Anixa Biosciences Appoints Leading Researchers in Immuno-Oncology to its Scientific Advisory Board

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Oct 11, 2018, 07:00 ET

SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 11, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Anixa Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANIX), a biotechnology company focused on using the body's immune system to fight cancer, today announced that it has added to its Scientific Advisory Board, Jose Conejo-Garcia, MD PhD; Marco Davila, MD PhD; Linda Kelley, PhD; and Daniel Abate-Daga, PhD; the lead scientists from Moffitt Cancer Center developing a novel ovarian cancer CAR-T treatment.

Dr. Amit Kumar, CEO of ITUS stated, "We are pleased to have such a distinguished group of scientists and physicians join our Scientific Advisory Board. This team has been instrumental in the development of a novel and promising ovarian cancer treatment, and it is due to their efforts that this treatment is advancing more rapidly than originally planned—with human trials potentially beginning as soon as the first half of 2019. Each member of this team is passionate about developing an effective treatment for ovarian cancer, and we are very excited to be working together in pursuit of this goal."

Dr. Jose Conejo-Garcia is the Chair of the Department of Immunology and co-leader of the Immunology Program at Moffitt. His research focuses on understanding and targeting mechanisms governing the balance between immunosuppression and protective immunity in the tumor microenvironment, with an emphasis on the role of cancer-driven pathological myelopoiesis. He completed his medical degree at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). After a residency in Clinical Chemistry, he completed his PhD in Molecular Medicine at the University of Alcala (Spain). He completed post doctorate training in pancreatic cancer at the University of Bern (Switzerland). Previous to his position at Moffitt, Dr. Conejo-Garcia held positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the Wistar Institute.

Dr. Marco Davila is a medical oncologist in the Department of Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Moffitt. His clinical focus is utilizing cell therapies to treat patients with hematologic malignancies. He obtained his MD and PhD degrees at the Duke University School of Medicine and trained in medicine and medical oncology at NY Presbyterian Weill-Cornell and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, respectively.

Dr. Linda Kelley is a Senior Member and Director of the Cell Therapy facility at Moffitt Cancer Center. Previously she was the head of the Cell Therapy facility at Dana Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard. As director of the Cell Therapy Facility at Moffitt Cancer Center, Dr. Kelley is responsible for manufacture and compliance of approved cell therapies for stem cell transplantation of malignant and benign disease, as well as experimental therapies for immune modulation of cancer treatment. In this capacity, she oversees 22 investigational new drug applications for on-going clinical trials. Dr. Kelley received her PhD in Pathology and Immunology at Vanderbilt University, where she also completed a fellowship in Hematology.

Dr. Abate-Daga is an Assistant Member of the Department of Immunology at Moffitt. His group is interested in understanding how a new generation of immune receptors (Chimeric Antigen Receptors, conventional T-cell receptors, and others) can be designed to outperform the current products, in both antitumor efficacy and safety. His team is also interested in identifying novel targets for cancer therapy, and in taking advantage of the unique biological properties of gamma/delta T cells for the treatment of various solid tumors. He completed his undergraduate studies in clinical biochemistry at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina), and his PhD in Health and Life Sciences at the Pompeu Fabra University and Centre for Genomic Regulation (Barcelona, Spain). He completed post doctorate training in cancer immunotherapy and gene therapy, under the mentorship of Dr. Steve Rosenberg, at the Surgery Branch of the National Institutes of Health.

About Anixa Biosciences, Inc.
Anixa, a cancer-focused biotechnology company, is harnessing the body's immune system in the fight against cancer. Anixa is developing both diagnostics and therapeutics to detect cancer early, when it is most curable, and to treat those afflicted once diagnosed. It is developing the Cchek^TM platform, a series of inexpensive non-invasive blood tests for the early detection of solid tumors, which is based on the body's immune response to the presence of a malignancy. It is also developing chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) based immuno-therapy drugs which genetically engineer a patient's own immune cells to fight cancer. Anixa also continually examines emerging technologies in complementary or related fields for further development and commercialization. Additional information is available at www.anixa.com.

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SOURCE Anixa Biosciences, Inc.