Cristal Therapeutics has a scientific advisory board that provides all the necessary scientific expertise for current R&D activities:
Dr. Gregory Berk
Dr. Greg Berk serves as President, Chief Medical Officer, and Board Member of Sideris Pharmaceuticals. From May 2012 until January 2014, Dr. Berk was Chief Medical Officer of BIND Therapeutics. Prior to this, Dr. Berk was Chief Medical Officer at Intellikine, a privately held biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of novel PI3 Kinase and mTOR inhibitors. Intellikine was acquired by Takeda/Millennium in January 2012. Dr. Berk was previously Senior Vice President of Global Clinical Development at Abraxis BioScience, where he was responsible for the company’s overall clinical strategy, including efforts to expand the indications for their lead clinical program (Abraxane®), as well as oversee the clinical development of their entire pipeline. Dr. Berk also served on the integration leadership team during the Celgene acquisition of Abraxis in 2010. Dr. Berk obtained his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University, and completed his internship, residency, and fellowship in internal medicine, hematology, and medical oncology, at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he also served as a faculty member from 1989-2004. During this time Dr. Berk served as an investigator on several industry-sponsored and cooperative group oncology clinical trials, including the pivotal trials for Gleevec® and Avastin®.
Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia
Dr. Bhatia is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the John J. and Dorothy Wilson Professor at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). Bhatia is the Director of the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine, and a member of the Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology – both part of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. She is also an Affiliated Faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, an Institute Member of the Broad Institute, a Biomedical Engineer at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and has been elected to Brown University’s Board of Trustees. Trained as both a physician and engineer, Bhatia’s laboratory is dedicated to leveraging miniaturization tools from the world of semiconductor manufacturing to impact human health. She has pioneered technologies for interfacing living cells with synthetic systems, enabling new applications in tissue regeneration, stem cell differentiation, medical diagnostics and drug delivery. Her multidisciplinary team has developed a broad and impactful range of inventions, including human micro livers which model human drug metabolism, liver disease, and interaction with pathogens. Her group also develops nanoparticles and nanoporous materials that can be designed to assemble and communicate to study, diagnose, and treat a variety of diseases, including cancer. Her work has been profiled broadly such as in Scientific American, the Boston Globe, BBC News, TED and TEDMED, Popular Science, Huffington Post, Forbes, PBS’s NOVA scienceNOW, the Economist, and MSNBC.
Prof. Dr. Alberto Gabizon
Prof. Dr. Gabizon is founder, CEO and Chief Scientist of LipoMedix, and is Professor of Oncology and Chairman at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a renowned scientist and clinician in the field of nanomedicine and cancer therapy. He has been awarded several prizes, among which the Alec Bangham Lifetime Achievement Award and the Kaye Innovation Award. He has been the recipient of several ICRF grants, has received an ICRF Research Career Development Award, and has been the recipient of a prestigious ICRF Research Professorship since 2008. As co-inventor and co-developer of Doxil® and Promitil®, Prof. Gabizon was key for the successful development and clinical implementation of liposomal drugs. Prof. Gabizon holds an MD degree from the University of Granada in Spain, and a PhD degree from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
Dr. Maninder Hora
Dr. Maninder Hora is Senior Vice President, Pharmaceutical Development & Manufacturing Operations at Nektar (USA) and Board Member of that company in India. He has over 25 years of experience in biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry in leading roles in research, technical development and corporate governance. Dr. Hora served in leading positions at several US-based biotechnology companies since 2001. He is an expert in drug development, manufacturing and regulatory submissions for product approvals. He was instrumental for successful registration and filing of many drugs and vaccines with regulatory authorities. He is author of more than 50 patents worldwide, 40 scientific publications in journals and books, and is recognized advisor of many scientific or technical conferences and seminars. Dr. Hora holds MSc and PhD degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, India.
Dr. Paul Lammers
Dr. Paul Lammers, an entrepreneur in the therapeutic oligonucleotide field, is former Chief Executive Officer of Mirna Therapeutics. Previously he served as President of Repros Therapeutics Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, after having served for 6 years as the Chief Medical Officer for EMD Serono, inc., the biopharmaceutical division of Merck KGaA. Having worked actively in senior roles across the Pharma and Biotech industries for the past 25 years, Dr. Lammers has gained therapeutic experiences in women’s and men’s health, neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic disorders, orphan drug diseases and oncology. Dr. Lammers received a M.Sc. and M.D. from the Catholic University (Radboud University) in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Prof. Dr. Twan Lammers
Prof. Dr. Lammers is an expert in drug targeting, image-guided drug delivery, tumour-targeted combination therapies and imaging. He started as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Pharmaceutics at Utrecht University, and was appointed group leader at the Department of Experimental Molecular Imaging at RWTH Aachen University and at the Helmholtz Center for Biomedical Engineering in 2009. He also serves as assistant professor at the Department of Targeted Therapeutics at the University of Twente. Prof. Lammers studied Pharmacy at the University of Utrecht. He holds a DSc degree in Radiation Oncology from Heidelberg University and a PhD degree in Pharmaceutics from Utrecht University.
Prof. Dr. Rob Liskamp
Prof. dr. Liskamp is an international expert in synthesis of biologically active modified peptides and peptidomimetics, dendrimers, peptide folding, protein mimics including synthetic antibodies and vaccines. He started his scientific career at The Institute of Cancer Research, Department of Chemistry at Columbia University, New York. He was assistant professor at the University of Leiden and visiting professor at the University of California in Los Angeles. Thereafter, he served as associate professor at Utrecht University and was appointed professor of Molecular Medicinal Chemistry in 1996. He was visiting professor at the Universities of Leeds and Glasgow and became professor and chair of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Glasgow in 2013. Prof. Liskamp holds a PhD in bio-organic chemistry from the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Prof. Dr. Ernst Wagner
Ernst Wagner is professor of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich since 2001 and member of the Center for Nanoscience (CeNS). He coordinates ‘Biomedical Nanotechnologies’ of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM)’.
After a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Technical University of Vienna and a postdoctoral stay at the ETH Zurich, in 1987 he became Group Leader at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) and at the Vienna University Biocenter, developing synthetic gene transfer systems. In parallel, 1992-2001 he was Director for Cancer Vaccines at Boehringer Ingelheim Austria, where he developed the first-in-world polymer-based clinical gene therapy study (an IL-2 gene-modified cancer vaccine) in 1994. His current research focuses on precise sequence-defined drug and protein carriers, and receptor-targeted delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics including pDNA, siRNA, or microRNA. The biomedical focus resides on tumor-targeted delivery and therapy, overcoming mechanisms of chemoresistance.
Ernst Wagner has authored ≥397 publications (current h-index 70). He is an Editor of Pharmaceutical Research and Editor-in Chief of the Journal of Gene Medicine, Board member of the German Society for Gene Therapy, Committee member of the ASGCT, and has been Board of Scientific Advisor member of the Controlled Release Society. He has been Honorary Guest Professor at Utrecht University, at Fudan University (Shanghai), and at Sichuan University (Chengdu).
Dr. William Zamboni
Dr. William Zamboni is an associate professor in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, Chapel Hill (USA). He is the director of UNC GLP Bioanalytical Facility and the director of the Translational Oncology and Nanoparticle Drug Development Initiative (TOND2I) Lab at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Dr. Zamboni’s research focuses on pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic, and pharmacogenetic principles in the optimization of the chemotherapeutic treatment of cancer. Dr. Zamboni holds BSc and PhD degrees from the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his MD degree at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in Memphis, Tennessee.