US New Drug Developer Kineta Appoints Immuno-Oncology Expert to Scientific Advisory Board

U.S. new drug developer Kineta Inc. has appointed internationally renowned clinical immuno-oncology experts to its Scientific Advisory Board as it focuses on developing next-generation immunotherapies to address cancer immune resistance issues.

On the 3rd, Kineta announced the appointments of Myriam Chalabi, MD, and Evan Ya-Wen Yu. They joined the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), which focuses on immuno-oncology. Dr. Chalabi and Dr. Yu will join Kineta's SAB alongside Lisa Coussens, Ph.D., and Michael Curran, Ph.D. Patricia LoRusso, DO, guides the clinical development of the company’s VISTA-blocking immunotherapy, KVA12123.

Thierry Guillaudeux, Kineta’s Chief Scientific Officer, said, "We are pleased to welcome Drs. Chalabi and Yu to Kineta’s Scientific Advisory Board. These experts will greatly complement the existing SAB and guide the company as we advance the clinical development of KVA12123 in patients with advanced solid tumors."

Dr. Myriam Chalabi, MD, is a medical oncologist and researcher at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. She has extensive expertise in treating patients with gastrointestinal cancers such as colorectal, gastric, and esophageal cancers. Her primary focus is on immunotherapy for gastrointestinal cancers. In 2017, Dr. Chalabi initiated the pivotal clinical study NICHE to investigate whether immunotherapy could benefit patients with early-stage colon cancer.

Through the NICHE trial, Dr. Chalabi identified a subtype of cancer patients with mismatch repair deficiency exhibiting many DNA replication errors who respond very well to immunotherapy. She is an expert in neoadjuvant immunotherapy for this indication. Dr. Chalabi also has a deep understanding of the critical role biomarkers can play in patient selection for immuno-oncology clinical trials.

Evan Y. Yu, MD, is a medical oncologist specializing in genitourinary malignancies, particularly prostate, bladder, and testicular cancers. He serves as the Head of the Clinical Research Division in the Cancer Medicine Department at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and as the Clinical Research Medical Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Consortium. Dr. Yu is also a professor at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.

He is the principal investigator for the National Cancer Trials Network Lead Academic Performance Site (LAPS) Grant, Southwest Oncology Group, and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group-American College of Radiology Imaging Network. Dr. Yu is also the core leader of the Pacific Northwest Prostate Cancer Specialized Program of Research Excellence and co-principal investigator of the DoD Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium.

Dr. Yu’s research focuses on next-generation testing of novel molecular targeted therapies and immunotherapy approaches with a complementary emphasis on imaging biomarkers. He has served for many years on the National Cancer Institute Genitourinary Cancers Steering Committee and currently co-chairs the National Cancer Institute Prostate Cancer Task Force. Dr. Yu has held various leadership and committee roles at ASCO and AACR and is senior editor for Clinical Cancer Research and Uro-Today.

Drs. Chalabi and Yu will join Kineta’s SAB alongside experts including Lisa Coussens, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Cell, Developmental, and Cancer Biology and Associate Director of Basic Research at Oregon Health & Sciences University (OHSU) Knight Cancer Institute; Michael A. Curran, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Immunology at MD Anderson Cancer Center; and Patricia LoRusso, D.O., Professor of Medicine (Oncology) and Associate Director of Experimental Therapeutics at Yale Cancer Center.