EBMT Reddit Mentions | ChartExchange

(Sorry for my VERY inconsistent formatting! Graduate school was a decade ago and I barely need to work. FYI, I picked their names at random from a list of 19-20 to share a few highlights for each).
\*DISCLAIMER\*: Oh and first a clinician wanted me clarify this, and I put into the simplest language possible so I can also share elsewhere, in non-stock-related forums:
... So, Sellas Life Sciences has a WILD stock resembling a roller coaster, but it does not reflect poorly on the competence of these fine scientists who I'm giving a shoutout to today. Basically many people received "warrants" years ago, a sort of BOGO offer to buy stock, which funded clinical trials for cancer treatment. Warrants can be turned into new shares... but more "shares" of a company in existence means each share is then worth less (each becomes a smaller relative percentage of the company). Day traders can place a "short" just before doing this - a lucrative bet that the stock will drop in value. Some people were quite open on forums that they had placed shorts... Sadly, right before the price JUMPED! Yikes!!
So if you see weekly articles or forum bots *so convinced the science will fail*, it's less likely that these scientists weren't doing their best work, and much more likely that someone is trying desperately to avoid loosing money, possibly all of their money.
There, context explained...
Michael Bolton- “…NOW BACK TO THE GOOD PART-”
In 2009, the National Cancer Institute evaluated some 75 tumor antigens, eventually ranking "Wilms' Tumor 1" (WT1) as their #1 priority target... Yet because of drug limitations and WT1’s "trickster" nature as both a tumor suppressor and tumor instigator at times - it was called “undruggable”…
Avengers, assemble! (as one Redditor put it).
First, a shoutout to a non-scientist on the team:
Katherine Bach Kalin, MBA. Executive Leadership at Johnson & Johnson (2002–2011), then Head of Corporate Strategy at Celgene from 2012 to 2017.
She helped Celgene grow from mid-size into one of THE TOP biopharma powerhouses globally. Conducted a $7.2 billion acquisition of “Receptos” in 2015.
By 2017 Celgene’s revenue more than doubled since her arrival, to 13 billion.
She would later secure for them an enormous $74-billion buyout deal with Bristol Myers Squibb in November 2019.
Her words on leadership: “Knowing how and when to be demanding, encouraging, believing, and yet striving always to be caring and inspiring are very difficult things to learn and apply in practice.”
Note: I’m enjoying the story of Angelos Stergiou and the many things he did well. I was picking names at random for the 19-20 people on the team, but I might look through his story again and summarize it soon - paying attention to clarify or dispel misleading claims on the internet spread by short sellers (no shade on you folks, but you bet against scientific progress). I appreciate his pleasant demeanor when answering questions from everyday investors. I’ll admit that I was fooled by propaganda about him months ago!
Dr. Larry W. Kwak, Director of the Toni Stephenson Lymphoma Center. Previously head of Vaccine Biology Section at the NCI (National Cancer Institute), Chair of Lymphoma and Myeloma at MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Deputy Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at City of Hope.
Among TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world (2010), for his clinical leadership in developing personalized therapeutic cancer vaccines.
[https://connection.asco.org/do/meet-two-worlds-most-influential-people](https://connection.asco.org/do/meet-two-worlds-most-influential-people)
Recipient of the Ho-Am Prize in Medicine (2016): Equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Korea.
One of the first scientists to prove that customized vaccines could be used to train a patient’s own immune system to target and eliminate cancer. He helped shift oncology toward post-chemo maintenance therapies using a vaccines custom-tailored to the genes of patients’ cancers.
Dr. Thomas R. Fleming, Lead Biostatistician on Independent Data Monitoring Committees (IDMCs/DMCs). Former Director, Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Prevention Trial Network, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Recieved FDA’s Special Citation Award for Extraordinary Contribution to the Agency.
Science magazine’s “Breakthrough of the Year” award in 2011.
Thomas was becoming a priest when a teacher inspired him to be a mathematician, the field where he also met his wife. Nice job of following one’s intuition! If not for this, who might have co-developed the kind of statistical framework we know today as the “O’Brien-Fleming boundary” which has greatly improved clinical trials.
Philip C. Amrein, M.D.
Recipient of Massachusetts General Hospital's “The One Hundred” honorary title, celebrating individuals whose clinical leadership, and dedication to both patients and research have been instrumental in the fight against cancer.
Veteran of the field of over 50 years! Primary investigator on plenty of new therapeutic approaches to AML, and thus a great team member for this WT1 design. A career focus for him has been the pursuit of tailored and more-tolerable treatments for elderly or high-risk leukemia patients (such as those who can’t withstand most chemotherapy).
Dr. Sharif S. Khan, MD. Director of the Blood & Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy Program, Bon Secours St. Francis Health.
Spearheaded and established the Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-Cell Program there. A major effort that gave patients fighting aggressive blood cancers local access to cutting-edge cellular immunotherapies!
