Academic Advisory Members
Randolph Noelle
Photo by: Jon Gilbert Fox
Dr. Noelle is a Professor of Immunology at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and co-founder and Vice Chair of ImmuNext. His laboratory discovered the natural CD40 ligand, CD154, and the checkpoint regulator, VISTA. Dr. Noelle is in the top 5% of NIH funded scientists for total funding over his career and is a Fellow in the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Industry Advisory Members
Shinichiro Fuse
Dr. Shinichiro (Shin) Fuse, is Partner and Managing Director at TPG Life Sciences Innovation. Previously, he was Managing Director at MPM Capital, where he served on the investment committee of the Oncology Impact Fund (OIF) and BioVentures Funds. Shin served on the Board of Directors of Orna Therapeutics, Triplet Therapeutics, iOmx Therapeutics and a stealth company, and as a board observer for Repare Therapeutics and CODA Biotherapeutics. Shin also played operational roles at MPM portfolio companies as the interim CEO of Orna Therapeutics and interim/founding SVP of Business Development at ElevateBio.
Prior to joining MPM, he was Director of Business Development at bluebird bio, where he was instrumental in executing and managing key industry and academic partnerships in the fields of cell and gene therapy, cancer immunotherapy and genome editing, including the acquisition of Pregenen. Previously, he was at Campbell Alliance (Syneos Health) as a life science strategy consultant, and at PureTech Ventures, where he was a member of the founding team of Vedanta Biosciences. He currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies at Dartmouth College, and also as a columnist for Nikkei Biotech, the leading biotech journal in Japan.
Shin received his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from Dartmouth College, an M.S. in Biomedical Science from the University of Tokyo, and a B.Eng. in Applied Chemistry from Keio University in Japan.
Jay Rothstein
Dr. Rothstein is currently the Chief Scientific Officer of ImmuNext. He is a translational immunobiologist with experience in lead discovery, PK/PD, toxicological assessment and POC models for immune modulatory drugs. Prior to ImmuNext, he was Director of Inflammation Research at Amgen where he championed a novel class of immunomodulatory drugs for the treatment of autoimmune disease. He was involved in evaluating and developing Amgen’s early immune-oncology drug pipeline including novel bispecifics such as BiTEs and checkpoint inhibitors. In addition, he developed novel drugs to target immunometabolism.
Micah Benson
Dr. Benson has more than 15 years of industry and academic experience as an expert immunologist and drug hunter. Prior to joining KSQ Therapeutics, Micah served as Head of Tolerance Therapeutics in the Immunology and Inflammation Research Unit at Pfizer, Inc. In this capacity, Micah was responsible for building and overseeing a drug discovery portfolio and identifying and seeding external research opportunities with biopharma partners focused on immune tolerance induction technologies. This included leading innovative approaches encompassing biologic, targeted drug delivery and cell therapy modalities, and working with patient advocacy groups to seed new opportunities in the immune tolerance space. He earned his PhD in Immunology from Dartmouth Medical School in Dr. Randy Noelle’s lab, where he discovered factors driving T regulatory cell differentiation, and was a Leukemia Lymphoma Society postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in Anjana Rao’s lab, where he worked on mRNA splicing factors in B lymphocytes. He has authored several patents and published extensively in top-tier scientific journals.
Kristen Garner Amanti
Dr. Garner Amanti is a Partner at Health Advances and is a leader in the Reproductive and Genomic Health practice and Precision Medicine practice. She is an expert in commercialization strategy, business development opportunity assessment, deal diligence, international and domestic market assessment, corporate strategy, and is a seasoned workshop facilitator. She has content expertise in companion diagnostics, reproductive and prenatal health, genomic health, cancer screening, tumor genetics and oncology. Kristen received her PhD in Cancer Pharmacology from Dartmouth College where her research focused on the development of novel targeted cancer therapeutics. She received her Masters degree in Cell and Molecular Biology and Bachelors degree in Biology from the University of Vermont.