Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Lee Hartwell is a well-known expert in cancer biology and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2001 for his ground-breaking work in cell cycle regulation. Dr. Hartwell is President of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. His insights into cell cycle control are being used at the Hutchinson Center and elsewhere to develop treatments for cancer and other diseases. Dr. Hartwell is involved in national and international projects to increase the number of laboratories working in protein diagnostics, develop more team science, improve the availability of informatics for data sharing, provide standardized reagents and stimulate new technology development. Dr. Hartwell is the recipient of many national and international scientific awards. His honors include the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Gairdner Foundation International Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Award in cancer research. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He earned his B.S. at the California Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the University of Washington faculty in 1968 and has been a genetics professor there since 1973. In 1996, he joined the faculty of Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and, in 1997, became its president and director.

Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach served as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from 2005 until 2009 where he engaged an agenda to modernize the FDA. Under his leadership, many new programs were designed to strengthen the FDA, including the establishment of a nanotechnology initiative. He emphasized the FDA’s role in working with external partners to assure quality throughout the entire life cycle of the products it regulates while internally fostering, through process improvements, a regulatory pathway that is transparent and efficient while still rigorous and science led. Currently, Dr. von Eschenbach serves as Senior Director for Strategic Initiatives at the Center for Health Transformation, founded by Newt Gingrich, and leads the 21st Century FDA Modernization Project. Dr. von Eschenbach joined the FDA after serving for four years as Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health where he set an ambitious goal to eliminate the suffering and death due to cancer by rapid acceleration and integration of the discovery-development-delivery continuum. While at NCI, he committed resources to ensure the application to oncology of nanotechnology, genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, and other emerging technologies.

Dr. von Eschenbach entered government service after an outstanding career over three decades as a physician, surgeon, oncologist and executive that included numerous leadership roles from Chairman of the Department of Urologic Oncology to Executive Vice President and Chief Academic at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, an institution world renowned for the magnitude and excellence of its clinical and research cancer programs. An internationally renowned cancer specialist and author of more than 200 scientific articles and studies, Dr. von Eschenbach has served in numerous leadership roles, including serving as one of the founding members of the National Dialogue on Cancer. He has received numerous professional awards and honors. In 2006, Dr. von Eschenbach was named one of Time magazine’s “100 most influential people to shape the world”, and in both 2007 and 2008, he was selected as one of the Modern Healthcare/Modern Physician’s “50 Most Powerful Physician Executives in Healthcare”.

Dr. von Eschenbach earned a B.S. from St. Joseph’s University in his native Philadelphia and his medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. He served as a Lt. Commander in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps. After completing a residency in urologic surgery at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, he was an instructor in urology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He completed a Fellowship in Urologic Oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Thomas A. Tombrello, Ph.D. is the Chairman of the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics. He has served as Caltech's Technology Assessment Officer since 1996. In this role, Dr. Tombrello is responsible for identifying and evaluating new and promising technologies for the Institute. From 1987 to 1989, Dr. Tombrello was Vice President and Director of Research at Schlumberger-Doll Research.

Among his many honors, Dr. Tombrello is a fellow of the American Physical Society. His research has primarily focused on applications of nuclear and ion beam physics to problems in materials science, geochemistry, and technology. Dr. Tombrello earned his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics at Rice University in Houston.

RNAi Advisors (through Calando subsidiary)

John J. Rossi, Ph.D.
Dr. Rossi is widely regarded as a world leader in the development of RNA interference and in clinical research with nucleic acids for the treatment of various diseases. He currently serves as an Associate Director of Laboratory Research at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Rossi is the Lidow family Professor and Chair of the Division of Molecular Biology, Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope. Since 1998, Dr. Rossi served as Dean of the City of Hope Graduate School of Biological Sciences. He is also an Adjunct Professor, Division of Biomedical Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA, as well as an Adjunct Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Loma Linda University, CA. He Co-Founded Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and has been its Chairman and Member of Scientific Advisory Board since October 2008. He served as Chairman of Scientific Advisory Board of Benitec Ltd. and serves as its Member of Scientific Advisory Board. He has been Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Kylin Therapeutics, Inc. since July 1, 2010. He serves as a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board for VIRxSYS Corporation. He has been a Member of Scientific Advisory Board of Nanoviricides, Inc. since July 14, 2005. He served as a Director of Cytogenix Inc. from November 11, 2003 to November 19, 2010. In 2002 he received the Merit Award from the Division of AIDS of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In 1993, City of Hope bestowed its highest honor upon him by naming him to its Gallery of Medical and Scientific Achievement for his pioneering work at the molecular level in the battle against AIDS and other major diseases. He has authored more than 275 peer-reviewed papers and more than 70 book chapters.

Timothy J. Triche, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Triche is a Professor of Pathology and Pediatrics at the University of Southern California ("USC") Keck School of Medicine where he manages a large cancer genomics, biology, and nanotechnology laboratory research program at USC. He served as Pathologist in Chief at Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) from 1988 until 2010, and now directs a program in pediatric personalized medicine at CHLA. Dr. Triche received his undergraduate degree in physics and biology from Cornell University, his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Tulane University, and did his residency training at Washington University School of Medicine, followed by a fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD, prior to becoming a tenured faculty member there for 14 years.

Obesity Advisors (through Ablaris subsidiary)

Research Team of Renata Pasqualini, Ph.D. and Wadih Arap, MD., Ph.D.
Ablaris Co-founders and Scientific Advisors

Since they discovered that every normal or diseased organ in the human body has a unique address embedded in its vasculature, Drs. Renata Pasqualini and Wadih Arap have creatively exploited that knowledge to pursue targeted therapies and imaging agents for cancer and other diseases. They are developing delivery systems that "mail" toxic drugs, genes or peptides to a precise "zip code" in the blood vessels of tumors to deliver a more devastating attack on cancer while sparing normal tissues. The effectiveness of this approach has been demonstrated in the treatment of cancer in mice. Drs. Arap and Pasqualini have designed, built, evaluated and validated a delivery system that relies on a hybrid virus equipped with a targeting peptide to find and genetically mark tumors for imaging. They are advancing this combinatorial screening for use in cancer patients.

Renata Pasqualini is the Helen Buchanan & Stanley Seeger Professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology with appointments in Department of Genitourinary Medical Oncology and the Department of Cancer Biology at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. She received her doctorate in biochemistry from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1990. She completed post-doctoral research fellowships at Harvard Medical School, Dana Farber Cancer Institute and The Burnham Institute in La Jolla, Calif.

Wadih Arap is Hubert L. and Olive Stringer Professor for Cancer Treatment and Research and vice chair in the Department of Genitourinary Medical Oncology. He received his medical degree from the University of São Paulo Medical School in Brazil, where he also did a residency in internal medicine. He completed a fellowship in hematology and medical oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and earned his doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford University. Both are on the faculty of The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston, a joint program of M. D. Anderson and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.