As the Vice President of Discovery at ImmunoScape based out of San Diego, Dr. Dan MacLeod will spearhead ImmunoScape’s push into the drug discovery space.
Dr. MacLeod brings over 15 years of education and experience across immunology, oncology, cancer, immunotherapy, gene-editing, and virology to ImmunoScape. He most recently held several leadership positions at Precision Biosciences where he was focused on engineering human T cells for cancer therapy. In his most recent role at Precision, he led a team responsible for early-stage research to IND-enabling studies for four allogeneic gene-edited CAR T therapies that advanced into Phase I/II clinical studies. Prior to Precision, Dr. MacLeod also held investigative or research-based roles at GlaxoSmithKline, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative Neutralizing Antibody Center at the Scripps Research Institute, and the University of California, San Diego. He received a B.A. from Northwestern University with a double major in biochemistry and psychology, and a Ph.D. in molecular pathology and biomedical sciences from the University of California, San Diego.
“ImmunoScape’s Deep Immunomics platform is able to deliver unprecedented insights into the human immune system, which is critical in advancing the development and commercialization of novel therapies in drug discovery programs,” said Dr. MacLeod, VP of Discovery at ImmunoScape. “I look forward to working closely with Chief Business Officer, Dr. Geoff Nosrati, and the rest of the growing U.S. based team to utilize this technology for the discovery of novel immunotherapies that can be developed into life-saving treatments.”
Dr. Katja Fink comes to ImmunoScape with over 20 years of experience in basic and applied immunology research. As the Senior Director of ImmunoScape’s Hit Discovery program in Singapore, she will lead the company’s efforts to identify tumor-specific T cells and T cell receptors that are therapeutically relevant and can be developed into immunotherapies for cancer.
Prior to joining ImmunoScape, Dr. Fink served as the Director, Antibody Research at Humabs BioMed SA in Switzerland, a subsidiary of Vir Biotechnology, San Francisco, where she coordinated and guided the discovery and pre-clinical development of therapeutic antibodies to infectious diseases including SARS-CoV-2. Earlier in her career, she established a research group at the Singapore Immunology Network at A*STAR that successfully discovered and developed new approaches for dengue vaccines, therapeutic antibodies, and disease biomarkers. Dr. Fink has published over 65 original research articles in peer-reviewed journals including Science, Nature, and Cell. She holds an M.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Zurich and a PhD in Immunology from the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland.
ImmunoScape’s new Director of Computational Biology, Dr. Andreas Wilm, has worked at the intersection of technology, biology, and computer science for nearly 15 years across research institutes in Germany, Ireland, and Singapore. Immediately prior to joining ImmunoScape, Dr. Wilm served as a Data & AI subject matter expert on Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Sector team. In his role as Bioinformatics core team lead at the Genome Institute of Singapore, Dr. Wilm and his team were responsible for developing scalable computational workflows for analyzing genomics big data on hybrid compute platforms, including data from the National Precision Medicine pilot program. He holds a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Dusseldorf and numerous technical certifications.
“We are excited to announce these exceptional new additions to our global team on the heels of our recent funding announcement and opening of our San Diego laboratory as we expand the use of our platform into drug discovery and develop new partnerships with leading biopharma,” said Choon-Peng Ng, CEO of ImmunoScape. “Dr. MacLeod, Dr. Fink and Dr. Wilm bring decades of invaluable experience across immunology research and technology and will build a world class team around them to apply the use of our Deep Immunomics platform for next-generation drug discovery.”
To learn more about ImmunoScape please visit https://www.immunoscape.com/.
About ImmunoScape
ImmunoScape is an immunomics-focused company with a technology platform that allows for immune profiling and characterization of the human immune response at extremely high resolution. The company’s Deep Immunomics platform combines mass cytometry, single cell sequencing, and proprietary computational bioinformatics, data analysis, and visualization tools to provide novel, reproducible immune profiling information. This technology has been utilized across multiple therapeutic areas, especially in oncology and infectious disease, both to better understand immunotherapy safety and efficacy and to identify drug targets. For more information, please visit https://www.immunoscape.com/.
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Kalyn Schieffer for ImmunoScape