Rakesh Dixit is a President & CEO, BIONAVIGEN, LLC, a biopharmaceutical virtual drug development company specializing in advising and consulting for all aspects of drug development, including discovery, preclinical development, CMC, translational sciences, clinical development and regulatory filing. Accomplished executive, inventor, and scientist with over 30 years of success with top biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Medimmune, AstraZeneca.
Stefan Glück, MD, PhD, FRCPC is medical oncologist and currently is VP, Head Oncology franchise in Medical affairs at Regeneron. He leads a fast growing team of internal experts in the field of Hematology and Oncology. Prior to that he was V.P. Global Medical Affairs, at Celgene Corporation since October 2014 until December 2019. He oversaw oncology activities worldwide, as well as the Immuno-Oncology program in solid tumors and hematology. He also contributed to activities of Celgene around Early Assets.
He previously served as a Sylvester Professor in the Department of Medicine at Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Florida until September 2014. From 2003–2008, he was the Clinical Director of the Braman Family Breast Cancer Institute, and from January 2009 - December 2010 Assistant Director of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and Associate Chief, Division Hematology & Medical Oncology. He has been a PI of 37 clinical studies of breast cancer in Miami, as well as investigator in numerous scientific, translational projects. Before his move to Miami, Dr. Glück was Director of Southern Alberta Breast Cancer Program at the Tom Baker Cancer Center, a Professor in the departments of oncology, medicine, pharmacology & therapeutics at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and Deputy Head, Dept. of Oncology at the University of Calgary. He completed his medical studies at the Free University of West Berlin, Germany. The internship in Berlin was followed by residency in internal medicine and fellowship in hematology at the Heinrich Heine Universität in Düsseldorf, Germany, and a medical oncology & bone marrow transplant fellowship at the Princess Margaret Hospital, University of Toronto, Canada.
Dr. Glück was presented the “America’s Top Oncologists” 2008 award from Consumers’ Research Council of America, as well as “Best Doctors in America” honor since 2006, and has annually earned that prestige every year to 2014. This award was warranted after less than 3 years of working in the United States.
Shailendra Singh (Shelly) is a member of MarketsandMarket's board. He focuses on global sales and client services functions, as well as commercial optimization at MarketsandMarkets. He has years of expe¬rience in global delivery and outsourcing sector in the IT/ Consulting/Analytics/Big Data sectors. Prior to MnM, he was leading the global sales, client services and commercial ef¬fectiveness functions for Mu Sigma, a unicorn company and a leading global provider of Decision Sciences and Big Data analytics solutions.
Roy Baynes is Senior Vice President Global Clinical Development and Chief Medical Officer at Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway, New Jersey. He was previously Senior Vice President of Oncology, Inflammation and Respiratory Therapeutics at Gilead Sciences and prior to that was Vice President Global Clinical Development and Therapeutic Area (TA) Head for Hematology / Oncology, at Amgen Inc. In the early years of his tenure at Amgen before becoming TA head of Hematology / Oncology in Clinical Development he was TA head for Hematology / Oncology in Global Medical Affairs. He graduated as a Medical Doctor and obtained a Master of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has had a long and distinguished career in the haematology-oncology-and stem cell transplantation fields, including drug development, basic research, clinical practice, clinical research, teaching and administration. He is a member of many international societies, including the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and has authored some 150 publications. He has been recurrently named among America’s top physicians. Before joining Amgen in 2002, he was the Charles Martin Professor of Cancer Research at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, an NCI designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Rakesh Dixit is a President & CEO, BIONAVIGEN, LLC, a biopharmaceutical virtual drug development company specializing in advising and consulting for all aspects of drug development, including discovery, preclinical development, CMC, translational sciences, clinical development and regulatory filing. Accomplished executive, inventor, and scientist with over 30 years of success with top biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Medimmune, AstraZeneca.
Stefan Glück, MD, PhD, FRCPC is medical oncologist and currently is VP, Head Oncology franchise in Medical affairs at Regeneron. He leads a fast growing team of internal experts in the field of Hematology and Oncology. Prior to that he was V.P. Global Medical Affairs, at Celgene Corporation since October 2014 until December 2019. He oversaw oncology activities worldwide, as well as the Immuno-Oncology program in solid tumors and hematology. He also contributed to activities of Celgene around Early Assets.
