Scientific Advisory Board

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Dr Jerome (Jerry) Zeldis

Jerome B. Zeldis is President of Clinical Research and Regulatory and Chief Medical Officer of Sorrento Therapeutics. He was CEO of Celgene Global Health and Chief Medical Officer of Celgene Corporation, Summit, NJ until June 2016. Prior to that he was Celgene’s Senior Vice President of Clinical Research and Medical Affairs and has been at Celgene since February, 1997. He attended Brown University for an A.B., M.S., followed by Yale University for an M.Phil., M.D., Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry (immunochemistry). Dr Zeldis trained in Internal Medicine at the UCLA Center for the Health Sciences and Gastroenterology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He was Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, Associate Professor of Medicine at University of California, Davis, Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Cornell Medical School and Professor of Clinical Medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Prior to working at Celgene, Dr Zeldis worked at Sandoz Research Institute and Janssen Research Institute in both clinical research and medical development. He has been a board member of a few start-up biotechnology companies and is currently on the board of the Semorex Corporation, PTC Corporation, Soligenix, Trek Therapeutics and Metastat. He has published 123 peer reviewed articles and 44 US patents.

Professor Daniel Von Hoff
Daniel D. Von Hoff, M.D., F.A.C.P., is currently Physician in Chief, Distinguished Professor Translational Research at TGen (Translational Genomics Research Institute) in Phoenix, Arizona. He is also Senior Consultant, Clinical Investigations for the City of Hope; Chief Scientific Officer for Honor Health Research Institute; Medical Director of Research, Chief Scientific Officer, US Oncology, and Professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic. Dr. Von Hoff’s major interest is in the development of new anticancer agents, both in the clinic and in the laboratory.  He and his colleagues were involved in the beginning of the development of many of the agents we now use routinely, including:  mitoxantrone, fludarabine, paclitaxel, docetaxel, gemcitabine, irinotecan, nelarabine, capecitabine, lapatinib, vismodegibm, nab-paclitaxel, nal-IRI, and others.

At present, he and his colleagues are concentrating on the development of molecularly targeted therapies for patients with pancreatic and other advanced cancers. Dr. Von Hoff has published more than 690 papers, 140 book chapters and over 1400 abstracts. Dr. Von Hoff received the 2010 David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology for his outstanding contributions to cancer research leading to significant improvement in patient care. Dr. Von Hoff was appointed to President Bush’s National Cancer Advisory Board in 2004-2010. Dr. Von Hoff is the past President of the American Association for Cancer Research (the world’s largest cancer research organization), a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, and a member and past board member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

He is a founder of ILEX Oncology, Inc. (acquired by Genzyme after ILEX had  two agents, alemtuzumab and clofarabine, approved by the FDA for patients with leukemia). Dr. Von Hoff is founder and the Editor Emeritus of Investigational New Drugs – The Journal of New Anticancer Agents; and, past Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. He is a co-founder of the AACR/ASCO Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop. He is also proud to have been a mentor and teacher for multiple medical students, medical oncology fellows, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows.

Professor Andrew MacDonald
Andrew MacDonald completed his PhD studying immunity to helminth parasites at the University of Edinburgh in 1998. After several years in the U.S., first at Cornell University and then at the University of Pennsylvania, he returned to the UK in 2002 to the University of Edinburgh where he established his lab through successive MRC Career Development and Senior Fellowships at the Institute of Immunology and Infection Research.

In January 2013 he took up the position of Professor of Immunology at the Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research (MCCIR). His research addresses some outstanding fundamental questions about activation and modulation of immunity by a specialized type of innate cell – dendritic cells. He joined the Immodulon Scientific Advisory Board in March 2016.

Dr Christopher Lowry

Christopher A. Lowry, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology and Center for Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) and Center for Neuroscience, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, a Principal Investigator in the Department of Veterans Affairs Eastern Colorado Health Care System, VA Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research, Education, & Clinical Center (MIRECC), director of the Behavioural Neuroendocrinology Laboratory at CU Boulder, and Co-Director of the Military and Veteran Microbiome Consortium for Research and Education (MVM-CoRE). Dr. Lowry was recently awarded a Young Investigator award from the Brain & Behaviour Research Foundation, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, and the Donald F. Klein Early Career Investigator Award from the Anxiety Disorders Association of America. Dr. Lowry’s research program focuses on understanding 1) stress-related physiology and behaviour with an emphasis on the microbiome-gut-brain axis, including the role of serotonin, a chemical signalling molecule in the body and the brain, and 2) neural mechanisms underlying anxiety and affective disorders, and development of novel strategies for both the prevention and treatment of these disorders and their medical comorbidity, such as allergy, asthma, and inflammatory bowel disease. He has published ~115 peer-reviewed articles and is currently an editorial board member for Stress: The International Journal on the Biology of Stress, and Brain, Behaviour, and Immunity. The National Institute of Mental Health, Office of Naval Research, Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Research and Development (VA-ORD), Colorado Clinical & Translational Sciences Institute (CCTSI) Center for Neuroscience, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation currently fund his research.

