HEMOGENYX PHARMACEUTICALS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- CO - FOUNDER
- NON - EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Alexis M. Sandler is the co-founder of Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals, for which she has served as the Chief Operating Officer. Ms Sandler is an attorney specializing in intellectual property, with almost 15 years of experience representing a range companies and institutions. Ms Sandler is especially skilled at handling diverse interests in day-to-day matters of organizations, multi-party agreements and long-term strategic planning.
Ms Sandler began her legal practice in Los Angeles at Hogan & Hartson LLP (now Hogan Lovells), where she specialized in entertainment and media law and intellectual property. She then worked for several years at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP representing studios, production companies, television networks and other major media companies in all aspects of entertainment, media and intellectual property law. For three years, Ms Sandler worked as the Director of Business and Legal Affairs for a division of the Fox Entertainment Group, during which time she was named one of Southern California's Best Young Lawyers by Los Angeles magazine. While at Fox, Ms Sandler successfully negotiated hundreds of major distribution agreements, in addition to advising the company on important corporate and other legal matters. Ms Sandler went on to become the General Counsel at a Smithsonian affiliate museum in New York City. Ms Sandler is currently the Associate General Counsel for a major New York City cultural institution. She also serves as the Secretary of the Board of Directors for MoMA PS1, the contemporary art space.
Ms Sandler received her AB from Harvard University and her JD from the UCLA School of Law, and is a member of the State Bar of New York and the State Bar of California.
After completing a PhD in Cellular, Molecular and Developmental Biology at Indiana University (IU), Bloomington, and then a successful Walter Winchell-Damon Runyon postdoctoral fellowship, also in the Biology Department at IU, Shepard joined Genentech in 1980. For his first few years at Genentech, Shepard participated in the projects that resulted in cloning of human interferons, plasminogen activators, and tumor necrosis factors. Leaving his cloning years behind, Shepard initiated two successful programs at Genentech. One was managing an extramural research program, which brought academic know-how into the the Company, as well as providing reagents for research that benefited both the Company and the academic community. While this program created many fruitful collaborations, none was more successful than the work with Marc Feldmann, which led to Remicade (TNF Blocker), which is now used to treat multiple autoimmune diseases. The other program Shepard started was the first Cell Biology group at Genentech. This goal has driven the passion his career, i.e. cancer therapeutics that kill tumor cells and leave normal cells intact. This started with work aimed at the mechanisms of tumor cell resistance to the tumor necrosis factors, and resulted in the first biomarker-driven drug discovery effort in biotechnology, i.e. the discovery of Herceptin/trastuzumab, an antibody that is now used to treat breast cancer patients characterized by the overexpression of the HER2 proto-oncogene. Shepard later shared the Warren Alpert Prize from Harvard Medical School for this breakthrough. In order to continue his efforts to create breakthrough cancer therapeutics, Shepard left Genentech to help start the first successful gene therapy company, called Canji, Inc. This Company was the first to successfully traverse the gene therapy regulatory framework (including the Recombinant DNA Activities Committee), to initiate a clinical trial with adenovirus-p53, a disabled adenovirus encoding the p53 tumor suppressor gene, for drug-resistant ovarian cancer. Several patients benefited from this treatment, but Schering-Plough decided not to pursue. Later, an adenovirus encoding IFN-alpha was constructed, and is NOW in Phase 3 clinical trials for transitional cell bladder carcinoma. Shepard helped to engineer relationship with Schering-Plough, which later lead to its acquisition. Additional successful efforts included the founding of NewBiotics, Inc., where Shepard's team invented a new class of therapeutics, called Enzyme-Catalyzed Therapeutic Agents. These are compounds that are activated by enzymes overexpressed in p53-inactivated tumor cells. Other programs included the first pan-HER antagonist, now being pursued by Symphogen. As VP/CSO at Halozyme Therapeutics, Shepard participated in multiple ENHANZE partnerships, and in recruiting collaborations with academic and pharma entities, including important immuno-oncology collaborations with major pharma companies. Shepard was also scientific program leader for Halozyme's Phase 3 candidate for pancreatic cancer (Pegylated PH20 hyaluronidase). Shepard currently consults with several biopharmaceutical companies, primarily on cancer therapeutics discovery and early clinical development.
Dr van Besien is a graduate of University of Leuven, Belgium and holds a PhD from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. He is currently a Professor of Medicine and Director of the Stem Cell Transplant Program at NYP-Weill Cornell College of Medicine.
Dr van Besien has established a national and international reputation with several research and clinical interests. He has devoted considerable efforts at developing novel treatment strategies for patients with recurrent lymphoma, including the introduction of novel drugs and treatment in salvage therapy and in transplant conditioning regimens. He also has developed novel methods of transplantation for those patients who lack matching donors.
Dr van Besien has over 200 publications in peer reviewed journals. He is a member of the editorial review boards of the journals Bone Marrow Transplantation and Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. He is also Editor in Chief of the journal Leukemia and Lymphoma, a journal that has reached a 2015 impact factor of 3.1.
Ronen is the Principal Scientist at Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals in charge of all research operations. His main goal is to advance the research and development projects at Hemogenyx, including the design of new chimeric receptor to utilize various immune cells to target malignant cells or infectious agents, such as SARS-CoV-2, HBV, Ebola, and other viruses. Additionally, after a successful process development and approved IND, Ronen oversee the GMP manufacturing of CAR-T cell therapy for relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (R/R AML).