He previously served as a Sylvester Professor in the Department of Medicine at Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Florida until September 2014. From 2003–2008, he was the Clinical Director of the Braman Family Breast Cancer Institute, and from January 2009 - December 2010 Assistant Director of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and Associate Chief, Division Hematology & Medical Oncology. He has been a PI of 37 clinical studies of breast cancer in Miami, as well as investigator in numerous scientific, translational projects. Before his move to Miami, Dr. Glück was Director of Southern Alberta Breast Cancer Program at the Tom Baker Cancer Center, a Professor in the departments of oncology, medicine, pharmacology & therapeutics at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and Deputy Head, Dept. of Oncology at the University of Calgary. He completed his medical studies at the Free University of West Berlin, Germany. The internship in Berlin was followed by residency in internal medicine and fellowship in hematology at the Heinrich Heine Universität in Düsseldorf, Germany, and a medical oncology & bone marrow transplant fellowship at the Princess Margaret Hospital, University of Toronto, Canada.
Dr. Glück was presented the “America’s Top Oncologists” 2008 award from Consumers’ Research Council of America, as well as “Best Doctors in America” honor since 2006, and has annually earned that prestige every year to 2014. This award was warranted after less than 3 years of working in the United States.
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Dr. Morrison is President, Chief Medical Officer, Board Chairmen of OmniSeq Inc., an advanced diagnostic oncology focused laboratory company, and Senior Vice President at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center (RPCCC) in Buffalo, NY . Dr. Morrison founded the Center for Personalized Medicine at RPCCC in 2012, which eventually led to the the founding of OmniSeq. in Buffalo, New York. Dr Morrison is also a Professor and Program Member in Cancer Genetics at RPCCC. Recognized nationally for his work in translational medicine, Dr. Morrison has authored or co-authored more than 150 peer-reviewed manuscripts with a focus on molecular pathology. Dr. Morrison is a Member of the College of American Pathologists and the Association for Molecular Pathology and has served on many national committees related to molecular pathology testing, most recently being the CMS PAMA panel.
Emmanuel Normant is vice president of preclinical sciences at TG Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech company focused on hematologic cancers and located in New-York. There, he leads the three early pipeline programs, including a novel irreversible BTK inhibitor, and anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody and a bispecific antibody directed against CD19 and CD47. All three assets have entered a phase 1 dose-escalation clinical trial in hematologic cancers. Dr Normant joined TG Therapeutics 2 years ago, bringing 18 years expertise in cancer biology, pharmacology, I-O, cancer epigenetic and preclinical sciences. He has participated to 9 IND fillings and authored more than 50 publications. Emmanuel Normant received his Pharmacy and PhD degrees from the Paris-Sorbonne University.
Vicki Plaks is a Principal Scientist with the Department of Translational Medicine at Kite, A Gilead Company. Vicki is supporting development of CAR-T therapeutics in B cell malignancies. As a Translational Lead to various clinical programs, Vicki is focusing on clinical pharmacology and biomarker strategies to expand YESCARTA into new indications and facilitate next generation programs as well as understanding mechanisms of CAR-T related toxicities. Prior to Kite, Vicki had worked at Genentech, where she gained experience in supporting cancer immunotherapy antibody drug development, while leading bioanalysis, circulating biomarker strategies and assay development for solid tumors. From her time as a postdoc and Assistant Adjunct Prof at UCSF, Vicki gained extensive expertise in leading pre-clinical targeted cancer drug discovery research for breast cancer. She focused on tumor stromal immunobiology and cancer stem cell signaling. Thus far, Vicki published numerous (28) first author, senior author and collaborative peer-reviewed publications.
Dr. Borriello is Harvard Trained Pathologist having trained at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the division of immunology where he worked with Arlene Sharpe and Gordon Freeman on the B7-CD28 pathway; co-authoring several pivotal papers in the costimulatory field. He obtained his MD, PhD degrees at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NYC where he also worked with Dr. Stanley Nathenson on structure-function relationships in the MHC Class I surface antigens. Dr. Borriello transitioned from academic life to the pharmaceutical/financial sectors in 1999 and has been a pharma business development professional since 2006. In 2016, he was the head of search and evaluation at Baxalta across multiple therapeutic areas until the Shire acquisition, after which he left to found Alloplex Biotherapeutics in pursuit of an idea of his own invention in tumor immunology. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in the Boston area.
