CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Strand Therapeutics, an mRNA gene therapy company specialized in utilizing synthetic biology for immunotherapy of cancer, announced today the appointment of industry leaders, Dr. Dane Wittrup to its Scientific Advisory Board and Dr. Mark Frohlich to its newly formed Clinical Advisory Board.
“We are incredibly excited to welcome Dane and Mark to the Strand family. After years of collaborating with Dane at MIT, we are very excited to push the discovery and design of our therapeutics forward with his insight that comes from decades of leadership within biological engineering. As we pivot these breakthroughs from the bench to the bedside at lightning speeds, Mark brings his unparalleled leadership and experience in the clinical development of cell and gene therapies for immuno-oncology,” said Jacob Becraft, CEO & Co-founder of Strand Therapeutics.
Dr. Dane Wittrup is the C.P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biological Engineering at MIT. In 2012, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. He was also elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011. Dr. Wittrup is a co-founder of Adimab and a fellow of the American Institute of Biomedical Engineers. He served as an Associate Director of MIT’s Koch Institute until 2017. He has also served as the J. W. Westwater Professor of Chemical Engineering, Biophysics, and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He previously worked as a postdoctoral research associate in Amgen’s Yeast Molecular Biology Group. He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of New Mexico.
Dr. Mark Frohlich has been involved in the clinical development of immunotherapies for cancer for more than 20 years. He currently serves as a strategic advisor or board member for several immuno-oncology biotech companies. He previously served as EVP of Portfolio Strategy at Juno Therapeutics, a leader in the development of CAR-T therapies. Prior to that, he was EVP of R&D and Chief Medical Officer of Dendreon Corporation, where he led the clinical team responsible for the approval of the first cellular immunotherapy in the US and Europe. He also led the clinical team at Xcyte Therapies, developing autologous activated T cells for cancer. Dr. Frohlich trained in medical oncology at UCSF. He is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and Yale College.
About Strand Therapeutics
Strand Therapeutics is an early-stage biotechnology company genetically programming mRNA to deliver truly revolutionary therapies to improve the lives of patients. Strand’s mRNA programming technology promises to make mRNA immunotherapies safer and more effective by programming the location, timing, and intensity of therapeutic protein expression inside a patient’s body using mRNA-encoded logic circuits. They are headquartered in Kendall Sq, Cambridge, MA.
