CUE-101, a Novel HPV16 E7 pHLA-IL-2-Fc Fusion Protein, Enhances Tumor Antigen Specific T Cell Activation for the Treatment of HPV16-Driven Malignancies

Clinical Cancer Research 2020; January 21, 2020 DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-19-3354

Steven N Quayle, Natasha Girgis, Dharma R Thapa, Zohra Merazga, MelissaM Kemp, Alex Histed, Fan Zhao, Miguel Moreta, Paige Ruthardt, Sandrine Hulot, Alyssa Nelson, Lauren D Kraemer, Dominic R Beal, Luke Witt, Jessica Ryabin, Jonathan Soriano, Mark Haydock, Emily Spaulding, John F Ross, PeterA Kiener, Steven Almo, Rodolfo Chaparro, Ronald Seidel, Anish Suri, Saso Cemerski, Kenneth J. Pienta and Mary Ellen Simcox

Rafi Ahmed, Ph.D.

Dr. Ahmed is a world-renowned immunologist and distinguished thought leader whose research has significantly shaped the scientific community’s current understanding of immunity in the context of viral infections and cancer. His extensive work on defining T cell exhaustion along with detailing molecular underpinnings of T cell differentiation and effector responses have been seminal in establishing novel areas of research and therapeutic applications. Dr. Ahmed’s laboratory pioneered highly sophisticated and leading-edge cellular and molecular techniques to study antigen-specific responses and immunological memory in murine, primate, and human systems. Dr. Ahmed serves as the Director of the Emory Vaccine Center at Emory University. He is also the co-leader of the Cancer Immunology research program at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University and a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Emory University School of Medicine. Dr. Ahmed is an elected member of the National Academy of Science. He is also recognized as a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and a Fellow of the Academy of Immuno-Oncology.

Rodolfo J. Chaparro, Ph.D.

Rodolfo Chaparro is co-founder of Cue Biopharma and co-inventor of its technologies. He currently serves as Senior Advisor to Cue Biopharma. From the Company’s formation in 2015 through February 2020, Dr. Chaparro was responsible for the Company’s immuno-oncology and autoimmunity research programs as well as its preclinical and early clinical development. Prior to Cue Biopharma, Dr. Chaparro was a research faculty member in the Department of Biochemistry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Dr. Chaparro possesses research expertise in molecular immunology and immunotherapeutics development and was Head of Immunology within its Macromolecular Therapeutics Development Facility (MTDF). Dr. Chaparro holds a B.S. in Biology from the University of California at Irvine and a Ph.D. in immunology from Stanford University.

Steven Almo, Ph.D.

Steven Almo is the Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he is Professor of Biochemistry and of Physiology & Biophysics. Dr. Almo holds the Wollowick Family Foundation Chair in Immunology and is Director of Einstein’s Macromolecular Therapeutics Development Facility, a resource dedicated to the development and optimization of protein-based therapeutics. Dr. Almo is recognized for his broad contributions to structural biology and has published more than 300 papers. His laboratory has played key roles in the development and implementation of high-throughput approaches for protein production, structure determination and functional annotation. Dr. Almo received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from Harvard University, while working with Greg Petsko in the Chemistry Department at MIT, and is best known for his high resolution structural and biochemical characterization of the CTLA-4 and PD-1 immune checkpoint proteins and their respective ligands. The strategy for clonal-specific T cell modulation, which underlies Cue Biopharma’s therapeutic discovery pipeline, was developed in Dr. Almo’s laboratory.