Dr. Oppenheim is a Principal Investigator and Chief of the section of Cellular Immunity of the Cancer and Inflammation Program at the National Cancer Institute which focuses on the effects of inflammation and the immune response on cancer. Dr. Oppenheim obtained his M.D. degree from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, trained as a clinical associate at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Bethesda, Maryland, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Birmingham, England, in immunology. He returned to the National Institute of Dental Research and subsequently headed the Section of Cellular Immunology. Dr. Oppenheim pioneered the development of cytokine, chemokine and alarmin fields of research. He is currently studying the role of alarmins that activate toll-like receptors, in inducing immunity to cancer. He has been engaged in translational studies aimed at utilizing alarmins as adjuvants in vaccines for use against infectious agents and tumors. He is also investigating means of blocking the immunosuppressive limb of immunity as exerted by T regulatory cells to augment antitumor immunity.
Natalie Russi works as Scientific Project Manager for NEBION AG, the premier provider of curated gene expression data and tools for innovative biopharmaceutical research. As PhD-level scientist from ETH Zurich her expertise is in the field of transcriptomics. Natalie is passionate about oncology and wants to advance immuno-oncology research by supporting researchers to harness the great potential of public gene expression data.
Li Peng is SVP of Discovery and Early Product Development at Palleon Pharmaceuticals, a leading biotechnology company focused on developing Glyco-Immune Checkpoint therapeutics to treat cancer. Li led the invention of two core platform technologies at Palleon – the EAGLE platform for targeting glyco-immune checkpoint ligands and the HYDRA platform for enabling patient stratification. Previously, she worked at Medimmune/AstraZeneca for ~10 years with increasing responsibilities from antibody engineering and characterization to leading drug discovery programs and cross-functional project teams. Li has a PhD in Biochemistry, MS in Genetics, and BS in Biology. She has published ~30 papers and authored >10 patents and applications.
Sebastien Tabruyn holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Liege (Belgium). After 10 years of experience as Project leader in renowned international academic research institutes including UCSF (California, USA), the Centre for Cancer Biology (Adelaide, Australia) and the University of Maastricht (Netherlands), he joined TransCure bioServices in 2013 as Head of Molecular Biology and Oncology. Sebastien Tabruyn published 30 peer-reviewed publications in the field of Oncology, Angiogenesis, Inflammation and Immunity
Megan leads the Functional Genomics group at Caribou Biosciences where her team is applying CRISPR-Cas9 technology with enhanced editing specificity to generate allogeneic T cell therapeutics. As part of these efforts, Megan and her colleagues have developed methodologies to characterize genome editing events, including a high throughput sequencing workflow to profile DNA repair outcomes at Cas9-dependent double-strand breaks. Prior to joining Caribou, Megan was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Molecular Biology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where she investigated the genetic and structural requirements for programmed DNA double-strand breaks during meiosis. Megan received her PhD in Cell Biology and Genetics from the Rockefeller University for identifying and characterizing a novel nuclease critical for mammalian telomere maintenance.
Dr. Williams is the President and CEO of BriaCell Corporation, where he has shepherded Bria-IMT™ into the clinic, established positive proof-of-concept, forged a collaboration with Incyte for novel combinations and coordinated the development of an off-the-shelf personalized approach to cancer immunotherapy. While at Incyte Corporation as Head of Exploratory Development, he brought numerous molecules into the clinic and established proof of concept in several disease areas. At GlaxoSmithKline he worked to bring several molecules into the clinic, ran a biomarker laboratory and spearheaded initiatives to utilize emerging technologies in drug development. At the University of Pennsylvania, he developed novel methods of bioactive peptide design, ran a major research program in receptor biology, and was able to bring novel therapies into the clinic. He has been involved in several successful new drug applications, including drugs for lymphoma, ovarian cancer, osteoporosis, nausea and vomiting, myelofibrosis and polycythemia vera.
Rajesh Singh is Laboratory Director at Abzyme Therapeutics. Rajesh oversees Abzyme Therapeutics programs to develop modular single domain VHH antibody fragments for therapeutic application including immune-oncology. Prior to joining Abzyme, he was Assistant Director of R&D at LifeSensors, a biotechnology company that develops enabling technologies for therapeutic, drug discovery, and research markets with focus on ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like protein pathways. Rajesh obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from University of Cologne, Germany and post-doctoral training from University of Maryland, College Park.
