SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cartography Biosciences, Inc., an oncology company advancing a pipeline of antibody therapeutics that more precisely target tumors, today announced the appointment of four new members to its Clinical Advisory Board (CAB). The new members include Kristen Hege M.D., Former SVP, Early Clinical Development, Hematology/Oncology & Cell Therapy at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS); Bridget Keenan M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor at University of California, San Francisco, Dirk Nagorsen, M.D., Chief Medical Officer at Affini-T Therapeutics and, Josep Tabernero, M.D., Ph.D., Head of the Medical Oncology Department at the Vall d´Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona.
“Our newly appointed advisors bring world-class academic, scientific and multi-disciplinary biopharma expertise to the advancement and delivery of novel cancer therapies to patients,” said Kevin Parker, Ph.D., CEO of Cartography Biosciences. “Our platform has identified several novel targets and target pairs that we have rapidly engineered new T-cell engagers and ADCs against. As these programs prepare to enter the clinic, we determined the need to assemble the very best minds to help guide our efforts and provide real-world inputs to our plans. We are grateful for the commitment of these prominent experts and look forward to their contributions, beginning with our lead asset CB21 in colorectal cancer, which is on track for an investigational new drug (IND) application next year.”
Dr. Hege retired from BMS in 2023 where she served as SVP Early Clinical Development, Hematology/Oncology & Cell Therapy. While there she led the advancement of small molecules, biologics and cell therapies from first-in-human through clinical proof-of-concept studies. Additionally, she led the BCMA CART cell program (Abecma) in multiple myeloma from target selection through FDA approval. Prior to BMS, she served a similar role at Celgene as Vice President, Translational Development. Dr. Hege has also held an active faculty position at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center since 1996, most recently as Clinical Professor of Medicine, Hematology/Oncology, serving in that role as a volunteer since 2008. Dr. Hege currently serves on the boards of directors at Mersana, Adaptimmune, and Kelonia Therapeutics. She received her M.D. from UCSF and hematology/oncology subspecialty training at Harvard and UCSF.
Dr. Keenan is an oncologist and physician-scientist focused on promising new treatments for digestive system cancers. Her research investigates various immunotherapy approaches to fighting cancer, including checkpoint inhibitors, cellular therapies, bispecific antibodies and other new treatments. Dr. Keenan’s current clinical practice is in the Cancer Immunotherapy Clinic at UCSF, where she works with patients with solid tumors who are being treated in early immunotherapy clinical trials. She is the co-director of the UCSF Cancer Immunotherapy Program. Dr. Keenan earned her medical degree and a doctorate in immunology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in hematology and oncology at UCSF.
Dr. Nagorsen has more than 20 years of experience in hematology and oncology, both in academia and industry. He joined Affini-T Therapeutics as CMO in 2022 after more than 10 years at Amgen, where he was Vice President Early Development and Therapeutic Area Head, Hematology & Oncology Early Development, overseeing more than 30 oncology programs spanning IND filings through Phase 1/2, including the recently approved IMDELLTRA™ (TARLATAMAB-DLLE) a first-in-class DLL3-targeted bispecific T-cell engager for recurrent small-cell lung cancer. His groundbreaking research has resulted in over 60 peer-reviewed manuscripts, including papers published in New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet Oncology. He earned his medical doctorate and his habilitation (equivalent of a PhD) in experimental medicine and tumor immunology from Charité University Medicine Berlin.
Dr. Tabernero has spent his career providing care at the forefront of oncology treatment paradigms. He is the Head of the Medical Oncology Department at the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, a Director of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology and Professor of Medicine at Universitat de Vic in Barcelona, Spain. Dr. Tabernero has been the Principal Investigator of several clinical studies and translational projects with targeted immune-based therapies. His research focuses on potentiating molecular therapies and targeting specific oncoproteins for personalized care. Dr. Tabernero serves on the Editorial Boards of various top-tier journals including Annals of Oncology, ESMO Open, Cancer Discovery and Clinical Cancer Research. Dr. Tabernero earned his M.D., and Ph.D., degrees from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain.
About Cartography Biosciences
Cartography Biosciences is building a differentiated oncology pipeline of antibody-based therapies designed to target tumors more precisely than existing therapeutics. Cartography’s ATLAS and SUMMIT drug discovery platforms are powered by an industry-leading, fully integrated dataset spanning over a thousand cell types across the healthy body and large-scale profiling of individual cells from patient tumors. By leveraging petabytes of proprietary data, along with insights from machine learning and AI, Cartography is identifying and developing therapeutics against highly specific targets and target pairs to build a pipeline of molecules with the greatest patient impact. Cartography’s lead program in preclinical development, CB21, is a T-cell engager being advanced for colorectal cancer (CRC). To learn more about Cartography and our mission to treat every patient with cancer, visit cartography.bio and follow us on LinkedIn and X @cartographybio.
