Celsion Corporation Expands Vaccine Advisory Board with the Addition of Dr. Dan H. Barouch and Dr. Luke D. Handke
July 15, 2021 at 08:00 am EDT
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Celsion Corporation announced the addition of Dan H. Barouch and Luke D. Handke to its Vaccine Advisory Board (VAB). They join Britt A. Glaunsinger, Ph.D. and Xinzhen Yang, M.D., Ph.D. on the VAB, which was formed in February 2021. Dr. Barouch is the principal investigator at the Barouch Laboratory, Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. In addition, he is a key participant in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery, the National Institutes of Health Martin Delaney HIV-1 Cure Collaboratory and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. Dr. Barouch and his team were instrumental in developing the vector, a variant of an adenovirus called Ad26, that was used to make single-dose vaccines for HIV, tuberculosis and Zika, and ultimately, in conjunction with Johnson & Johnson researchers, SARS-CoV-2. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Handke is a highly skilled molecular biologist and microbiologist with a decade of pharmaceutical industry experience including nine years with Pfizer’s Vaccine Research and Early Development Unit. At Pfizer he served as molecular biology lead on an early phase viral vaccine program and was the lead reviewer of data sources and literature citations for licensure application for the Trumenba® meningococcal group B vaccine in the U.S. and in Europe. He began his career in vaccine research at Wyeth. He is co-author and co-inventor on various patent applications for a protein-based RSV vaccine and a SARS-CoV-2 detection assay and authored 10 peer-reviewed publications including six as first author. Dr. Handke is currently a Senior Scientist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. In addition to serving on the VAB, Dr. Handke will provide consulting services to Celsion in connection with its vaccine development program, which involves DNA-based vectors in combination with proprietary non-viral cellular delivery agents. He also will advise Celsion as it advances this program into human clinical studies.
Imunon, Inc. is a clinical-stage biotechnology company. The Company is focused on advancing a portfolio of treatments that harness the bodyâs natural mechanisms across an array of human diseases. The Company is developing non-viral Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) technology across four modalities. The first modality, TheraPlas, is developed for the coding of proteins and cytokines in the treatment of solid tumors. The second modality, PlaCCine, is developed for the coding of viral antigens that can elicit a strong immunological response. The third modality, FixPlas, concerns the application of Imunonâs DNA technology to produce universal cancer vaccines, also called tumor associated antigen cancer vaccines. The fourth modality, IndiPlas, is in the discovery phase and is focused on the development of personalized cancer vaccines, or neoepitope cancer vaccines. Its lead clinical program, IMNN-001, is a DNA-based immunotherapy for the localized treatment of advanced ovarian cancer.