Dr. Qingcong Lin is SVP of Biocytogen and CEO of Biocytogen Boston Corporation, focusing on providing services on gene-targeting and humanized mouse models, using cutting-edge ESC and CRISPR-Cas9 technology for immuno-oncology antibody candidate in vivo efficacy and toxicity assessment. Prior to joining Biocytogen, Dr. Lin was SVP of Shenogen Pharma Group. Dr. Lin has extensive expertise in multiple therapeutic areas, including cancer, CVMD, neurology, immunology & inflammation and various technologies, including genetically engineered mouse models, therapeutic antibody engineering, affinity maturation and optimization. Prior to joining Sheongen, Dr. Lin worked at Pfizer as a principal research scientist II and group leader of antibody engineering group. Before joining Pfizer, he worked at Wyeth and Harvard Medical School as Director of Gene Modification Lab of Harvard-Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics. Dr. Lin received Ph.D. from Albert-Einstein College of Medicine and completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School.
Thomas has 18 years of combined drug discovery and development experience in both small and large biopharmaceutical industry. He has led cross-functional and global project teams and external alliances spanning different therapeutic areas, including oncology, autoimmunity and infectious disease. Currently, Thomas oversees immunology discovery efforts and translational studies at Elstar Therapeutics. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle. Thomas has over 60 publications and book editorials and has held adjunct faculty position in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis.
Girish Naik is a physician by training. He received his MBBS degree (Bacherlor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) degree in 2011 from RGUHS and MD (Doctor of Medicine) degree (residency) from the Christian Medical College, Vellore in India. Subsequently he obtained his DAS in Pharmacetuical Medicine from the University of Basel in Switzerland and most recently the MMSc degree from Harvard Medical School (HMS) in 2018. During his training at HMS, he completed a two year clinical research fellowship at the Dana-Faber Cancer Institue (DFCI), Center for Immuno-oncology (CIO)/Melanoma. Prior to his training at HMS and DFCI, he worked for two years at a biopharmacetuical company Biocon in India as the medical lead for the clinical development of novel monoclonal antibodies in the area of Oncology/Immuno-oncology. He currently works as a Medical Director at Leap Therapeutics Inc. in Cambridge, MA and leads the development of agonist immunotherapies.
Soldano Ferrone received his MD and PhD degrees in 1964 and in 1971, respectively, from the University of Milan, Milan, Italy. He has held faculty positions at many academic Institutions in the States. Since 2012 he is a faculty member of the Department of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. Dr. Ferrone’s research program focuses on the molecular characterization of escape mechanism(s) utilized by tumor cells to avoid immune recognition and destruction and on the development of combinatorial immunotherapeutic strategies to counteract the escape mechanism(s) utilized by tumor cells. These studies are greatly facilitated by the large panel of HLA antigen- and human tumor antigen-specific monoclonal antibodies he has developed and shared with the scientific community over the years. He has described the results of his studies in more than 600 papers published in peer reviewed journals.
Tabb Sullivan is a Senior Scientist and Project Leader at Integral Molecular, driving development of the Membrane Proteome Array platform for applications in novel therapeutic target discovery, antibody deorphaning and off-target ligand profiling. Dr. Sullivan obtained his PhD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he studied pathogenesis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Prior to joining Integral Molecular he was a postdoctoral fellow at Thomas Jefferson University studying MHC Class II restricted antigen presentation in the context of Rabies infection.
Tullia C. Bruno, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh and a faculty member in the Tumor Microenvironment Center and the Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. She obtained her Ph.D. in Immunology from Johns Hopkins in 2010 and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado in 2015—both with a focus in tumor immunology. While Dr. Bruno’s PhD training focused on inhibitory receptors on intratumoral T cells, she became interested in tumor infiltrating B cells during her postdoctoral fellowship and has built her independent research program around understanding their function in multiple human cancers, in particular, lung and head and neck cancer. Dr. Bruno’s overall research objective is to develop a B cell-specific immunotherapy in the next five to ten years.
Melissa Olekson obtained her PhD from Rutgers University in Biomedical Engineering and went on to do postdoctoral training through the National Research Council at the US Army Institute of Surgical Research. Through these experiences, she worked on projects with a focus on developing and testing wound healing treatments in cell culture and animal models. Since then, she has worked at PromoCell, providing support to scientists in academia and industry on cell culture models and protocols.
