Smart Immune appoints world-leading experts
to its Scientific Advisory Board
PARIS, France, July 28, 2022 – Smart Immune SAS, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing ProTcell™, a thymus-empowered cell therapy platform to fully and rapidly re-arm the immune system, announced today the members of its newly-formed Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), all world-leading experts in fields including thymus rejuvenation, thymic biology, immune reconstitution and immune-oncology.
The SAB will provide guidance and insight to Smart Immune on its research and development strategy, which is focused on the development of the Company’s allogeneic, thymus-empowered T-cell therapy platform, ProTcell™, and advancement of its clinical pipeline.
As announced earlier this month, the SAB will be chaired by Marcel R M van den Brink, MD who is internationally renowned for his work in bone marrow transplantation, the gut microbiome, and immunotherapy at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he is Head of the Division of Hematologic Malignancies.
The SAB members are:
- Dario Campana, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Senior Principal Investigator, Cancer Science Institute, and Mrs. Lee Kong Chian Chair in Advanced Cellular Therapy, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore
- Eliane Gluckman, MD, PhD, Professor Emeritus Founder and current President of EUROCORD University Paris-City and Hospital Saint Louis Paris, director of the research group on sickle cell disease at Monaco Scientific Center, Monaco.
- Georg Holländer, MA (Oxon), MD, FMedSci, FRCPCH, FMH Paediatrics (CH), Head of the Department of Paediatrics and Action Research Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Botnar Research Centre for Child Health at the ETH Zurich and University of Basel
- Jerome Ritz, MD, Executive Director, Connell and O’Reilly Families Cell Manipulation Core Facility, Professor of Medicine, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
- Chair - Marcel R M van den Brink, MD, PhD, Head, Division of Hematologic Malignancies, MSK, New York
Olivier Negre, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer of Smart Immune, said: “We are excited to be bringing together the great minds and vast experience of Drs. Campana, Gluckman, Holländer, Ritz and van den Brink to work with us at Smart Immune. Their outstanding knowledge across the fields of thymic biology and immuno-oncology will be invaluable as we further develop our ProTcell™ platform, in pursuit of our mission to fight cancer and infection by fully and rapidly re-arming the immune system.”
SAB member biographies
Dario Campana, MD, PhD, is an internationally renowned specialist of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in children, as well as a pioneer in the development of CAR T-cells and CAR NK cells. At the National University of Singapore, he is a translational researcher known for improving cure rates in children with AML and ALL. He is also the inventor of cell therapies and the founder of three biotechnology companies. Dr. Campana is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians.
Eliane Gluckman, MD, PhD, is known for being the author of the first successful human cord blood transplantation and the co-author of the demonstration that cord blood from an unrelated donor could be a valid source of hematopoietic stem cells. Prof. Gluckman created the European Group for Bone Marrow Transplantation, of which she is the former president. She is also the founder and president of Eurocord and the director of the Monacord research group at Monaco Scientific Center. She has been an early supporter of Smart Immune as one of its first scientific advisors in 2020. She will keep nurturing Smart Immune’s strategy for the development of HLA requirements for off-the-shelf ProTcellTM products.
Georg Holländer, MA (Oxon), MD, FMedSci, FRCPCH, FMH Paediatrics (CH), is an internationally recognized expert in developmental immunology with a specific interest in thymic biology. His research group at Oxford University has developed unique mouse models to understand the development and function of the thymus and explore ways to control it. A pediatrician and an immunologist by training, Georg Holländer is a professor in several prestigious universities: the University of Basel and the ETH Zurich in Switzerland, and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Prof. Holländer is also the director of the Botnar Research Center for Child Health in Basel.
Jerome Ritz, MD, is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a leading specialist in graft versus leukemia (GVL), graft versus host disease (GVHD), bone marrow transplantation, immuno-oncology and cell manufacturing. Dr. Ritz’s research lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has revealed mechanisms of GVL and demonstrated the key role of Treg in chronic GVHD after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Dr. Ritz is also the Executive Director of the Cell Manipulation Core Facility at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. This academic GMP cell manufacturing facility provides a variety of cellular products including CAR T-cells, NK cells, genetically modified hematopoietic stem cells and regulatory T-cells for adult and pediatric patients enrolled on early phase clinical trials.
Chair - Marcel R M van den Brink, MD, PhD is internationally renowned for his work in the field of bone marrow transplantation, the gut microbiome, and immunotherapy at New York’s MSK, where he is Head of the Division of Hematologic Malignancies. He is also a professor of Medicine and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College and holds a joint appointment in the Immunology and Transplantation Program of the Sloan Kettering Institute. At MSK, the van den Brink lab studies novel strategies to improve immune therapies for cancer patients with a special emphasis on the role of the intestinal microbiome in (patho)physiology and therapy, Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapy, and regeneration of thymic function to improve T-cell immunity. Dr. van den Brink is Co-Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at MSK and Medical Council Chairman for DKMS, an international nonprofit organization devoted to bone marrow donor registration. He has received prestigious prizes and honors including the 2022 E. Donnall Thomas Award from the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ASTCT).
About Smart Immune
Smart Immune is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing ProTcell™, a thymus-empowered cell therapy platform to fully and rapidly re-arm the immune system, enabling next-generation allogeneic T-cell therapies for all. The company was founded in 2017 to help patients with life-threatening diseases such as high-risk blood cancers and primary immunodeficiencies.
Smart Immune’s ProTcell™ platform, which is already in Phase I/II clinical trials, enables the recovery of a complete immune repertoire in patients fighting cancer and infection. ProTcell™ introduces potent, allogeneic T-cell progenitors which are then differentiated by the thymus into fully functional T-cells – an ‘off the shelf’ T-cell medicine.
Smart Immune’s partners include Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York and Greater Paris University Hospitals (AP-HP). The company is headquartered at Paris Biotech Santé, 29 rue du Faubourg St Jacques, France.
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smartimmune@consilium-comms.com
