Dr. Tanya Mayadas Joins Biothera's Research Advisory Board

Biothera announced today that Tanya Mayadas, Ph.D. has joined its Research Advisory Board. Dr. Mayadas is a Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.

She has a broad background in inflammation, with specific expertise in elucidating the neutrophil-dependent mechanisms of tissue injury in disease. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Mayadas’ research has focused on the role of complement receptor 3 (CR3, Mac-1) as well as Fc-gamma receptors on neutrophils and how they functionally interact to mediate neutrophil recruitment, activation and function in disease.

“We are delighted to welcome Dr. Mayadas to our Research Advisory Board,” said Myra Patchen, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Biothera Pharmaceutical Group. “Her expertise in neutrophil biology and immune complex interactions will be invaluable to our research on the anti-cancer mechanism of Imprime PGG.”

Biothera’s cancer immunotherapeutic candidate Imprime PGG® is a beta-glucan biologic immune modulator. It targets the innate immune system, enabling neutrophils and monocytes, via a CR3-dependent mechanism, to exert anti-tumor activity against complement-opsonized, antibody-targeted tumor cells. Recent mechanistic studies have demonstrated that Imprime PGG’s binding and functional activities depend on its ability to form an immune complex with pre-existing anti-beta glucan antibodies present in the serum of human subjects.

Dr. Mayadas is a faculty member of the Ph.D. program in Immunology, Harvard Medical School. She has National Institutes of Health funded research in two areas of inflammation: (1) immune mediated neutrophil recruitment and cytotoxicity, with a focus on antibody-mediated glomerular injury, and (2) cAMP mediated regulation of endothelial cell permeability.

In addition, Dr. Mayadas serves on National Institutes of Health study sections, is an Associate Editor of Journal of Immunology and is a member of the editorial board of Clinical Immunology.

She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Rochester School of Medicine, Rochester, New York and did a joint post-doctoral fellowship at Massachusetts Institutes of Technology and Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA.

About Biothera
Biothera, a privately held U.S. biotechnology company, is developing Imprime PGG, a late clinical stage biologic that modulates the immune response to cancer. Data from the most recent randomized phase 2 study of Imprime PGG in first line non-squamous NSCLC was featured as a late-breaking abstract in the Immunotherapy of Cancer session at ESMO 2014. In this study, which evaluated the addition of Imprime PGG to bevacizumab and carboplatin/paclitaxel versus bevacizumab and chemotherapy alone, objective response rate was 60.4% versus 43.5%, duration of response was 10.3 months versus 5.6 months and median overall survival was 16.1 months versus 11.6 months. Similarly encouraging data have been observed in both squamous and non-squamous subjects in a second randomized Phase 2 study in 1st line NSCLC in combination with cetuximab and in studies in high-risk chronic lymphocytic leukemia and metastatic colorectal cancer. Imprime PGG directly modulates the key effector cells of the innate immune system, neutrophils and monocytes/macrophage, enabling them to recognize and kill antibody-targeted cancer cells. In addition, on-going research points to a secondary, bystander effect of Imprime PGG on both innate and adaptive immune cell types known to exist in the tumor microenvironment, including T-cells, dendritic cells, M-2 macrophages and myeloid derived suppressor cells. Imprime PGG is being evaluated in a phase 3 study in late stage metastatic colorectal cancer and planning is underway for an approvable study in NSCLC.

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