Scientific Advisory Board

Eli Gilboa, Ph.D.
Scientific Advisor and Member of the SAB
Prof. Gilboa, Ph.D., is an international leader in translating promising immune therapies from the laboratory into patient care – particularly against cancer and HIV. Since 1993, Prof. Gilboa has held joint appointments in the Departments of Surgery and Immunology at Duke University. He previously worked at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and at Princeton University. He is a pioneer in gene therapy, having developed the first generation of retroviral vectors tumor cells as cancer vaccines. Prof. Gilboa is currently best known for using RNA-vaccine in the first human trials. He was also among the first researchers to show the potential of modified Dendritic Cells, a form of cell therapy, to stimulate the immune system in cancer patients.

Prof.Gilboa studied in Israel and at MIT. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and books on a variety of topics in gene therapy, tumor immunology and infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS. He approaches immune therapy in cancer from several fronts, working to boost the body’s immune response against the tumor, but also to overcome the propensity of tumors to suppress the immune system.

Jean-Pierre Abastado, Ph.D.
Scientific Advisor and Member of the SAB
Dr. Abastado is a leading expert in immunotherapy and brings over 25 years of academic and biotechnology research and development experience in immunology. He is currently a Principal Investigator at the Laboratory for Tumour Immunology in Singapore. Previously he was a Research Director at CNRS, Cochin Institute in Paris and Head of the Immunotherapy and Treatment Associations Group. Prior thereto, he was for six years the Chief Scientific Officer of IDM (NASDAQ: IDMI), a large immunotherapy company developing therapeutic vaccines. Prior to that, he was a researcher at the NIH and the Pasteur Institute. Dr. Abastado also served as a consultant to several immunology projects during the last ten years. He has authored many articles in peer-reviewed journals and was awarded several patents.

Angel Porgador, Ph.D.
Scientific Advisor and Member of the SAB
Prof. Progador is an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Health Sciences, at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is one of the leading immunologists in Israel with an extensive experience in cellular immunology. His group currently focuses on the characterization of innate immunity responses to tumors and viral infections with the ultimate goal of understanding how NK cells kill their targets and to identify relevant pathogen-induced ligands that interact with NCRs. In parallel, Prof. Progador is also involved in the characterization of the peptidome and glyco-peptidome in the blood of tumor-bearing hosts. Separately, he is a founder of a number of ventures in immunology and immunotherapy.