Dr. Balveen Kaur is Professor and John P. and Kathrine G. McGovern Distinguished Chair within the department of Neurological surgery. She has an active research interest in translational therapeutics and is considered an expert in the field of oncolytic viral therapy. Dr. Kaur has published more than 100 manuscripts and book chapters pertaining to cancer biology, tumor microenvironment and novel therapeutics. She has a strong track record of mentoring students and post-doctoral fellows. She also serves on several national/international committees, and has been an invited chair on several NIH study sections and review panels. She is Principal Investigator/Project leader on several NIH grants pertaining to Neuro-oncology.
Dr. Tesi has been our President, Chief Executive Officer and acting Chief Medical Officer since the formation of the Company in September 2015. Dr. Tesi was has been a biotech executive in public and private companies for the last 20 years with a focus on immunology and inflammation. Before that Dr. Tesi was an academic transplant surgeon performing liver, pancreas and kidney transplants. Dr. Tesi received his MD degree from Washington University School of Medicine in 1982.
Scott K. Durum PhD trained at Oak Ridge, National Jewish Denver and Yale before coming to the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health where he is chief of the Section of Cytokines and Immunity. His lab has studied the role of cytokines in the immune system, with a long interest in the IL-7 pathway which is essential for T lymphocyte development and survival. His lab together with collaborators found gain-of-function mutations in the IL-7 receptor that drive acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common cancer in children. They are currently studying the mechanism of leukemogenesis and developing therapeutics to target the pathway. He also plays in NIH’s band, the Affordable Rock n Roll Act.
Dr. Pan Zheng’s research interests are tumor immunology, cancer biology and signal transduction in hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) and cancer stem cells. Her laboratory has been working on TSC-mTOR signaling in rejuvenation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) and immunity. Using genetically modified mice with conditionally deletion of hematopoietic lineage cells, they demonstrated that mTOR inhibition is critical to maintain hematopoietic stem cell quiescence. Activation of mTOR in HSC increased mitochondrial biogenesis and elevated levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The most important finding with immediate clinical implication is that short-term rapamycin treatment greatly enhanced the efficacy of influenza vaccination in aged mice. Her collaboration with Dr. Yang Liu’s laboratory identified CD24-Siglec signaling pathway in regulating host defense to tissue damage induced inflammation. Dr. Yang Liu and Dr. Pan Zheng are co-founders and executives in OncoImmune, Inc. The company has completed the Phase II clinical trial on leading product, CD24Fc, for the prevention of acute graft vs host disease for patients undergo hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The pre-clinical and clinical studies have demonstrated that CD24-Siglec pathway is critical in pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases, metabolic syndrome, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), HIV chronic inflammation, and immunotherapy related adverse events (irAE).
Dr. Greving has a passion for innovation and an awarded track record in commercialization of technologies that advance pharma and biotech discovery. Dr. Greving founded his first company 20 years ago to develop new software algorithms that made the large data stores housed on legacy mainframe systems accessible to modern internet-based systems. Many of the core algorithms he developed continue to serve as an architectural framework for today’s big data, highly-parallel transaction processing systems. In 2010 Dr. Greving completed his Ph.D. in Biochemistry. His thesis research produced some of the key innovations and intellectual property behind HealthTell’s Immunosignature technology for diagnostics. Dr. Greving completed his post-doctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) with a focus on metabolomics and high-throughput mass spectrometry. After his post-doctoral work, Dr. Greving founded Nextval, where he developed a new array-based mass spectrometry laboratory and software platform that set a new standard in high-throughput enzyme screening. Notably, his developments at Nextval resulted in receiving two prestigious innovation awards. First, The Society of Lab Automation and Screening (SLAS) 2012 “Innovation of the Year Award” for his high-throughput drug toxicity screening platform. Second, R&D Magazine’s “2013 R&D 100 Oscar of Innovation” for his high-throughput enzyme screening platform. After successfully exiting Nextval, Dr. Greving joined HealthTell as a Principal Scientist to continue development on the Immunosignature technology. In addition, he initiated the R&D to apply HealthTell’s high-density library platform towards significantly advancing therapeutic discovery, which ultimately resulted in the spin-out of RubrYc.
Omar has 20 years of pharmaceutical experience at Roche, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson. He has developed and led multiple blockbuster launches in the US and globally and is an expert in immunology and immuno-oncology drug development. He has also led development & commercialization of Janssen's $10B+ immunology portfolio.
