News
11 December 2024
Prescient Therapeutics has announced that a global expert in brain cancer, Professor Donald M. O’Rourke, will be joining the company’s Scientific Advisory Board.
Prescient Therapeutics has announced that a global expert in brain cancer, Professor Donald M. O’Rourke, will be joining the company’s Scientific Advisory Board.
Professor O’Rourke is a renowned authority on brain cancer, particularly the extremely aggressive type known as Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM), and is regularly named as one of the US’ top doctors.
“I am delighted to be appointed to Prescient’s scientific advisory board,” Professor O’Rourke said of the appointment.
“GBM is a particularly insidious disease that’s very hard to treat. CAR-T therapy holds promise for treating GBM, but must overcome several unique challenges that the disease presents.”
“I am especially excited to see how OmniCAR’s control and ability to target multiple cancer antigens can address these challenges in GBM.”
Steven Yatomi-Clarke, CEO of Prescient Therapeutics, said that the company is privileged and delighted to be working with Professor O’Rourke.
“His expertise – both as a clinician and research leader – will be invaluable as the company progresses our pipeline of cancer treatments,” he said.
“In particular, Professor O’Rourke’s insights and expertise in CAR-T treatments for GBM are unsurpassed, and will help guide the OmniCAR GBM program through the challenges that other approaches have encountered.”
OmniCAR is Prescient Therapeutics’ next-generation CAR-T platform, which the company hopes will make treatment safer and more targeted for patients.
It was developed using technology licensed from the University of Pennsylvania, where Professor O’Rourke has helped to pioneer chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapies for cancer, including leading the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) team conducting first-in-human clinical trials of the revolutionary treatments.
In July, immunogenicity testing on OmniCAR provided positive safety results. The in-silico tests (meaning they were conducted by complex computer algorithms) found two binding components used in OmniCAR treatments, SpyTag and SpyCatcher, are unlikely to trigger adverse immune responses in patients.
Professor O’Rourke currently holds the John Templeton, Jr., MD Endowed Chair in Neurosurgery and is a professor with tenure at both the Department of Neurosurgery and the Abramson Cancer Center at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.
In addition to these roles, Professor O’Rourke is the director of the Glioblastome Translational Center of Excellence and director of the Human Brain Tumor Tissue Bank.
Professor O’Rourke said he was delighted with the appointment.
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