Dr Jean Pierre Bizzari

Dr. Bizzari began working in the pharmaceutical industry in 1983 as Head of Oncology at the Institut de Recherches Internationales SERVIER (France). From 1993 to 2002 he served as Vice President, Clinical Development Oncology at Rhône-Poulenc Rorer (Aventis- Sanofi-Aventis). From 2002 until 2008, Dr. Bizzari was the Vice President of Clinical Oncology Development at Sanofi-Aventis where he oversaw the approval of a number of drugs including Eloxatin®, Taxotere®, Eloxatin and Elitek®.

Between 2008 to 2015 he was the executive vice president at Celgene in charge of clinical development and was in charge of Revlimid, Pomalist and Abraxane. Dr. Bizzari is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of France’s National Cancer Institute and Netrix Pharma, and serves on the board of Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc., Pieris, Oxford Bio Therapeutics, Nordic NanoVector, and Transgene SA. Dr. Bizzari received his medical degree from the University of Nice (France).

He is a specialist in oncology, having trained at La Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, followed by training at the Ontario Cancer Institute and McGill Cancer Center. He was appointed in June 2015 to the Board of EORTC located in Bruxelles and elected Chairman of the New Drug Advisory Committee. He was appointed to the Immodulon Board in 2016.

Professor Angus Dalgleish
Angus Dalgleish is the Foundation Professor of Oncology at St George’s, University of London and the Principal of the Institute for cancer vaccines and immunotherapy. His research has focused on the Immune response to HIV and Cancer. He was the co-discoverer of the finding that CD4 acted as the main receptor for HIV and that SLIM disease in Africa was caused by HIV infection. His work with Thalidomide (funded by Celgene) led to the analogue programme which resulted in Lenalidomide one of the biggest selling Oncology drugs in the world. He was awarded the Joshua Lederberg prize in 2011 by Celgene in recognition of his contribution. He was a pioneer of cancer vaccines in the UK and a co-founder of Onyvax. He was one of the first to realise that antigen specific vaccines fail if the underlying immune suppression is not addressed.

The observation of the long-term benefit of mycobacterium vaccae on advanced melanoma patients with regards to survival led to the resurrection of this and similar approaches by Immodulon leading to IMM-101.

His current research focuses on how combinations around this agent can synergise without added toxicity. He is a fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK and Australia, the Royal college of Pathologists UK and was voted a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001. He has published nearly 400 peer reviewed papers and co-edited 5 text books including ‘HIV and the new viruses’ and ‘Tumour Immunology’. He has been and is on the editorial board of many journals, and scientific councils and boards including those in Australia, Canada, Austria, Italy and the EU framework programme. In 2017 he was made a visiting Professor at the Earle Chiles Research Institute in Portland, Oregon (USA)

Dr Satvinder Mudan

Dr Mudan joined Immodulon in 2007. He has a long and distinguished career in cancer medicine. His interests include surgery for cancers of the oesophagus and stomach, pancreas, bile ducts and the liver, and he is part of the sarcoma unit for cancers of the retroperitoneum. His surgical training includes Senior Registrar posts in London, Southampton and Portsmouth, and full training in surgical oncology at clinical-fellowship level in two major cancer centres overseas: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York) and The National Cancer Centre Hospital (Tokyo). He qualified in Medicine from St Bartholomew’s Hospital medical School, University of London in 1986. He also has an MD by thesis in cell biology from University of London. He is a Fellow of The Royal College of Surgeons of England and has been on the specialist register for General Surgery since 1999.

Professor Olivera (Olja) Finn
Dr. Finn is University of Pittsburgh Distinguished Professor of Immunology and Surgery and Founding Chair of the Department of Immunology, the position she held from 2001 to 2013. She was Program Leader of the Cancer Immunology Program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute from 1991 to 2014. After receiving her PhD in Immunology at Stanford University in 1980 and completing her postdoctoral training there in 1982, Dr. Finn moved to Duke University and in 1991 to the University of Pittsburgh. She gained prominence through her original focus on transplantation biology and later through her basic and applied research focused on tumor antigens and the development of cancer vaccines.

She has an extensive track record of research accomplishments reported in over 170 peer-reviewed papers and numerous reviews and book chapters. She is the discoverer of the MUC1 tumor antigen and has published extensively and continuously for the last 30 years on her basic and preclinical work on the development and evaluation of MUC1 cancer vaccines. She has been a co-investigator on a dozen clinical trials of various MUC1 vaccines in pancreatic, colon, breast, prostate and lung cancer. Dr. Finn and her team also identified cyclin B1 as a tumor antigen and published several papers on its excellent potential as a cancer vaccine. Her current efforts are on the development of preventative cancer vaccines.

She is on editorial boards of many cancer journals and advisory boards of many cancer centers and several companies. She is an active member of the American Association of Immunologists where she served seven years as Council member and one year as President. She is also a member of the American Association for Cancer Research and Past Chair of the Steering Committee of the AACR Cancer Immunology (CIMM) Working Group. She has served and currently serves on NCI study sections and was a member of the NCI Board of Councilors. She has received many honors the most recent being the 2016 American Association of Immunologists Life Time Achievement Award, the 2017 National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigator Award, the 2017 AACR CRI Lloyd Old Cancer Immunology Prize and the 2019 SITC Richard V Smalley Memorial Award.