Scientific Team Leader and the Advisory Board

  Swey-Shen Chen, Ph.D.,   Chairman of the Scientific Board (charting and implementing drug discovery programs). Dr. Chen is the Founder, CO-CEO, President and CSO of the Company. Dr. Chen obtained Master of Microbiology and Doctor of Immunology from Harvard University. His main research is focused on regulation of IgE and IgE-mediated allergic diseases. His seminal contribution is to elucidate the mechanisms of IgE production, which underline the foundation of treating IgE-related diseases. One of the main contributions is to set the cornerstone for developing monoclonal anti-IgE Xolair in treating allergic asthma. Dr. Chen, who has served as the advisor for Tanox, Inc. (now a part of Genentech, Inc.) for development of Xolair. He has been Professor of Immunology in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Medical Center at Omaha, and Case Western University Medical School, and the Principal Scientist at La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology. He has published extensively in refereed journals, and is a leading authority in the field of immunoregulation of IgE and inflammation research. The Research of the Company leads to innovations of promising drug leads for the next generation of IgE therapeutics. The innovation includes identification of IgE peptides presented in different molecular platforms to lower levels of IgE and protect mast cells from IgE sensitization. The new generation of IgE therapeutics in the pipeline aims at altering the natural course of IgE-mediated diseases.

  Maurizio Zanetti, M.D.,   Member (advising on IgE B-cell vaccine and IgE peptide T-cell vaccine). Dr. Zanetti is Director of Laboratory of Immunology, and Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Dr. Zanetti has more than one hundred publications. He is a pioneer and worldly famous expert in vaccinology in cancer and infectious diseases. He has done seminal work in innovating immunoglobulin scaffold vector to constrain B- and T-cell epitopes into complementarity-determining region 2 and 3 (CDR2/3) as DNA vaccine. Later, he made the seminal discovery of somatic transgenic immunization for inducing long-term memory cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTL) for protective immunity for cancer and flu infection. He is also a worldly renowned expert in mechanisms for establishing long-term memory for CTL immunity. He advises in the capacity of constructing and constraining IgE B-cell vaccines in the protein scaffold, and immunization for the eliciting human IgE peptide specific cytotoxic T-lymphocytes in HLA-A2 and –B7 transgenic animals. Dr. Zanetti obtained his M.D. from the University of Padova, Italy, and his postdoctoral fellowship in TSRI.

  Fu-Tong Liu, Ph.D., M.D.,   Member (advising on pathology of airway Inflammation mediated by IgE/Mast cells axis in the animal model). Dr. Fu-Tong Liu is Professor and Chairman of Department of Dermatology, University of California, Davis. Dr. Liu published more than 170 original research articles and 26 reviews. Prior to this position, Dr. Liu is Chairman of Division of Allergy in La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology. Dr. Liu has cloned pivotal molecular reagents essential for studying rodent and human IgE/mast cell interactions. He performed pioneered work in characterizing molecular interactions of IgE with high affinity IgE Fc receptors, FceRI on mast cells. He establishes a key role of mast cells/IgE axis in IgE-mediated airway inflammation and airway hyperreactivity. Dr. Liu is known for the seminal discovery of IgE-binding factor as a family member of galectins, and is an internationally eminent and highly respected scholar for discovering several additional galectin family members, and for ascertaining the function of these novel super-family gene products in inflammation, apoptosis and as biomarkers for cancers. Dr. Liu obtained his Ph.D. in Department of Chemistry of the University of Chicago in organic synthesis, and his M.D. from the University of Miami. He was trained as a postdoctoral fellow and later as a junior faculty in TSRI with Dr. D. H. Katz on mechanisms of immunological tolerance, IgE regulation and mast cell biology.

  Michael Robertson, Ph.D.,    Member (advising on recombinant FceRI receptor biochemistry, protein display, and mast cell/basophil degranulation). Dr. Robertson made the fundamental understanding of asymmetric binding of IgE CHe3 dimer to receptor domain 2 vs. domain 1 of FceRIa via phage display technology. Later, he characterized role of glycosylation of three different IgE receptor subunits in the assembly of holo-receptor. His recent work focused on a unique peptide sequence resident in the transmembrane domain of FceRIa; for desensitizing receptor-mediated degranulation of huFceRIa-transfected RBL-2H3 cell line. Dr. Robertson advised on leukotriene, histamine release assays of a human FceRIa transfected RBL-2H3 cell line. Dr. Robertson obtained his Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University, and his postdoctoral fellowship on phage display of high affinity IgE receptor with Professor Greg Winters in the University of Cambridge, UK.

  Mike Taussig, Ph.D.,    Member (advising on ribosome display for selecting IgE and FceRIa mimetics). Dr. Taussig is Head of Biotechnology Research Group, the Babraham Institute; Fellow of the University of Cambridge, and Professor/Director of Biological Studies at the Slewyn College of the University of Cambridge. He is also the Chairman of the European Science Foundation in Integrated Functional Genomics of 23 European countries. Dr. Taussig seminal work includes a first demonstration of the role of now called “cytokines” in lymphocyte differentiation with Professor Alan Munroe, and the invention of the ribosome display system for high throughput selection and molecular evolution for biopharmaceutical targets. He also invents the high throughput protein array screening based on cell free expression of a whole cDNA library. His other high impact research interests include the X-ray analysis of anti-steroid antibodies, rheumatoid factors. Dr. Taussig advises in the capacity of ribosome selection of aptameric IgE mimetics in blocking FceRIa and in structure and functional analysis of IgE/FceRIa complexes. Dr. Taussig obtained his Ph.D. from the Trinity College of the University of Cambridge, UK.