Scientific Advisory Board

Chair - Marcel van den Brink

President of City of Hope Los Angeles and National Medical Center, and chief physician executive

Dr. van den Brink is internationally renowned for his work in the field of bone marrow transplantation, the gut microbiome, and immunotherapy at New York’s MSK, where he served 24 years in different positions and was recently the Head of the Division of Hematologic Malignancies. In August 2023, Marcel van den Brink was appointed as president of City of Hope Los Angeles and National Medical Center, chief physician executive, and the Deana and Steve Campbell Chief Physician Executive Distinguished Chair in honor of Alexandra Levine, M.D. At MSK, the van den Brink lab studied novel strategies to improve immune therapies for cancer patients with a special emphasis on the role of the intestinal microbiome in (patho)physiology and therapy, Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapy, and regeneration of thymic function to improve T-cell immunity. Dr. van den Brink is also the Vice-chairman of the board for DKMS, an international nonprofit organization devoted to bone marrow donor registration. He has received prestigious prizes and honors including the 2022 E. Donnall Thomas Award from the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ASTCT).

Chiara Bonini

Professor of Hematology at the University Vita-Salute, San Raffaele Milan, Head of the Experimental Hematology Unit and Deputy Director of the Division of Immunology, Transplantation and Infectious Diseases of IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele, Milan

Chiara Bonini's main research focus is the development, preclinical and clinical validation of T-cell based gene therapy approaches to treat cancer and she initiated the use of suicide gene therapy applied to allogeneic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT). Her lab is currently focused on cancer immunotherapy, genetic manipulation of T cells, including TCR/CAR gene transfer and TCR gene editing. She has been a member of the Boards of ESGCT and ASGCT and chair of the EBMT CTIWP. She is currently member of the ASH Awards and Global Research Award Committees, of the Board of ESH, member of the EHA Subcommittee on Cellular Therapy, Councelor of the Board of EHA and Member of ASGCT Program Committee.

Todd A Fehniger

Professor of Medicine at Washington University

Todd A Fehniger, MD, PhD, is an internationally recognized expert in natural killer (NK) cell biology and therapeutics with more than 25 years of experience. As a physician-scientist, his laboratory program has advance novel basic, translational, and early phase clinical research concepts related to NK cells and innate lymphoid cells. Contributions to the field include discovery of human memory-like NK cells and their translation to the clinic. His clinical practice is focused on patients with lymphoma, leukemia and related blood cancers, including use of cellular therapies and hematopoietic cell transplantation. He is the co-leader of the Siteman Cancer Center Hematopoietic Development and Malignancy Program and Laboratory Director of the Washington University Center for Gene and Cellular Immunotherapy. He also serves as Director of the Siteman Cancer Center Biological Therapy Academic GMP Facility that provides investigational cellular therapy including T, NK, and manipulated hematopoietic cell grafts.

Georg Höllander

Head of the Department of Paediatrics and Action Research Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Botnar Research Centre for Child Health at the ETH Zurich and University of Basel

Georg Holländer, MA (Oxon), MD, FMedSci, FRCPCH, FMH Paediatrics (CH), is an internationally recognized expert in developmental immunology with a specific interest in thymic biology. His research group at Oxford University has developed unique mouse models to understand the development and function of the thymus and explore ways to control it. A pediatrician and an immunologist by training, Georg Holländer is a professor in several prestigious universities: the University of Basel and the ETH Zurich in Switzerland, and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Prof. Holländer is also the director of the Botnar Research Center for Child Health in Basel.

Jerome Ritz

Executive Director, Connell and O’Reilly Families Cell Manipulation Core Facility, Professor of Medicine, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital,Harvard Medical School

Jerome Ritz, MD, is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a leading specialist in graft versus leukemia (GVL), graft versus host disease (GVHD), bone marrow transplantation, immuno-oncology and cell manufacturing. Dr. Ritz’s research lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has revealed mechanisms of GVL and demonstrated the key role of Treg in chronic GVHD after hematopoietic stem celltransplantation. Dr. Ritz is also the Executive Director of the Cell Manipulation Core Facility at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. This academic GMP cell manufacturing facility provides a variety of cellular products including CAR T-cells, NK cells, genetically modified hematopoietic stem cells and regulatory T-cells for adult and pediatric patients enrolled on early phase clinical trials.