Scientific board

Prof. Luigi Naldini,
Ph.D., M.D.

CO-FOUNDER
Executive Scientific Board Chairman

Luigi Naldini is a renowned scientist and academic, considered as the father of the Lentivirus Gene Therapy. Luigi is Professor of Cell and Tissue Biology and Cell and Gene Therapy at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University School of Medicine in Milan, and Director of the San Raffaele-Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy and of the Division of Regenerative Medicine, Stem Cells & Gene Therapy at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute. He has previously served as President of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy and a member of the Board of Directors and Advisory Council of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. Luigi is also a scientific advisor on EMEA and WHO committees for the evaluation of novel gene transfer medicines and has authored more than 250 scientific publications. He won numerous awards including the Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) in 2014 and from ESGCT in 2015, the Beutler Prize from the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in 2017 and in 2019 the Jeantet-Collen Prize for Translational Medicine.
Nominated “Grande Ufficiale” dell’Ordine “Al Merito della Repubblica Italiana”, one of the highest ranking honor in Italy, from the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister of Italy, on December 27th 2019.
Elected “Socio Corrispondente- Classe di Scienze Fisiche, Matematiche e Naturali” at the “Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei”, on July 26th, 2022.

Prof. Kenneth C. Anderson, M.D.

Dr. Anderson is the Kraft Family Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School as well as Director of the LeBow Institute for Myeloma Therapeutics and Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is a Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Research Scientist and American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor. After graduating from Johns Hopkins Medical School, he trained in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and then completed hematology, medical oncology, and tumor immunology training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Over the last four decades, he has focused his laboratory and clinical research studies on multiple myeloma. He has developed laboratory and animal models of the tumor in its microenvironment which have allowed for both identification of novel targets and validation of novel targeted therapies, and has then rapidly translated these studies to clinical trials culminating in FDA approval of novel targeted and immune therapies. His paradigm for identifying and validating targets in the tumor cell and its milieu has transformed myeloma therapy and markedly improved patient outcome.

Prof. Lisa Coussens,
Ph. D., M.D., FAACR

Dr. Coussens is Chairwoman of the Department of Cell, Developmental and Cancer Biology and Associate Director for Basic Research in the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University, where she holds the Hildegard Lamfrom Endowed Chair in Basic Science. Dr. Coussens’ research focuses on dissecting the roles of normal immune cells in regulating various facets of solid tumor development, identifying leukocyte activities that are co-opted by early tumors to support ongoing cancer development and in understanding the role leukocytes play in regulating responses to cytotoxic, targeted and immune-based therapies. Utilizing mouse models of mesothelioma, cutaneous, head and neck, pancreas and mammary carcinoma, her research identified critical immune-regulated pathways for therapeutic targeting that are being clinically translated in combination with chemotherapy in women with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, pancreas cancer and head/neck squamous cancer. In recognition of her contributions for revealing underlying mechanisms of cancer development, Dr. Coussens has been acknowledged with multiple awards, including the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Gertrude B. Elion Award (2001), the AACR-Women in Cancer Research Charlotte Friend Memorial Lectureship (2012), the 13th Rosalind E. Franklin Award from the National Cancer Institute (2015), a Doctor in Medicine (honoris causa) from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina (2018), the 12th AACR-Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship (2018), a Career Award from the European Academy of Tumor Immunology (2018) and the 2018 Susan G. Komen Brinker Award for Scientific Distinction in Basic Science. She has been elected as Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS; 2018); Fellow of the AACR Academy (2019); and recently elected as President of the American Association for Cancer Research (2022-2023).

Prof. Miriam Merad, Ph.D., M.D.

Miriam Merad, M.D.; Ph.D. is the Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the Director of the Mount Sinai Human Immune Monitoring Center (HIMC). Dr. Merad is an internationally acclaimed physician-scientist and a leader in the fields of dendritic cell and macrophage biology with a focus on their contribution to human diseases. She is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the recipient of the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology. In 2020, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her contributions to the field of immunology.

Prof. Bernhard Gentner, Ph.D., M.D.

CO-FOUNDER
Executive Scientific Board Member

Bernhard Gentner is Professor in Immuno-Oncology and serves as an attending physician in the Oncology Department at Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV). He has been appointed as Medical Director foTestor the T cell therapy platform and heads the group of HSC engineering within the Lausanne branch of the Ludwig Institute. Until 2022, Bernhard has been a Group Leader at SR-TIGET and Staff Hematologist at the San Raffaele Hospital, Milan. Bernhard completed his MD studies at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and the MD Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, USA. He trained in internal medicine at Erlangen University Hospital and hematology at San Raffaele Vita-Salute University. He has authored more than 60 scientific publications and is a recipient of the Young Investigator Award of ESGCT.

Prof. Michele de Palma, Ph.D.

Michele de Palma teaches cancer biology at the Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland and serves on the editorial and advisory boards of several scientific publications. Michele obtained his Ph.D. in Cell Biotechnologies from the University of Turin Medical School, where he studied the contribution of bone marrow-derived cells to tumor angiogenesis under Prof. Luigi Naldini, a co-founder of Genenta. His work has led to first-in-kind clinical trials of engineered monocytes in patients with brain and haematological cancers.

Prof. Richard Flavell, Ph.D., FRS

Richard Flavell is Sterling Professor of Immunobiology at Yale University School of Medicine, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his B.Sc. (Honors) in 1967 and Ph.D. in 1970 in biochemistry from the University of Hull, England, and performed postdoctoral work in Amsterdam and Zurich. Richard was previously first Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam, Head of the Laboratory of Gene Structure and Expression at the National Institute for Medical Research, London, and President and Chief Scientific Officer of Biogen Research Corporation). His research focuses on using transgenic and gene-targeted mice to study innate and adaptive immunity, T cell tolerance and activation in immunity and autoimmunity, apoptosis, and regulation of T cell differentiation. Richard is a fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences as well as the National Academy of Medicine.

Prof. Hervé Wolf Fridman, Ph.D., M.D.

Professor Wolf H. Fridman is Professor Emeritus of Immunology at the Paris Descartes University Medical School in Paris, France. He received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Paris. After 10 years in the laboratory headed by Jean Dausset, he created his own laboratory at the Cancer Research Centre in Villejuif in 1976, then moved to Institut Curie in 1983 and created in 2007 the Cordeliers Research Centre, a 500 people joint research structure between INSERM, University Paris Descartes and University Pierre et Marie Curie. He also headed the Immunology Laboratory of European Hospital Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Prof. Patrick Y Wen, M.D.

Patrick Wen is a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He the Director of the Center For Neuro-Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Chief of the Division of Neuro-Oncology in the Department of Neurology at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital. He is a former President of the Society For Neuro-oncology and Editor-In-Chief of Neuro-Oncology and a current member of the Response Assessment in Neuro-oncology (RANO) Steering Committee. His research is focused on novel treatments of brain tumors and developing improved responses assessment, endpoints and trial designs for brain tumor trials.