Ikena Oncology, Inc. announced the formation of its multi-disciplinary Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). George Demetri, M.D., FACP, FASCO, Professor of Medical Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Co-Director of the Ludwig Center at Harvard will chair the SAB. Dr. Demetri will be joined initially by two world-class medical and scientific experts: Kevan Shokat, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at UCSF; and Josep Tabernero, M.D., Ph.D., Head of the Medical Oncology Department at the Vall d’Hebron Barcelona Hospital and Director of the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology. Ikena will continue to grow the SAB as the Company expands its targeted oncology pipeline. Dr. Shokat currently serves as Professor, Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, and Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Shokat is an innovator in the development of chemical methods for investigating cellular signal transduction pathways, with a particular focus on protein kinases and lipid kinases. After receiving his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at UC Berkeley with Professor Peter Schultz, and post-doctoral work in immunology at Stanford University with Professor Chris Goodnow, Dr. Shokat began his independent research career at Princeton University. He has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2005. Dr. Tabernero currently serves as Head of the Medical Oncology Department at the Vall d’Hebron Barcelona Hospital and the Director of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology. His research group aims at potentiating molecular therapies targeting specific oncoproteins and accelerating more effective personalized cancer medicines for patients displaying genetic lesions or pathway dysregulation. Dr. Tabernero has held leadership positions in many other organizations devoted to advancing cancer research, including Past President of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) from 2018-2019. He holds MD and PhD degrees from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Dr. Demetri currently serves at the Quick Family Chair in Medical Oncology and Director of the Sarcoma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, as well as Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Co-Director of the Ludwig Center at Harvard. He has dedicated his career to translational and clinical research aimed at developing clinical therapeutics from scientific mechanisms to treat life-threatening cancers. He is a pioneer in the development of multiple targeted cancer therapies, and research from his collaborative efforts has resulted in FDA and worldwide regulatory approvals of several cancer therapies, including imatinib (Gleevec®), sunitinib (Sutent®), regorafenib (Stivarga®), pazopanib (Votrient®), trabectedin (Yondelis®) and tazemetostat (Tazverik®). Dr. Demetri received his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Harvard College and medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine, after which he completed his internal medicine residency and chief residency at the University of Washington Hospitals in Seattle, and subsequently trained in Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. He is also Chair of the Science Policy and Government Affairs Committee of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Ikena Oncology, Inc. is a targeted oncology company. The Company is focused on developing differentiated therapies for patients in need that target nodes of cancer growth, spread, and therapeutic resistance in the Hippo and RAS onco-signaling network. The Company's lead targeted oncology program, IK-930, is a transcriptional enhanced associate domain 1 (TEAD1) selective Hippo pathway inhibitor, a known tumor suppressor pathway that also drives resistance to multiple targeted therapies. The Company's second clinical-stage program targets the RAS signaling pathway with IK-595, a novel MEK-RAF molecular glue. It has IK-175 aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) antagonist program that completed Phase 1 clinical trial. Its partnering portfolio also includes several other immune oncology programs that are available for potential sale or outlicensing, including PY314, a Phase 2 ready TREM2 antagonist, PY159, a Phase 2 ready TREM1 antagonist, and PY265, an IND-ready MARCO antagonist.