Re

imagining

what’s

possible

Dr. Druker is the Director of the Knight Cancer Institute, Associate Dean for Oncology, and JELD-WEN Chair of Leukemia Research at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, OR. A pioneer in the field of precision medicine, his research focuses on translating knowledge of the molecular pathogenesis of cancer into specific therapies and investigating the optimal use of these molecularly targeted agents. Dr. Druker’s research led to the first drug to target the molecular defect of a cancer while leaving healthy cells unharmed—imatinib (Gleevec) for chronic myeloid leukemia. He performed the preclinical studies that led to its development and then spearheaded the clinical trials that led to Food and Drug Administration approval of imatinib in record time. The drug changed the life expectancy of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia from an average of three to five years to a 95% survival rate at five years. The approach has led to a paradigm shift in cancer treatment from nonspecific chemotherapy to targeted therapeutic agents, spurring the development of numerous precision therapies for other cancers. Dr. Druker has served as a member of the Board of Scientific Advisors to the National Cancer Institute and on the board of directors of the American Association for Cancer Research. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. Among his many awards, he received the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award.

Dr. Garcia-Echeverria has provided scientific leadership to drug discovery and early clinical development teams across different modalities and diseases. He currently serves as the chief of Rx creation at EQRx, leading the research and early stage development functions. Previously, he was the chief operating officer of research at Sanofi where he oversaw the establishment and execution of the mid- and long-term vision and strategy of global research for effective portfolio management. Prior to Sanofi, Dr. Garcia-Echeverria was a member of the leadership team and global oncology decision board at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research. He has also broad experience in managing research partnerships. His research accomplishments are documented by 190 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and review papers, as well as 45 granted patents.

Dr. Garcia-Echeverria holds a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Barcelona and received the Leonidas Zerwas Award from the European Peptide Society in recognition of his outstanding contributions to peptide science.

Dr. Knapp is the chief scientific officer of the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) and professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the Goethe-University Frankfurt. His research interests are the rational design of selective inhibitors that target protein kinases as well as protein interactions modules that function as reader domains of the epigenetic code. He joined Frankfurt University (Germany) in 2015 as a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry in the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and the Buchmann Institute of Molecular Life Sciences. 

From 2012 and 2015, he was the director for Chemical Biology at the Target Discovery Institute (TDI), and between 2008 to 2015 he was a professor of structural biology at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine (NDM) at Oxford University (UK). Previously, he was a principal research scientist in structural biology and biophysics at Pharmacia Corporation.

Dr. Knapp studied chemistry at the University of Marburg (Germany) and at the University of Illinois (USA). He did his PhD in protein crystallography at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (Sweden) and continued his career at the Karolinska Institute as a postdoctoral scientist.

Dr. Krueger is at The Rockefeller University in New York City where he serves as its Chief Executive Officer, the Head of the Laboratory for Investigative Dermatology, and a Senior Attending Physician and Co-director for the hospital’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science. His research group at Rockefeller was the first to conduct clinical trials with specific, targeted immune antagonists in psoriasis, establishing that elimination of pathogenic T cells from skin lesions could reverse the full pathological phenotype of psoriasis. Since then, his group has used immune-based therapeutics to dissect inflammatory pathways and to conduct parallel biomarker studies that define mechanisms of targeted therapeutics in human populations. His group discovered elevated expression of IL-23 in psoriasis lesions and the contribution of this cytokine to an inflammatory axis dominated by Th17 T-cells. This work has also provided the “disease maps” for cytokine-driven inflammation in psoriasis, which has been the basis for biologic therapeutic development for the disease. The successful development of multiple therapeutic antagonists to IL-12/23, IL-23/IL-39, and IL-17 extends from this research and early clinical trials conducted by his group. Dr. Krueger received an AB in Biochemistry from Princeton University, a PhD in Virology and Cell Biology from The Rockefeller University, and an MD from Cornell University Medical College, where he also completed an internship in internal medicine and residency in dermatology. Dr. Krueger is certified by the American Board of Dermatology and has published hundreds of papers in notable scientific journals. 

Dr. Londei most recently was the chief executive officer of Gadeta. Previously, he was the chief development officer and chief medical officer of AnaptysBio (NASDAQ: ANAB), where he played a crucial role in the company’s transition from a preclinical phase to its successful IPO, and several rounds of financing as a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company. Prior to AnaptysBio, Dr. Londei held leadership roles at Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb, in charge of global teams for clinical development in transplantation, autoimmune, and inflammatory disease areas. Over the 15 years in the pharma industry, Dr. Londei and his team brought more than a dozen of new molecular entities into clinical development, six of which have since entered the market. Before his move to the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Londei was professor of medicine at Imperial College and University College London in the UK. From his academic tenure, he also brings his valuable expertise in human T lymphocyte and their role in pathology.

