SELLAS is a late-stage clinical
biopharmaceutical company...

Dr. Javier Pinilla-Ibarz is currently a senior member of the malignant hematology and immunology program and Director of Immunotherapy for Malignant Hematology at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, as well as Professor in the Department of Oncologic Sciences, University of South Florida College of Medicine, both in Tampa, Florida. He has a long track record of successfully applying immunology clinical and translational approaches to the treatment of leukemias and myelodysplastic syndromes, and has participated in several clinical trials of peptide and cellular vaccines in various hematological disorders, including acute and chronic leukemias. Dr. Pinilla-Ibarz received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Zaragoza, Spain. He then completed a research fellowship in Immunology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), as well as Hematology and Oncology training at the same Institution. Dr. Pinilla-Ibarz has published more than 130 articles in top peer-reviewed journals in his field.

Dr. Larry W. Kwak is Vice President and Deputy Director of the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte, CA. He is also, Director of the Toni Stephenson Lymphoma Center within the Hematologic Malignancies and Stem Cell Transplantation Institute, and is endowed with the title of the Dr. Michael Friedman Professor in Translational Medicine. From 2004 to 2014, Dr. Kwak served as Chairman of the Department of Lymphoma and Myeloma and Co-Director of the Center for Cancer Immunology Research at the University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, where he also held the Jane and John Justin Distinguished Chair in Leukemia Research. Prior to his role at M.D. Anderson, Dr. Kwak served as Head of the Vaccine Biology Section, Experimental Transplantation and Immunology Branch, at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for 12 years. His laboratory at the NCI was credited with the bench-to-clinic development of a therapeutic cancer vaccine for B-cell malignancies. In 2010, Dr. Kwak was named to TIME Magazine’s TIME100 as one of the world’s 100 most influential people for his 20-year commitment to the science of cancer vaccines, specifically a personalized therapy for follicular lymphoma. Dr. Kwak received his medical degree from Northwestern University Medical School and earned his Ph.D. in tumor cell biology there in 1984. He also completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in medical oncology at Stanford University Medical Center in California. He has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters and monographs.

Dr. Guenther Koehne is Deputy Director, Chief of Blood & Marrow Transplantation and Hematologic Oncology at the Miami Cancer Institute, part of Baptist Health South Florida, in Miami, Florida. Prior to assuming this role in mid-2017, he was an Attending Physician of the Adult Bone Marrow Transplantation Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and also held the position of Medical Director of the Cell Therapy Laboratory in the Bone Marrow Transplantation Laboratory at MSKCC since 2010. He was Associate Member and Associate Attending Physician in the Allogeneic Bone Marrow Transplantation Service at MSKCC from 2007 to 2014, as well as Associate Professor of Medicine of the Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University from 2007 to 2017. Dr. Koehne has led fundamental research in the mechanisms of immunologic responses to multiple myeloma antigens and has spearheaded the development of innovative adoptive immunotherapeutic strategies for post-transplant blood disorders, including plasma cell dyscrasias. Dr. Koehne has particular expertise in the creation and monitoring of antigen-specific T-cell responses in these patients. He is the Principal Investigator in active clinical trials using adoptive cell therapy following allogeneic stem cell transplants for multiple myeloma and plasma cell leukemia patients. Dr. Koehne graduated with his MD in 1991 from the Medical University of Hamburg in Germany and received his PhD from the same institution in 1996. He completed residencies at the Medical University of Hamburg General Hospital and Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, before undertaking his fellowship training at MSKCC and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. Dr. Koehne is board certified in both Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology and keeps up to date with the latest advances in his field by maintaining a professional membership with the American Society of Hematology, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation. Dr. Koehne has published more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, textbook chapters, and monographs.