Yong Chan Kim, PhD is a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and a founder of TeraImmune, Inc. As a Treg immunologist with 13 years of professional experience, Dr. Kim has dedicated himself to experimentally investigating functional roles of human Tregs and to developing TeraImmune’s key Treg manipulating technologies: TREGABLE™ and TREGING™ using ODNps25 treatment and B-cell antibody receptor (BAR) targeting antibody-producing B cell directly. He has accumulated his scientific experience as an undergraduate student, a postdoctoral fellow, and a research assistant professor at Chungnam National University, NIAID and Uniformed Services University, respectively.
His scientific interest is to develop a platform to generate antigen-specific therapeutic human regulatory T cells (e.g., FVIII, MS antigens, etc.) and T cells (e.g., B lymphoma, etc.) using viral transduction of T cell receptors (TCR), CAR, and Variation-of-CAR (B-cell antibody receptor, BAR) ex vivo and to demonstrate their specific tolerant and killing effects in vivo. After founding TeraImmune, Inc., he has focused on translating the Treg-manipulating technologies to the industry and the clinic.
Jihoon Park, PhD is a Chief Operating Officer (COO) and a co-founder of TeraImmune, Inc. He has a broad and solid background in biochemistry, with specific expertise in cell metabolism, cancer biology, and redox biology. He has been involved in multiple drug development projects by collaborating with pharmaceutical companies and proven mechanisms of action of drug candidates.
He has accumulated his scientific experience from Chungnam National University and NHLBI, NIH. Dr. Park served an NIH-Korean Scientists Association (NIHKSA) as a vice president in 2015, and led a committee that hosts monthly seminars, annual conference and meetings linking NIH and Korean government officials. He is still voluntarily dedicating to NIHKSA as an external advisory council. He completed the Technology Transfer course at NIH to learn the commercialization pathway of the biological sciences to the market.
Dr. Keating is a Professor of Medicine and Professor in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. He was Director, Division of Hematology, University of Toronto for 19 years and was the inaugural incumbent of the Epstein Chair in Cell Therapy and Transplantation for 17 years. He established the largest hematopoietic stem cell transplantation program in Canada and have been a senior research scientist at University Health Network for 30 years.
Dr. Keating was also Chief of Medical Services and Head, Department of Medical Oncology and Hematology at Princess Margaret Hospital/Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto for a decade. He has served in numerous capacities in scholarly organizations, and was President of the American Society of Hematology and am a past president of the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation. He has served in a number of advisory roles at the US National Institutes of Health and also, is an advisor to NASA on tissue regeneration. Dr. Keating co-founded CellCAN, a consortium of cell manufacturing centres and their cell therapy investigators across Canada and serves as chair of its steering committee. His research and clinical interests focus on cell and gene therapy, cell-based tissue regeneration, anti-cancer cell therapy, and blood and marrow transplantation. He has conducted laboratory, translational and clinical research in these areas, including on innate immune cells and on the biology and clinical application of mesenchymal stromal cells and have published over 400 papers.
Ethan M. Shevach, MD (CRADA PI) is a world leading Treg immunologist at NIAID, NIH. He discovered CD4+ Treg cells that express the FOXP3, which acts as a primary immunosuppressive function. In 2004, he won the William B. Coley Award with Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi. Since 2015, Thomson Reuters has listed him as among those most likely to win a Nobel prize based on his scientific contribution to Treg immunology.
David W. Scott, PhD (CRADA PI) had worked as a vice chair for research and is now a professor at USU. As a top-tier cellular immunologist in immune tolerance and hemophilia. He received PhD degree from Yale University and pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at Oxford University, UK. Dr. Scott has contributed to over 200 research papers on several subjects in immunology, focusing on immunologic tolerance, gene therapy, and most recently engineering regulatory T cells for application in autoimmune diseases and hemophilia.
Steven Jacobson, PhD (CRADA PI) is a senior investigator at NINDS, NIH. Dr. Jacobson is studying virologic, immunological, and molecular mechanisms associated with human T lymphotropic virus type-I associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis and the viral association with multiple sclerosis. He is currently involved in three clinical trials at NIH.