CALIDI BIOTHERAPEUTICS, INC. Calidi Biotherapeutics, Inc. announced the appointment of three new members to its Scientific and Medical Advisory Board. These oncology experts are among the country?s preeminent leaders in cancer biology and clinical care and join the company?s existing advisors who hail from top cancer research institutions and facilities collaborating with Calidi in the development of its novel immunotherapies targeting high-grade gliomas and solid tumors. Dr. Antonio Chiocca, M.D., Ph.D., serves as the Neurosurgeon-in-Chief and Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women?s Hospital.
He also leads the Institute for the Neurosciences as Co-director and is the Surgical Director at the Center for Neuro-oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Chiocca is a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and leads a laboratory focused on developing novel genetic therapies for malignant brain tumors. His research centers around engineering viruses that can kill tumor cells without affecting normal brain cells and includes extensive preclinical evaluation of oncolytic viruses for glioma therapy.
Dr. Chiocca has more than 250 peer-reviewed publications including research in Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, Molecular Cell, and PNAS. He received his joint M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and the Graduate School Biomedical Sciences. Dr. David T. Curiel, M.D., Ph.D., is the Distinguished Professor of Radiation Oncology and the Director of the Biologic Therapeutics Center at Washington University School of Medicine.
Dr. Curiel?s research focuses on gene transfer vectors designed to advance the human application of gene therapy and virotherapy and has completed extensive work with oncolytic virotherapy for glioblastoma. Dr. Curiel, a funded member of the NIH Common Fund?s Somatic Cell Genome Editing program, is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and has published hundreds of papers with thousands of citations focused on oncology. Dr. Curiel received his M.D. from Emory University School of Medicine, his Ph.D. in Virology from Groningen University in the Netherlands, completed his residency at Emory University, and his fellowships in Pulmonary Medicine at the National Institutes of Health and in biotechnology at the Navy Medical Oncology Branch at the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Burt Nabors, M.D., is a Professor and Vice Chair of Research for the Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Dr. Nabors is the Director for the UAB Division of Neuro-oncology, an active participating member with the Neurology Service for UAB Hospital and a Senior Scientist in the Neuro-oncology program at the O?Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB. Dr. Nabors received his M.D. from the University of Tennessee and completed his residency and fellowship at UAB Hospital in Neurology and Neuro-oncology.
Calidi?s Scientific and Medical Advisory Board is tasked with advising the company on its scientific approach and helping inform the company about how to best advance its novel immunotherapies into the clinic. The three new advisors join existing Scientific and Medical Advisory Board members, including: Karen Aboody, M.D., Head of Translational Stem Cell-Oncology Laboratory, City of Hope, Ewa Carrier, M.D., Executive Director of Clinical Development, FibroGen, Inc. Santosh Kesari, M.D., Ph.D., Director of Neuro-Oncology and Chair of the Department of Translational Neurosciences and Neurotherapeutics, John Wayne Cancer Institute at Providence Saint John?s Health Center, Maciej (Matt) Lesniak, M.D., Michael J. Marchese Professor and Chairman, Department of Neurological Surgery, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Ashok Srivastava, M.D., Ph.D., MBA, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President Immuno-Oncology, Medical Oncology and Hematology Drug Development, Medical Affairs and Pharmacovigilance, CliniFomatrix.
W.K. Alfred Yung, M.D., Professor of Neuro-Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dmitriy Zamarin, M.D., Ph.D., Medical Oncologist, Gynecologic Medical Oncology and Immunotherapeutics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
