IFM Scientific Founders Named Among World's Most Influential Researchers

BOSTON, Dec. 3, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- IFM Therapeutics, LLC (IFM), a privately held biopharmaceutical company focused on developing therapies that modulate novel targets in the innate immune system to treat inflammatory disorders and cancer, today announced that two of the company's scientific founders have been named in Clarivate Analytics' annual Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list.

Luigi Franchi, M.D., Ph.D. and Eicke Latz, M.D., Ph.D. both scientific founders at IFM, were identified by the citation analysis for publishing leading peer-reviewed papers that rank in the top one percent most-cited over a decade. In the immunology category, only 146 researchers worldwide held this distinction in 2018. Franchi and Latz earned their places on the list through their respective institutions, the University of Michigan and University of Bonn, Germany. Both have been recognized in the Clarivate Analytics HCR list each year since its inception in 2014, when it was known as Thomson Reuters' World's Most Influential Scientific Minds.

Prior to his role at IFM, Dr. Franchi served as assistant professor of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at the University of Michigan and as the director of the Immunology Oncology program. Franchi's research has been instrumental in advancing the scientific community's understanding of innate immune system biology and its role in disease pathogenesis.  

Dr. Latz is the founder and director of the Institute of Innate Immunity at the University of Bonn, Germany. He is also a recipient of the prestigious 2018 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation (DGF). Latz's recent scientific contributions include a novel study in Nature demonstrating NLRP3 inflammasome activation and Amyloid-β pathology in Alzheimer's disease, as well as a publication in Cell linking the Western diet to systemic inflammation and myeloid precursor programming. 

"We are proud that two of IFM's co-founders have made the Highly Cited Researchers list, which speaks to the value of work and extent to which Franchi and Latz have influenced the field of immunology," said Martin Seidel, executive vice president of R&D at IFM. "The translational discoveries that are taking place in Luigi and Eicke's labs have laid the groundwork for IFM's drug discovery team to develop a pipeline of first-in-class therapies, which have the potential to improve the lives of patients living with serious inflammatory diseases. Their continued, deep involvement with IFM's research programs enriches our efforts and has helped set a high scientific bar for everything we do."

Placement on the Highly Cited Researchers list has been recognized as a significant achievement for those named. The 2018 list includes more than 4,000 researchers from 21 fields of science and social science. The list is generated using data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts using a compilation of science performance metrics and trend data based on scholarly paper publication counts and other citation data from more than 33,000 journals.

About IFM Therapeutics, LLC
IFM Therapeutics, LLC (IFM) is a privately held biopharmaceutical company based in Boston, Massachusetts. The company was founded by an international group of preeminent scientists and physicians who have spent decades understanding innate immunity and the role it plays in regulating the immune system. IFM's team has discovered and developed small molecules that modulate novel targets in the innate immune system as next-generation therapies for cancer, auto-immunity, and inflammatory disorders. IFM owns and operates IFM Tre, a subsidiary company launched in July of 2018 that is developing a suite of small-molecule antagonists targeting inappropriate inflammatory responses of the innate immune system via the NLRP3 pathway. For more information, please visit www.ifmthera.com.    

SOURCE IFM Therapeutics, LLC

Related Links

http://www.ifmthera.com