CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Eleven Biotherapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company discovering and developing protein therapeutics to treat diseases of the eye, announced today that it has established a Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) to guide the Company’s core therapeutic and technologic approaches, including its ophthalmic pipeline and protein engineering platform. The members of the SAB include clinical and scientific experts in the areas of ocular disease (both front and back of the eye), immunology and cytokine biology and protein engineering. Listed in alphabetical order, the members are: Peter Campochiaro, MD, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Wilmer Eye Institute; Reza Dana, MD, Harvard Medical School, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary; Patricia D’Amore, MD, Harvard Medical School, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary; K. Christopher Garcia, PhD, Stanford University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Casey Weaver, MD, University of Alabama School of Medicine.
“We are pleased to welcome these well-respected clinicians and scientists in the fields of ocular disease and protein engineering to Eleven’s Scientific Advisory Board,” said Abbie Celniker, PhD, President and CEO of Eleven Biotherapeutics. “Their experience and knowledge, both in ocular disease and in the underlying cytokine biology and protein engineering, will be valuable to Eleven as we advance our development pipeline, including EBI-005, our most advanced product candidate.”
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Peter Campochiaro, MD, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Wilmer Eye
Institute
Dr. Campochiaro is the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Professor of Ophthalmology and Neuroscience at the Wilmer Eye Institute. His major research interests are in gaining a greater understanding of the roles of peptide growth and trophic factors in the retina and retinal pigmented-epithelium, in particular in connection with proliferative retinopathies, choroidal neovascularization, and retinal degenerations.
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Reza Dana, MD, Harvard University, Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary,
Schepens Eye Research Institute
Reza Dana, a scientific co-founder of Eleven, is Professor of Ophthalmology and the Claes Dohlman Chair in Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. He is an ophthalmologist and an immunologist, with a particular interest in the molecular and cellular mechanisms of inflammation and immunity in the eye and ocular surface. In addition to his position as Senior Scientist and W. Clement Stone Scholar at The Schepens Eye Research Institute, Dr. Dana also serves as Director of the Cornea Service at The Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and is a member of the Committee on Immunology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Dana has authored over 300 peer-reviewed articles and reviews, and is on the editorial board of the journals Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science (IOVS), Cornea, The Ocular Surface, Ophthalmologica, and UpToDate (Rheumatology and Allergy), in addition to serving as Senior Editor to the Encyclopedia of the Eye. Dr. Dana is a recipient of numerous national and international awards for his many contributions to the field of ophthalmology and ophthalmic science.
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Patricia A. D’Amore, MD, Mass Eye and Ear, Schepens Eye Research
Institute, Harvard Medical School
Dr. D’Amore is Director of Research at Schepens Eye Research Institute and The Charles L Schepens Professor of Ophthalmology and Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. D’Amore has served as co-chair of the Program in Development in Angiogenesis, Invasion & Metastasis at the Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and is Co-Director of the AMD Center of Excellence at Harvard Medical School. She founded the Boston Angiogenesis Meeting, as a forum for presenting new findings and promoting collaboration in angiogenesis research and co-organizes the Biennial Age-related Macular Degeneration Symposium, an international forum. As an internationally recognized expert in vascular growth and development, D’Amore’s investigations have led to a deeper understanding of the molecular basis of eye diseases, and helped form the foundations of vascular targeting therapies. Her work uncovered important physiological roles of vascular growth factors, and yielded crucial insight into the safe use of antiangiogenic therapies. She has received multiple recognitions for her scientific and academic contributions.
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K. Christopher Garcia, PhD, Stanford University, Howard Hughes
Medical Institute
K. Christopher Garcia, a scientific co-founder of Eleven, is a leading scientist studying the structural biology of cytokine receptor recognition and activation, and probing cytokine signaling mechanisms using protein engineering. Dr. Garcia's laboratory also has a longstanding interest in the structural biology of adaptive immunity, mainly focused on understanding on how the T cell receptor recognizes MHC molecules. Dr. Garcia was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 and has been a Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, and of Structural Biology at Stanford University School of Medicine since 1999, and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2005. There he has identified new paradigms for recognition and activation of a variety of receptors that play critical roles in autoimmunity, cancer, neural growth and repair, and blood pressure regulation.
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Casey Weaver, MD, University of Alabama School of Medicine
A leading scientist studying T cell development and function, Dr. Casey Weaver, a scientific co-founder of Eleven, is recognized for his contributions in defining the Th17 cell pathway and its importance to autoimmune disease, as well as mechanisms that give rise to memory T cells. Dr. Weaver is the Wyatt and Susan Haskell Professor of Medical Excellence in the Department of Pathology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where his lab is using transgenic mouse models and molecular biological approaches to define the signals that control the fate of T cells and to understand how alternative T cell developmental pathways lead to distinct immune responses.
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K. Dane Wittrup, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Koch
Institute
A pioneer in protein engineering methodologies and tumor targeting theory, K. Dane Wittrup, a scientific co-founder of Eleven, is currently the C.P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Associate Director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, as well as co-founder and acting Chief Scientific Officer at Adimab. Dr. Wittrup has also served as the J. W. Westwater Professor of Chemical Engineering, Biophysics, and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Wittrup co-founded BioDisplay Technologies, which was acquired by Abbott Laboratories 2001. He previously worked as a postdoctoral research associate in Amgen’s Yeast Molecular Biology Group. Dr. Wittrup is a fellow of the American Institute of Biomedical Engineers.
About Eleven Biotherapeutics
Eleven Biotherapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company with a proprietary protein engineering platform, called AMP-Rx, that it applies to the discovery and development of protein therapeutics to treat diseases of the eye. The company’s therapeutic approach is based on the role of cytokines in diseases of the eye, the company’s understanding of the structural biology of cytokines and the company’s ability to rationally design and engineer proteins to modulate the effects of cytokines. Cytokines are cell signaling molecules found in the body that can have important inflammatory effects.
For more information, please visit www.elevenbio.com.