Aegera establishes a clinical advisory board

Montreal, QC – Biotechnology company Aegera Therapeutics says it has established a clinical advisory board to assist in the development of its cancer and cancer-related therapeutics.

“The creation of a clinical advisory board is a significant milestone in a biotech’s growth,” says Michael Atkin, president and CEO of Aegera. “We have solidified our access to world leading oncology expertise with a team of Board members who have a proven track record in understanding the intricacies of leading a drug successfully through clinical trials.”

Members named to the advisory board include:

Philip S Schein, MD, chairman: Dr Schein was founder, chairman and CEO of US Bioscience, a publicly held pharmaceutical company involved in the development and marketing of chemotherapeutic agents, from 1987 to 1998. Before that, he was scientific director of the Vincent T Lombardi Cancer Research Center at Georgetown University, vice president for worldwide clinical research and development, SmithKline and French Labs and senior investigator and head of the clinical pharmacology section at the National Cancer Institute. He has served as president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and has chaired the Food and Drug Administration Oncology Drugs Advisory Committee. Presently, he serves as visiting professor in cancer pharmacology, University of Oxford, and as president of the Schein Group, which provides consultative services to the pharmaceutical/biotechnology industry. He has published over 350 papers in the field of cancer research and drug development and has 11 issued patents.

Jacques Jolivet, MD: Dr Jolivet is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Currently, he holds a clinical position in the hematology and medical oncology service of the Hotel Dieu Hospital (St Jerome, QC), and is an independent consultant to multiple drug discovery and pharmaceutical firms. Dr Jolivet gained his medical degree in 1976 from the Universite de Montreal, and completed his medical oncology training with a 3-year fellowship in anti-cancer drug pharmacology at the US National Cancer Institute, in Bethesda, MD. Dr Jolivet’s basic research career spanned 15 years at the University of Montreal until 1998, when he became the director of clinical oncology development, at ShireBioChem until 2004. Dr Jolivet has published more than 80 papers and has two issued patents.

Kathleen I Pritchard, MD: Dr Pritchard is currently chair of the breast cancer site group at the Toronto-Sunnybrook Regional Cancer Center and Sunnybrook and Women’s College Health Sciences Center. She is head of the division of clinical trials and epidemiology, clinical director of the Ontario Clinical Oncology Group, co-chair of the breast cancer site group of the National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group (NCIC CTG) and professor of medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr Pritchard is a frequent consultant for or member of independent data and safety monitoring committees for clinical trials world-wide.