Announcement • Feb 22
Quince Therapeutics, Inc. Launches Scientific Advisory Board
Quince Therapeutics, Inc. announced the launch of a Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) comprised of leading experts in biochemistry, neurology, immunology, hematology, pharmacology, and clinical practice. Quince’s newly formed SAB includes the following seven founding members: Mauro Magnani, Ph.D., Chair of the SAB, is a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Urbino, Italy and is a co-founder of Quince’s proprietary Autologous Intracellular Drug Encapsulation (AIDE) technology platform. Dr. Magnani developed and patented a method for using autologous red blood cells that allow for the slow delivery of different drugs in circulation to treat patients in need. He is a member of the National Committee for Biotechnology, Presidency of the Italian Government, and an Italian delegate at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and at the European Commission. Dr. Magnani received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Urbino, Italy. Carlo Brugnara, M.D., is a Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Hematology Laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Brugnara’s clinical laboratory-based research has focused on the use of hematological parameters to assess the balance between iron availability and erythropoiesis. He has described the appearance of functional iron deficiency in normal subjects treated with recombinant human erythropoietin (r-HuEPO) based on the particular flow cytometric characteristics of erythrocytes and reticulocytes. He received his M.D. from the University of Verona, Italy and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the laboratory of Dr. Daniel Tosteson in the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Brugnara also trained in Clinical Pathology and Transfusion Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and holds board certifications in both specialties. William Jusko, Ph.D., is a State University of New York Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Buffalo University Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Dr. Jusko’s research interests are in theoretical, basic, and clinical aspects of the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of various immunosuppressive agents, including corticosteroids, as well as drugs used to treat diabetes, inflammation, and cancer. His research expertise includes the diverse effects of corticosteroids and he has evolved advanced mathematical models of receptor/gene-mediated responses. Dr. Jusko received a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Howard Lederman, M.D., Ph.D., is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Director of the Immunodeficiency Clinic, the Pediatric Immunology Laboratory, and the Ataxia-Telangiectasia (A-T) Clinical Center at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. Dr. Lederman specializes in the evaluation, diagnostic testing, and long-term management of patients of all ages who have known or suspected primary immunodeficiency diseases. CDr. Lederman received a M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School and completed a residency in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and a fellowship in immunology at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He is board certified by the American Board of Pediatrics. Vladimir Muzykantov, M.D., Ph.D., is a Founders Professor of Nanoparticle Research at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (UPENN), Professor and Vice-Chair of the Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics at the Perelman School of Medicine, UPENN, and Founding Director of the Center for Translational Targeted Therapeutics and Nanomedicine, UPENN. Dr. Muzykantov conducts research in drug/gene targeting in the vascular system, including devising drug delivery systems for precise molecular interventions in the lungs, heart, brain, spleen, and other organs and blood components, including host defense agents. Since the early 1980s, he has explored red blood cells as natural carriers for prolonged circulation and site-specific delivery of drugs aimed at regulation of bleeding, clotting, thrombolysis, inflammation, and complement. He also investigates the mechanisms controlling drug delivery at the level of whole organism to nanoscale regulation of intracellular targeting/trafficking of drugs. He received a M.D. in Internal Medicine from the First Moscow Medical School and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Russian National Cardiology Research Center in Moscow. Susan Perlman, M.D., is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles and Director of the UCLA Ataxia and Neurogenetics Clinical Trials Programs and Post-Polio Program. Leveraging three decades as a clinical professor of Neurology, Dr. Perlman is an expert in building subspecialty clinics that diagnose and treat patients living with rare, progressive, and incurable disorders, including Friedreich’s ataxia, Huntington’s disease, and all types of genetic and non-genetic cerebellar ataxias, such as A-T. She has long been a site primary investigator for Friedreich's ataxia trials, sits on the Medical Advisory Board of the National Ataxia Foundation, and will participate as an investigator in Quince’s upcoming Phase 3 clinical trial of its lead asset, EryDex. She received a M.D. from the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University and completed a residency in Neurology and a two-year Muscular Dystrophy Association fellowship in Neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles. James Spudich, Ph.D., is the Douglass M. and Nola Leishman Professor of Cardiovascular Disease in the Department of Biochemistry at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Over the last five decades, the Spudich laboratory studied the structure and function of the myosin family of molecular motors in vitro and in vivo, and they developed multiple new tools, including in vitro motility assays taken to the single molecule level using laser traps. That work led to his laboratory’s current focus at Stanford on the human cardiac sarcomere and the molecular basis of hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathy. Dr. Spudich postulated in 2015 that a majority of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy mutations are likely to be shifting beta-cardiac myosin heads from a sequestered off-state to an active on-state for interaction with actin, resulting in the hyper-contractility seen clinically in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HMC) patients. Dr. Spudich received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Stanford University, in addition to completing his postdoctoral work in Genetics at Stanford University and in Structural Biology at the MRC Laboratory at Cambridge University. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.