Dr. Londei received his MD from the Faculty of Medicine at University of Bologna and has conducted post-doctoral studies at Tumor Immunology Unit, London, UK. He was a key member of the team that pioneered the development of anti-TNF therapies while at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology (KIR) Faculty of Medicine Imperial College, London, with professors Ravinder Maini and Marc Feldmann. He is a widely recognized world-class contributor in the field of inflammation and self-recognition by T lymphocytes.

Dr. McInnes is the Vice Principal and Head of the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, the Muirhead Chair of Medicine and Versus Arthritis professor of rheumatology at the University of Glasgow. He was the Chief Investigator of the IMID-Bio-UK meta-consortium leading the UK effort to discover precision medicine tractable biomarkers for application in immune diseases. He is the past Chairman of the FOREUM (Foundation for European Rheumatology Research) Scientific Committee. Dr. McInnes also led the European Roadmap program that defined the research agenda for European rheumatology for the next decade and, from 2019-2021, was President of the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR), the leading transnational society for rheumatology across Europe. Dr. McInnes is one of the leading figures in global research on rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis. His focus has been on the biology of inflammatory cytokines, as well as the mechanisms of co-morbidities in chronic diseases. His work has been hugely influential in driving new approaches and treatments for inflammatory diseases, and he is a pioneer in precision-based medicine for inflammatory arthritis. Dr. McInnes is the recipient of several prestigious awards in recognition of his work, including the Sir James Black Prize Medal by the Royal Society of Edinburgh for his “outstanding contribution to the field of immunology.” He obtained a BSc in Immunology, an MBChB, and a PhD from the University of Glasgow. He was honored as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2019 for his contributions to medicine.  

Dr. O’Shea served as the Scientific Director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases Intramural Research Program for 20 years and continues to serve as a Senior Investigator and Chief of the Molecular Immunology and Inflammation Branch at NIAMS. He also served as acting director of the NIH Center for Regenerative Medicine and chair of the NIH COVID-19 Candidate and Technologies Portal. He discovered numerous aspects of the JAK-STAT pathway, including identifying the tyrosine kinase JAK3 and demonstrating its role in the pathogenesis of severe combined immunodeficiency, along with other genetic autoimmune and autoinflammatory disorders. Dr. O’Shea and colleagues at the NIH elucidated multiple aspects of the roles of STATs in immune cell differentiation, including innate lymphoid cells and Th1, Th2, and Th17 cells. His laboratory has employed deep sequencing to understand the epigenetic regulation of lymphoid differentiation and the role of STATs in these processes. Dr. O’Shea was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, and as a Master of the American College of Rheumatology and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Association of Immunologists. Dr. O’Shea was awarded two U.S. patents related to Janus family kinases and the identification of immune modulators, and he was elected to the National Academy of Inventors. He was also awarded the U.S. Public Health Service Physician Researcher of the Year Award, Lee C. Howley Sr. Prize for Research in Arthritis, Irish Immunology Society Public Lecture Award, Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine, International Cytokine and Interferon Society Millstein Prize, American Association of Immunologists–Steinman Award for Human Immunology Research, and American Society for Clinical Investigation Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine.  

Dr. Tyner is a co-director of the Translational Oncology Program for the Knight Cancer Institute, director of the Cancer Biology Graduate Program, and a professor in the Department of Cell, Developmental & Cancer Biology. Dr. Tyner’s research is focused towards identification of cancer-causing gene targets in cancer patients and identification of patient-tailored, gene-targeted therapies. To accomplish these objectives, he has spent the past decade developing and implementing a functional screening approach whereby primary cells from hematologic malignancy patients can be tested ex vivo for sensitivity to a library of small-molecule inhibitors. This assay has now been cumulatively applied to over 2,500 patient specimens, and this large data set has been leveraged to inform findings that offer new diagnostic and therapeutic options.

Dr. Tyner attended undergraduate school at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, and graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis. His graduate work, focusing on asthma and respiratory viral infections, was conducted under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Holtzman. For his post-doctoral fellowship, he joined Dr. Brian Druker’s laboratory at OHSU, where he studied molecular mechanisms of leukemogenesis

Dr. Ray has over two decades experience in biotech working at Gilead, Nimbus, Morphic and, most recently, serving as Chief Scientific Officer at Third Harmonic Bio. He has provided leadership for small molecule drug discovery, nonclinical development, and translation across therapeutic areas contributing to numerous IND and successful worldwide registrational filings. Dr. Ray has authored >100 peer-reviewed articles, reviews, book chapters, and letters to the editor in prestigious journals, including manuscripts published in Science and Nature. He is an inventor on >30 granted U.S. patents, including those supporting successful drugs Harvoni and Veklury.

Dr. Ray received his undergraduate degree in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz graduating with highest honors. He completed his graduate studies in the Pharmacology Department at Yale University. Dr. Ray was the recipient of the William H. Prusoff Young Investigator Lecture Award and the James R. Gillette Drug Metabolism and Disposition Best Paper Award.