Ronen has completed his doctoral studies in the Heart Research Laboratory, Faculty of Medicine at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. There he studied inherited cardiomyopathies focusing on the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms. His research showed electrophysiological and molecular abnormalities in induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes of PRKAG2-myopathy and DMD patients, which were restored to normal function by means of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing. Prior to his Ph.D. studies, he graduated summa cum laude from the Technion as a Biotechnology and Food Engineer and received a B.Sc. degree. Ronen has published numerous peer-reviewed papers in the fields of cardiomyocyte electrophysiology, induced pluripotent stem cells, and genome editing; additionally, he has presented his work at several prestigious conferences in the US and Europe.
Job Titles:
- CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
- CO - FOUNDER
Dr Vladislav Sandler is the Co-Founder and CEO of Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals and a Research Assistant Professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate. Dr Sandler is a widely published stem cell scientist with decades of experience in scientific research. In particular, Dr Sandler has extensive experience developing novel methods of direct reprogramming of somatic cells into functional and engraftable hematopoietic stem cells, as well as developing novel sources of pluri- and multi-potent cells.
Dr Sandler has conducted his research in Russia, Israel, Canada and the United States, including at Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, Harvard University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, among others. He also led a team of scientists at Advanced Cell Technologies, Inc. and was most recently on the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical College. While at Cornell, Dr Sandler made the significant discovery that the cells that give rise to blood stem cells during mammalian development continue to exist after birth, and he developed the method of isolation of these cells from humans. As a result of this important work, Dr Sandler was awarded the inaugural Daedalus Fund Award for Innovation at Cornell. He went on to found Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals in order to further pursue this significant scientific discovery and his dedication to the translation of science into clinical practice.
Dr Sandler has published numerous peer-reviewed papers and has received a number of awards and fellowships for his scientific research. Dr Sandler received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. He is a member of the International Society for Stem Cell Research.
Job Titles:
- DIRECTOR PRE - CLINICAL DEVELOPMENT
Biography
Elina Shrestha received her Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from NYU School of Medicine. Her research concentrated on understanding the regulation of macrophage gene expression by nuclear receptor LXRa, a key transcription factor involved in lipid metabolism and cholesterol homeostasis.
By applying cutting-edge proteomics and biochemical approaches and gene editing technologies, she discovered a novel interactor and co-regulator of LXRa as a potential therapeutic target for augmenting cholesterol efflux in macrophages and reversing cholesterol accumulation in atherosclerotic plaques. During her graduate career, she also set out to investigate the cause of high incidence and challenges in the clinical management of cardiovascular diseases among diabetics. For this, she utilized advanced transgenic and knockout mouse models of atherosclerosis in combination with drug-induced diabetes. Her research established that hyperglycemia, through alteration in LXRa post-translational modification, promotes macrophage retention in atherosclerotic plaques which aggravates the disease. Overall, her studies suggest new prospects for drug discovery in the treatment of atherosclerosis.
Apart from her doctoral training, Elina has a solid background in the field of immunology, stem cell biology, and biochemistry. She has published several peer-reviewed publications in multiple disciplines of biology. During her research career, she has acquired the relevant knowledge and skillsets required to succeed in the vibrant environment that Hemogenyx offers to facilitate the accelerated development of new technologies and therapies and their transition into the clinic.
Peter Redmond is a corporate financier with some 30 years' experience in corporate finance and venture capital. He has acted on and assisted a wide range of companies to attain a listing over many years, on the Unlisted Securities Market, the Full List and AIM, whether by IPO or in many cases via reversals, across a wide range of sectors, ranging from technology through financial services to natural resources and biotech, in recent years often as a director and shareholder of the companies concerned. He has been active over many years in corporate rescues and reconstructions on AIM and in reverse transactions into a range of investing companies. He was a founder director of Cleeve Capital plc (now Satellite Solutions plc) and Mithril Capital plc (now BeHeard plc), both of which were admitted to the Standard List of the London Stock Exchange, and took a leading role in the reconstruction and refinancing of AIM-quoted Kennedy Investments and 3Legs Resources plc. He is a former director of AIM-quoted Pires Investments plc and a director of Gem Resources plc (formerly URA Holdings plc).
Professor Sir Marc Feldmann is a pre-eminent medically trained immunologist at the University of Oxford where he was Head of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology until 2014 and now Emeritus Professor. He trained in medicine at Melbourne University and then earned a Ph.D. in Immunology at the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute with Sir Gus Nossal, before working in London at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. Sir Feldmann's main research interests are immunoregulation, understanding mechanisms of autoimmunity and the role of cytokines in disease, and working out how to fill unmet medical needs.
His work in London led to the generation of a new hypothesis for the mechanism of autoimmunity, linking upregulated antigen presentation and cytokine expression. Testing this hypothesis led to the discovery, with colleague Sir Ravinder Maini, of the pivotal role of TNFα (Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha) in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis. This major discovery has therapy not only of rheumatoid arthritis but other chronic inflammatory diseases (eg Inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, ankylosing spondylitis), and helped change the perception of monoclonal antibodies from niche products to mainstream therapeutics. Anti-TNF therapeutics are the current leading drug class with 2016 sales exceeding $36 Billion.
This has led to much scientific recognition, for example election to the Royal Society and Academy of Medical Sciences in London, the National Academy of Sciences USA and the Australian Academy of Science, and multiple major International prizes: including the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Albert Lasker Clinical Research Award (NY), the Ernst Schering Prize , the Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research and the Canada-Gairdner Award. He was also the first recipient in biology or medicine of the EU/ European Patent Inventor of the Year Award in the Lifetime Achievement category. In addition, Sir Marc has advised more than 20 of the largest pharmaceutical and biotech companies in the world and has mentored some of the most successful scientists, many of whom have become senior figures in the commercial pharmaceutical world. Sir Marc was knighted in the 2010 Queen's Birthday and was in Australia with the knighthood equivalent, the Companion of the Order of Australia.