Dr. Pinilla-Ibarz, MD, PhD (REGAL trial committee)
Received the Moffitt Physician of the Year Award (2016–2017). Principal investigator and key contributor to multi-center clinical trials that successfully brought modern 2nd and 3rd-generation kinase inhibitors through FDA approval. This shifted the standard of care for leukemia patients away from chemotherapy.
Through the Pinilla Laboratory at Moffitt, he has driven effective research into restoring impaired immune functions in blood cancer patients. His lab continuously develops novel peptide and cellular vaccines aimed at preventing disease relapse.
Dr. Linghua Wang, MD, PhD. (TBH…she cute!)
Founding executive director: Center for Cellular Language Intelligence at University of Texas Anderson Cancer Center, a cancer hospital consistently ranked No. 1 by the U.S. News & World Report for over a decade.
Her published work has been cited about 70,000 times. (#OVER-9,000!) [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GNZEW3EAAAAJ&hl=en](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GNZEW3EAAAAJ&hl=en)
She helps the SLS team map how patients’ immune systems respond to GPS, and applies her foremost skills and experience in parsing those biomarkers predictive of which patients will benefit most from SLS009.
Major co-lead on “The Cancer Genome Atlas” project (TCGA). She led an effort using supercomputers to conduct a “multi-omic” analysis (meaning looking at the entire cell holistically) across 33 cancer types, examining how protein changes F\*\*\*ed up the cell’s various organelles and life processes.
More on the TCGA as a whole, in Gemini’s words:
“Widely considered one of the most transformative scientific initiatives in modern medicine. Launched in 2006 as a joint effort by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), the Atlas fundamentally reshaped oncology from a discipline defined by organ location (i.e. "breast cancer" vs. "lung cancer") into one driven by molecular and genetic subtyping!”
In my words again: The TCGA facilitated the discovery of novel molecular subtypes. Among brain cancer: “proneural, neural, classical, and mesenchymal groups,” which helped explain WHY a therapy might work for one patient but not for another (very disparaging!).
Yet another true breakthrough (…and so many on one team, holy sh\^\^).
Those same insights on Microsatellite Instability (MSI), would later gave clinicians insight to identify tumor variants that Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors were crucial for treating (Keytruda enters the chat).
Panagiotis D. Tsirigotis, MD (saw someone called him TsiriGOATis once - that’s a high accolade among my people).
Professor of Medicine at the NKUA and Chief of Leukemia at Attikon University Hospital. He is an international authority, one of multiple experts consulted for consensus policy decisions at the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT).
Also for those unfamiliar, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) routinely ranks in the top 100 globally for research citations per faculty member, ranking 4th among institutions outside the U.S. It outperforms so many European and U.S. institutions due to massive scientific output in oncology, cardiology, and clinical trials.
According to A.I.: "What makes NKUA’s citation metrics unique globally is its extreme concentration of research firepower.”
Whoa there Gemini.
Dr. Guenther Koehne, MD, PhD, Deputy Director and Chief of Blood & Marrow Transplant and Hematologic Oncology at Miami Cancer Institute.
Course director for the annual “Summit of the Americas on Immunotherapies for Hematologic Malignancies,” which brings together international clinical leaders in blood cancers to develop new consensus in treatment strategies (good luck folks!)
He established trials evaluating heteroclitic WT1 peptide vaccines post-transplant to clear residual disease in high-risk multiple myeloma patients.
Investigator on current high-impact multi-center trials such as CRISPR-Cas9 gene-edited CD33-deleted stem cell transplants for relapsed/refractory AML.
Dr. David A. Scheinberg, M.D., Ph.D. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, ranked #2 U.S. institution for cancer care.
Inventor of over 40 patents and author of over 350 scientific papers and book chapters.
In 2013 was named one of the top 20 “Translational Researchers” globally (https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.2986) Recipient of too many awards to list here.
From A.I.:
Origin of Galinpepimut-S (GPS): The Center served as the incubator for Galinpepimut-S (GPS)—SELLAS Life Sciences’ lead WT1-targeting cancer vaccine candidate. Dr. Scheinberg's lab engineered the synthetic peptide vaccine to elicit a multi-epitope immune response against the WT1 protein, taking it from molecular design all the way through initial clinical validation.
He was chair of the Center for Experimental Therapeutics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, responsible for:
Pioneering Targeted Alpha Therapies: Under his direction the Center pioneered "targeted atomic nanogenerators.” These constructs use targeted antibodies or peptides to deliver radioactive isotopes (such as Actinium-225 and Bismuth-213) directly inside cancer cells to destroy their DNA while sparing surrounding healthy tissue.
TCR-Mimic (TCRm) Antibodies: His team developed groundbreaking T-cell receptor mimic monoclonal antibodies (such as ESK1). These antibodies can recognize intracellular cancer proteins that are displayed as fragments on the cell surface, opening up previously "undruggable" intracellular targets.