science, The American Association for Cancer Research Academy, The American Association of Immunologists, and the Academy of Immuno-Oncology (SITC). He is also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences.

Stephen A. Sherwin, M.D., has spent over 35 years in the biotechnology industry, helping to create and manage companies that discover and develop new treatments for patients with cancer. Dr. Sherwin was the first medical doctor hired by Genentech, Inc. and served as its Vice President of Clinical Research. During his career, Dr. Sherwin co-founded and served as Chief Executive Officer and/or Chairman of industry-leading companies. Dr. Sherwin served as the Chief Executive Officer of Cell Genesys, Inc., an immuno-oncology company that developed GVAX (a first-generation whole tumor cell vaccine) and first-generation CAR T cells, and was Chairman from 1994 until the company’s merger in 2009 with BioSante Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (now ANI Pharmaceuticals, Inc.). He co-founded and served as Chairman of Abgenix, Inc., an antibody company focused on oncology that was acquired by Amgen Inc. for $2.2 billion in 2006. He co-founded and served as Chairman of Ceregene, Inc., a gene therapy company acquired by Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc. in 2013. He served on the Board of Directors of Neon Therapeutics, Inc., an immuno-oncology company developing both personal and shared neoantigen targeted cancer vaccines and T cell modalities, until its merger with BioNTech SE in 2020. Dr. Sherwin currently serves as a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. He also serves as an Advisory Partner at Third Rock Ventures, a leading healthcare venture firm, and as a director of Biogen Inc. and Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. In addition to his corporate experience, Dr. Sherwin has also served on the Board of Directors of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization from 2001 to 2014, serving as Chairman from 2009 to 2011, been on the staff of the National Cancer Institute, and served on the President’s Council of Advisors in Science and Technology Working Group on Drug Development from 2011 to 2013. Dr. Sherwin is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a volunteer Attending Physician in Hematology-Oncology at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Sherwin holds a B.A. in Biology, summa cum laude, from Yale University and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.

Clinical Advisory Board

Dr. Abul Abbas, MBBS currently serves as distinguished professor and Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Pathology at the University of California San Francisco. He received his medical degree in India, completed training in Pathology at Harvard and joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he rose to become Professor of Pathology and Head of the Immunology Research Division. In 1999, after twenty years on the Harvard faculty, he moved to the University of California at San Francisco as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pathology. Dr. Abbas has received several honors, including election to the National Academy of Medicine, election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Rous-Whipple Award and Robbins Educator Award of the American Society of Investigative Pathology. He has served as one of the founding Editors and Associate Editor of Immunity, Associate Editor and Section Editor for The Journal of Immunology, Associate Editor of Cell, Consulting Editor of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, and founding Editor of the Annual Review of Pathology: Mechanisms of Disease. From 2011-2013, he was the President of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS). Dr. Abbas’ research interests are in Immunology, with a focus on the control of immune responses and the causes of autoimmunity. His laboratory has used experimental models to analyze the generation and maintenance of regulatory T cells. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers and invited reviews, and is the author of four widely read textbooks, two in Immunology and two in Pathology. He has taught Immunology at Harvard Medical School and UCSF, and has organized and conducted Immunology courses worldwide.

Dr. Bazhenova is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, Lung Cancer Unit Leader and a Director of the Hematology Oncology training program. Dr. Bazhenova’s clinical practice and research concentrate on lung cancer. Dr. Bazhenova has vast experience in clinical trial management, design and implementation. She serves a vice chair of UC San Diego Protocol Review and Monitoring committee. Dr. Bazhenova is a member of Alliance Respiratory Committee. She is a recipient of NCI Clinical Trial Leadership Award, San Diego Best Doctors awards and Women Who Mean Business Award. Her main research interest is drug development. Dr. Bazhenova completed her M.D. at Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. She graduated from Internal medicine residency at University of California Los Angeles/ West Los Angeles VA medical center and then completed a fellowship in Hematology-Oncology at Scripps-Green Hospital in La Jolla in 2005 and has been in practice at NCI designated UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center since 2005.

