January 12, 2022 09:30 AM Eastern Standard Time
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LEXINGTON, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Elpis Biopharmaceuticals, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing next generation multifunctional immunotherapies to transform cancer treatment, today announced the appointment of Vincenzo Bronte, M.D., of the University of Verona in Italy, to its Scientific Advisory Board. Additionally, the company has entered into a collaboration with Dr. Bronte’s laboratory to discover and develop human therapeutic antibodies against inhibitory myeloid derived suppressive cells (MDSCs), which play key roles in suppressing the immune cell activation within tumors. “I am honored to welcome Dr. Bronte to our Scientific Advisory Board. It is exciting to collaborate with his team to develop novel immunotherapeutic antibodies,” said Yan Chen, President and Chief Executive Officer at Elpis Biopharmaceuticals. “Dr. Bronte is a world leader in the biology of myeloid cells, which are central to the mechanisms of immunosuppression in cancer. His tremendous expertise in this area will undoubtedly strengthen the Elpis myeloid-related programs.” “I am delighted to be joining distinguished colleagues with great achievements in immuno-oncology on the Scientific Advisory Board of Elpis,” said Dr. Bronte. “I am equally enthusiastic about collaborating with Elpis on developing a novel therapeutical antibody program and further expanding the company’s myeloid biology portfolio, which already includes their exciting pre-clinical anti- Siglec15 mAb candidate.”
Under the collaboration, Elpis will discover fully human mAb candidates utilizing its proprietary mRNADisTM technology and leveraging mechanistic insights and immuno-suppression mechanism models developed by Dr. Bronte and his team at the University of Verona. The most promising candidate will be developed and commercialized by Elpis. Dr. Bronte is Full Professor of Immunology at the University of Verona, Head of the Immunology Section of the Department of Medicine of Verona University and of the Immunology Unit of the Verona University Hospital. He has received multiple awards, including the International Prize Francesco De Luca and the prize Guido Venosta for oncology researchers. He has authored 124 articles published in peer-reviewed journals and has been an editor of several immunology and oncology journals, including Frontiers in Immunology, Frontiers in Oncology, the Journal of Immunology, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Cancer Immunology Research and Cancer
Research. Among Dr. Bronte’s other achievements is his definition and characterization of myeloid- derived suppressor cells. He is also a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher (2018 to 2021).
About mRNADisTM and mSCAFoldTM Elpis’ proprietary mRNADisTM human antibody discovery and mSCAFoldTM cytokine engineering platforms enable rapid and robust discovery of multifunctional human antibodies and mechanism fine-tuned immunomodulators through precision modulation of the downstream mechanisms.
About Elpis Biopharmaceuticals Elpis Biopharmaceuticals is engineering and developing multifunctional immunotherapies, that modulate disease biology with great precision and safety to overcome cancer resistance. Through its proprietary mRNADisTM antibody discovery and mSCAFoldTM protein engineering platforms, Elpis is advancing a rich pipeline to treat solid tumors and hematological malignancies with the goal of improving outcomes for patients with difficult-to-treat and resistant cancers. The company’s lead immuno-oncology product candidates EPIM-001, a tumor-targeted engineered bifunctional IL-2Rβ agonist/anti-PDL1 with reduced IL-2Rα activation and EPB-001, an anti-Siglec15 mAb to treat solid tumors are being advanced to enter into clinical studies in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
Elpis is headquartered in Lexington, MA, with research labs in the U.S. and China.
Contacts Media: Karen Sharma MacDougall
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Charles Zhao, M.D., MBA, brings more than 20 years of drug development experience in oncology therapeutic area. Before Elpis, Charles served as CMO at ABM Therapeutics and Sr. Medical Director at Mirati Therapeutics. Previously, he was Medical Director at EMD Serono working on cMET inhibitor global program in hepatocellular carcinoma indication; MEK inhibitor early phase development program in multiple indications including pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, melanoma, NSCLC, CRC, TNBC, and CML; and MetAP2 inhibitor early phase development program. He was Associate Medical Director at Boehringer Ingelheim working on PLK1 inhibitor in urothelial carcinoma and AML indication. His career highlights also include his work at Novartis working on HDAC inhibitor in CTCL and PKC inhibitor in AML indication, and Eli Lilly in early phase clinical development.
Diala Ezzeddine, Ph.D. Diala is founder and CEO of Xios Therapeutics (Waltham, MA), a privately held, venture-backed drug discovery company. Xios is developing next generation oncology protein degrading therapeutics with the potential to transform the treatment and lives of cancer patients. From 2010 to 2015, Diala was EVP and Chief Business Officer of X-Chem. She was instrumental in crafting the company’s business strategy, obtaining an equity investment, and establishing multiple revenue generating partnerships with top tier pharmaceutical companies with a cumulative deal value surpassing $2B. In the course of her career, Diala held business development roles of increasing responsibility at several leading biotechnology companies in the Boston area including Millennium Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge, MA, now Takeda Pharmaceuticals), and Archemix Corp. (Cambridge, MA). In support of the companies’ corporate strategies, she structured and negotiated value creating partnerships with several of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Diala holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard Medical School obtained in 1997. Before that, she had conducted research in the Neurogenetics department at Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, MA). She is the lead author on a publication describing successful in vivo pre-clinical proof-of-concept for an innovative genetic engineering approach to treating malignant brain tumors.
Ahmad is the Vice President of Business Development and Corporate Strategy. Previously, he held roles in business development and corporate strategy at Epizyme and Momenta Pharmaceuticals. His diverse drug development experience includes roles in management consulting, commercial strategy, corporate finance, and program and portfolio management. Ahmad started his career in drug discovery as a research scientist at Abbvie, Vertex and Chiron. He holds a B.S in Chemistry from University of Massachusetts, an M.S. in Pharmacology from Northeastern University, and an MBA from F.W. Olin College of Business at Babson College.
Yan Chen, PhD: Founder, President and CEO. Yan brings more than 20 years of expertise in both mRNA display technology and biologic drug discovery in the oncology disease area. She was Biotherapeutics Discovery Head at Juno Therapeutics in Boston and Senior Vice President of Research at X-Body Biosciences which was acquired by Juno in 2015. Previously, she was an investigator and project leader in Oncology Biotherapeutics at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. Earlier in her career, she was a scientist at Phylos and Adnexus playing instrumental roles in establishing the mRNA antibody and protein display technology platforms. Yan was a postdoctoral trainee in Immunology at Tufts Medical School and received her PhD in Tumor Immunology from National University of Singapore. She is the co-inventor of more than 20 antibody technologies and biologic therapeutics patents.
Kehao Zhao, PhD: Co-founder, Chief Scientific Officer. Kehao brings more than 15 years of drug discovery experience in disease areas including cancer, liver disease and ophthalmology. Before Elpis, Kehao was a senior investigator at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research leading antibody therapeutics platform and cancer epigenetics research. Previously, Kehao was a scientist at Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals. Kehao completed postdoctoral training in Gene Expression & Regulation at the Wistar institute and received his PhD from the Institute of Biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Kehao has published over 30 research papers in prestigious scientific journals.