Scientific Advisory Board
Dr. Neil H. Bander, M.D.
Dr. Neil H. Bander completed fellowship training in urological oncology under Dr. Willet F. Whitmore, Jr. and an NIH Immunology Training Fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Lloyd Old, both at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. After coming to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medicine (NYPH/WCM), he focused on clinical urological oncology and the development of monoclonal antibodies for targeted cancer therapy.
Dr. Bander’s research team was the first to show that after an antibody binds to PSMA, the antibody-PSMA complex is rapidly internalized into the targeted cancer cell. This finding supports the potential to use PSMA-binding agents to target either radiopharmaceuticals or highly potent drugs that will be selectively internalized by the cancer cells to specifically kill the tumor cells without causing damage to normal cells.
Dr. Bander’s team pioneered the application of PSMA-targeted agents to patients in clinical trials dating back to the early 2000’s. These studies demonstrated that the lead antibody, designated J591, is capable of virtually flawless targeting of tumor sites wherever they are in the body. In addition to successful targeting, a significant proportion of the patients demonstrated anti-tumor activity such as PSA declines and tumor shrinkage of as much as > 90%. These trials validated the utility of targeting PSMA and spawned the high level of interest and activity in PSMA-targeted imaging and therapy now taking place around the world.
Seeing the early clinical data with the agents developed in his lab, Dr. Bander predicted that such agents had the potential to transform how prostate cancer patients are diagnosed, monitored and treated. His vision has, in recent years, begun to bear fruit, and PSMA PET imaging and therapeutics have become some of the most promising recent advances in the prostate cancer field [see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=PSMA].
Dr. Bander’s group recently completed a Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Laboratory – Clinical Transition Award to develop a PSMA antibody-drug conjugate (ADC). This work led to an ADC based on one of Dr. Bander’s antibodies that is now in clinical trials in the US and Europe sponsored by a major pharmaceutical company.
The NYPH/WCM Uro-Oncology research team has sponsored over 15 clinical trials with anti-PSMA antibodies and, more recently, small molecule PSMA agents in prostate cancer patients. As of 2018, over 500 patients have been treated in these trials at WCM/NYPH.
As a result of these efforts, the lead antibody, J591, has been licensed by several biotech/pharma partners who are developing both J591-radiopharmaceuticals and J591-drug conjugates in clinical trials in the US, Europe and Australia.
Since late 2016, the NYPH/WCM Uro-Oncology research team has conducted studies combining the use of small molecule plus antibody for targeting PSMA. Data in Dr. Bander’s lab indicates that such a combination can substantially increase the dose to tumor without increasing side effects and thus has the potential to increase treatment potency to new levels. The NYPH/WCM Uro-Oncology research team is also actively targeting alpha particles—the most potent cell-killing agents known—using the J591 antibody. These efforts, which include related active clinical trials, are unique to WCM/NYPH as the WCM/NYPH PSMA team continues to forge the path forward in the PSMA effort against prostate cancer.
Dr. Bander has exemplified the role of a surgeon-scientist. He has used his clinical background and laboratory efforts to develop a translational research program that has spawned novel clinical trials that are unique in urological oncology and have already made a difference in the lives of prostate cancer patients.
Zhengrong (Rong) Cui
Zhengrong (Rong) Cui is a Professor and Alfred and Dorothy Mannino Fellow in Pharmacy at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), College of Pharmacy, Division of Molecular Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery. He is also a member of the LIVESTRONG Cancer Institutes at UT Austin Dell Medical School. His research interests lie in drug and vaccine delivery and experimental tumor therapy.
Dr. Matthew Frieman, M.D.
Dr. Frieman is an Associate Professor in The Department of Microbiology and Immunology at The University of Maryland School of Medicine. He attended Washington University in St Louis for his undergraduate studies and has a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His postdoctoral work was at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he first started his research on coronaviruses before he joined The University of Maryland School of Medicine in 2009.
Dr. Frieman’s research interests span from basic science into translating those findings to human therapies. His work on coronavirus replication derives from his interest in studying how the virus interacts with the cellular machinery during infection. He has identified SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV encoded proteins that alter the host response to infection including proteins that block the innate immune response to allow the virus to replicate silently without the cell sensing that a virus was there. Some of these viral proteins inhibit the interferon induction and signaling while other reverse the cells proteins that retain coronaviruses at the surface of the cell. These findings have also been used by Dr. Frieman to identify cellular proteins that interact with the coronavirus proteins to try and block these actions. He is now developing novel compounds that target the host proteins so that they can counteract the pro-viral function of the coronavirus proteins. He has shown that this cellular target, the SKI complex, plays a role in many viruses, such that the novel compounds he has identified inhibit SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2, Influenza virus, Ebolavirus and Marburg virus. This work is continuing to identify more potent inhibitors of this complex for use in animal models and eventually humans.
His interest in translating his lab’s work from the bench to the bedside has developed from basic science studies and animal model building over the course of his career. Starting with SARS-CoV-1 and then MERS-CoV, he helped develop mouse models to study both viral proteins and therapeutics including antibodies, anti-viral drugs and vaccines. When SARS-CoV-2 emerged, he developed mouse models to study how SARS-CoV-2 and its variants cause disease, allowing for therapeutics to be tested in these models. He has performed work with Novavax, Regeneron, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Emergent and Takeda to develop novel therapeutics that inhibit SARS-CoV-2 in both cells as well as mouse models of disease.
Currently, he has been funded by NIH, BARDA, DARPA, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the identification and testing of novel and repurposed drugs to combat SARS-CoV-2. Several of these compounds both singly and in combination have been found to highly effective at inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 in cells and mice. Future clinical trials are in development for new combinations of repurposed drugs he has identified in his lab as treatments for both SARS-CoV-2 and for yet to emerge coronaviruses.
Scott Tagawa
Scott T. Tagawa, MD, MS, FACP is a Professor of Medicine & Urology at Weill Cornell Medicine, and an Attending Physician at NewYork-Presbyterian – Weill Cornell Medical Center. After earning his BS from Georgetown University, Dr. Tagawa received his MD at the University of Southern California School of Medicine.
Dr. Neal Shore
Dr. Neal Shore graduated both Duke University and Duke University Medical School. He completed his general surgery/urology residence at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center/Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Cente. He is the Medical Director, for the Carolina Urologic Research Center. He practices with Atlantic Urology Clinics in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Andreas Typaldos
Mr. Typaldos, a veteran IT entrepreneur, is CEO of Petra Acquisition, a life sciences company (with a recent $73M Nasdaq IPO); Executive Chairman of Melontus, a holding company in Digital Health, CLOUD, Enterprise Software, Communications, and AI; BoardMember of QCD-x, an early cancer detection company; as well as AI Advisory Board Member at AIkido Pharma.
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