Jack Bui, MD, PhD is Director of University of California, San Diego Stem Cell Processing Laboratory and Flow Cytometry and Immunology Laboratory, and interfaces between the cancer research and immunology programs. Dr. Bui also serves as an associate professor in the Department of Pathology, at UC San Diego’s Moore Cancer Center. He is a board-certified clinical pathologist with expertise in tumor immunology and immune function tests. Much of his laboratory research has focused on conducting studies on cells and tissues from biopsies and excisions to understand immune recognition of uninfected, stressed or damaged tissues, such as tumor cells and transplantable normal cells. Dr. Bui received his PhD, focused on T cell memory, in the laboratory of Steve Hedrick at UCSD. He also received his MD at UCSD and completed postgraduate training at Washington University in St. Louis, as a postdoctoral fellow on innate immunity and cancer with Robert Schreiber studying how innate cells and T-regulatory cells influence tumor formation.

Dr Adil Daud is an expert in immunotherapy and has pioneered the development of novel immunotherapeutics and targeted therapies. His fellowship in medical oncology was at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and was a faculty member at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fl. He is currently Professor of Medicine and Dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the director of the Melanoma Program and melanoma clinical research at the Helen Diller Family Cancer Center at UCSF.

He leads the development of IL-12 in melanoma and has developed novel technology to deliver it in vivo. He has played a major role in developing PD-1 antibodies in cancer therapy. Recently he has developed novel assays to determine immune responsiveness in vivo. These assays can determine the likelihood of response to immune therapy and provide novel imsights into immune drug development. He has collaborated on numerous clinical and translational clinical trials that have yielded insights into the use of immunotherapy. A full list of publications is at https://profiles.ucsf.edu/adil.daud.

As a physician–scientist, Dr. Hideho Okada has been dedicated to brain tumor immunology and the development of effective immunotherapy for brain tumor patients for over 20 years. He is a Professor of Neurosurgery at University of California, San Francisco, a member of Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, and serves as an associate editor for Neuro-Oncology. He received his MD and PhD from Nagoya University School of Medicine. Dr. Okada conducted one of the first immune gene therapy trials in patients with malignant glioma, and led the team that was one of the first labs to discover cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes in glioma-associated and glioma-specific antigens. Dr. Okada’s seminal discovery of CTL epitopes in glioma-associated antigens and the work on the mechanisms underlying the adjuvant effects of poly-ICLC enabled him to launch novel glioma vaccine trials in combination with poly-ICLC as an adjuvant. These efforts have also been supported by his mechanistic studies delineating the role of anintegrin receptor very late activation antigen (VLA)-4 and the chemokine CXCL10 in facilitating entry of CTLs to the brain tumor site. Dr. Okada has translated these discoveries into a number of innovative immunotherapy clinical studies in vaccine trials for both adult and pediatric brain tumor patients. Dr. Okada’s discoveries have also led to two currently active multicenter trials (NCT02078648 and NCT02960230), each involving 15 or more sites. Most recently, Dr. Okada has developed a novel chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) against epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)viii and cloned a high affinity T-cell receptor against H3.3K27M, both of which are glioma-specific antigens. Dr. Okada’s team has also pioneered in discoveries of novel immunoregulatory mechanisms in gliomas, such as one mediated by myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) and mutations of the isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) enzymes IDH1 and IDH2. To improve radiologic evaluation criteria for brain tumor patients undergoing immunotherapy, Dr. Okada leads an international group of brain tumor immunotherapy experts to develop novel iRANO criteria.

Dr. David Reardon, MD is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and currently serves as Clinical Director of the Center for Neuro-Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He previously served as the Associate Deputy Director of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University Medical Center for eleven years. He completed his residency at John Hopkins Hospital in Maryland, USA and was awarded a fellowship at the University of Michigan. Dr. Reardon is an active researcher with special interests in the design and implementation of clinical trials for neuro-oncology and the preclinical evaluation of promising therapeutics for central nervous system tumors. His work includes using innovative clinical therapeutic agents to improve outcome for patients with brain and spinal tumors, with particular focus on immunotherapeutics. He has also led investigations of molecular-targeting agents, anti-angiogenic reagents, cytotoxins and other biologically-based therapies. Dr. Reardon has published over 270 peer-reviewed manuscripts. He received the R. Wayne Rundles Award for Excellence in Cancer Research as well as the Award for Excellence in Adult Clinical Research by the Society for Neuro-Oncology in 2015 and 2016. He also served as the tenth president of the Society for Neuro-Oncology from 2013-2015.