Julio A. Aguirre-Ghiso, PhD, is an Endowed Professor of Cell Biology and founding Director of the Cancer Dormancy and Tumor Microenvironment Institute at the Albert Einstein Cancer Center in New York City, where he co-directs the Gruss-Lipper Biophotonics Center and co-leads the Tumor Microenvironment and Metastasis Program also at the Cancer Center. He is also a member of the Stem Cell Institute and Aging Research Institute at Einstein. Previously, he was an Endowed Mount Sinai Chair of Cancer Biology in the Departments of Medicine (Hematology and Medical Oncology), Otolaryngology, and Oncological Sciences and Co-Leader of the Cancer Mechanisms Program at The Tisch Cancer Institute at Icahn School of Medicine School of Medicine in New York City, where he retains and Adjunct Professor position. He is also President of the Metastasis Research Society and has served at several leadership levels at AACR. He received his PhD from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1997 and completed his post-doctoral training as a Charles H. Revson Fellow at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 2003. He became an Assistant Professor at SUNY-Albany the same year and since 2008 he was at ISMMS where he joined as Associate Professor and reached the rank of Professor in 2014 and of Endowed Chair in 2020. His work focuses on understanding the biology of residual cancer cells that persist in a dormant state after initial therapy. His research team led, along with others, a paradigm shift, revealing novel cancer biology that diverges from the notion that cancer is perpetually proliferating. His work has been published in top tier journals such as Nature, Nature Cell Biology, JEM, Nature Cancer, Science and Cancer Cell among others. His team discovered that reciprocal crosstalk between disseminated tumor cells and the microenvironment regulates the inter-conversion between dormancy and proliferation of metastasis. His lab has also provided mechanistic advances to the understanding of the process of early dissemination in breast cancer and how it contributes to dormancy and metastatic progression. His work also has mechanistically explored how adaptive pathways such as the unfolded protein response allow cancer cells to persist while quiescent. This knowledge enables targeting residual cancer before it becomes clinically detectable and thus preventing recurrences. His research, which has been applied in clinical studies, is revealing ways to maintain residual cancer dormancy, kill dormant cancer cells, and utilize markers to determine the dormant or active state of disseminated cancer cells.
Department: Advisors & Clinical Collaborators
Daniel Bollag, Ph.D.
Daniel Bollag, Ph.D., is a regulatory consultant for HiberCell. Dan has spent over 30 years in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry and has been a regulatory consultant since 2020.
Dan has extensive experience leading regulatory and quality teams, having served as Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs & Quality at both Ariad Pharmaceuticals and Ocular Therapeutix. In his tenures, he oversaw the approval of the ocular insert Dextenza for ocular inflammation and pain following ophthalmic surgery and the accelerated approvals of Iclusig and Alunbrig for chronic myeloid leukemia and ALK-positive metastatic non-small cell lung cancer, respectively. Earlier in his career, Dan held senior regulatory and project management roles at Genzyme, Sanofi, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck.
Dan received his PhD in biochemistry from Cornell University.
Richard Huhn, M.D.
Richard Huhn, MD is consulting to HiberCell as Senior Medical Director. Prior to this role, Dr. Huhn was Senior Medical Director at Ambrx, Boehringer Ingelheim and Biothera, directing development of antineoplastic biological agents. Dr. Huhn was formally trained in Hematology (focus on cellular and gene therapies) at the US National Institutes of Health and previously in Clinical Pharmacology in the Brown University medical program. He has held positions as Medical Director of the NJ Cord Blood Bank and stem cell research program at the Coriell Institute, and as Medical Reviewer in the Office of Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapy at the US Food and Drug Administration, as well as various roles in basic and clinical Oncology and Hematology research programs in academia and pharma/biotechnology programs.
Philip Rowlands, Ph.D.
As a Clinical Development Advisor, Philip Rowlands brings deep experience developing new classes of transformative medicines and technology platforms with a goal of improving outcomes for patients fighting cancer. Phil has spent 32 years in large and mid-size pharmaceutical companies in roles spanning preclinical and clinical R&D. Trained as a pharmacologist, toxicologist and embryologist, his career started in 1988 in developmental toxicology, first at Zeneca/ICI, and then at Sterling Drug in the UK. Through a series of roles of increasing responsibility in preclinical development, based in the UK, Europe, and then the US, he worked at Sterling, Sanofi, GD Searle and Pharmacia. In 2003, following acquisition, he transferred to Pfizer as an exploratory development director and has been focused exclusively on oncology drug development from that time. At Pfizer, Phil led multiple programs spanning small molecule and biologic modalities, and crossing multiple mechanistic classes including anti-angiogenesis, signal transduction, cell cycle inhibition, and immunotherapy. Programs he oversaw through different phases of preclinical and clinical development that ultimately led to new medicines included: bosutinib, crizotinib, dacomitinib, exemestane, inotuzumab, palbociclib, and tremelimumab.
In 2011, Phil moved to Takeda/Millennium, initially, as lead portfolio management and program leadership, and later, among a small management group piloting the first version of a fully integrated Therapeutic Area group comprising program leadership, program and portfolio management, and clinical development into one unit responsible for oncology R&D strategy, oversight of execution against that strategy, and development portfolio goals and budget. From 2015-2020, Phil was Oncology Therapeutic Area Head. In this time, working closely with discovery and commercial partners, he oversaw the critical pivot of the research strategy to development of next generation breakthrough immune-oncology programs, the acquisition of ARIAD, new indication delivery for Adcetris, Ninlaro and Iclusig, new medicines in brigatinib and mobocertinib, regional approvals for cabozantinib and niraparib, and advancement into the clinic of the next wave of immunotherapy approaches including a novel STING agonist, a sumoylation inhibitor, an attenuated cytokine, an armored oncolytic vaccine, and critical partnerships to bring in multiple next generation cell therapy and bispecific platforms. Consistently a champion of the central role of the multifunctional project team as the core of strategic development and execution, Phil also played a key part in generating and leading key initiatives to advance the integration of scientific, medical, commercial and patient inputs into strategic development and the practice of asset strategy.
Gregory L. Beatty, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Gregory Beatty, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in cancer immunotherapy. His research focuses on the anti-tumor potential of myeloid cells and the role of the liver in immune regulation and pancreatic cancer. He has led multiple clinical trials for cancer immunotherapy in pancreatic cancer, including studies investigating CAR T cells, small molecule inhibitors and immune agonists (e.g. CD40 and Dectin-1).
Abhishek Maiti, M.D.
More information on Dr. Maiti can be found here.