In this Science Commune segment, Dr. Daniel Chen and Dr. Pablo Umaña discuss what it means to be both a scientist and an engineer while utilizing principles from both disciplines to solve problems and advance innovation.
Daniel Chen, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, IGM Biosciences
Daniel Chen, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer for IGM Biosciences, and former Vice President, Global Head of Cancer Immunotherapy Development at Genentech/Roche.
He received a BS degree in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1990), a PhD in Microbiology & Immunology (1996) and MD (1998) from the University of Southern California. Daniel completed an Internal Medicine Residency and
Medical Oncology Fellowship at Stanford University (2003). He went on to complete a Post-doctoral fellowship with Mark Davis in Immunology, where he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate. He also ran the metastatic melanoma clinic at
the Stanford Cancer Center from 2003-2006. In that time, he studied human anti-cancer immune responses pre- and post- cancer vaccination and cytokine administration to determine why anti-tumor immune responses were not more clinically effective.
He received a U19 grant to develop better immunologic tools to interrogate human immune responses and ultimately patented the MHC cellular microarray to detect and functionally characterize antigen-specific T cell states. He continued as Adjunct
Clinical Faculty at Stanford from 2006-2016, where he cared for melanoma patients. At Genentech from 2006-2018, Daniel focused on the clinical development of anti-angiogenic and immune modulatory targeted therapies in both early and late Development,
as well as the diagnostic tools to aid their development. This included leading the clinical development for atezolizumab, a PD-L1 inhibitor, from the time the program was in research through IND, Phase I, Phase II, Phase III, to filing and approvals
in multiple indications world-wide. At IGM, Daniel focuses on the development of novel engineered multivalent and multispecific therapeutics. He is a reviewer for Nature, Immunity and Clinical Cancer Research, serves on the Board of Directors
for SITC, co-chair of the CRI cancer Immunotherapy consortium, gave the keynote presentation at the AACR NCI EORTC Annual Meeting 2014 and presented at the US Congressional Briefing on Immuno Oncology in 2017. He has continued to publish with
academic and industry collaborators in the field of cancer immunotherapy, including the often-referenced Chen and Mellman manuscripts, “Elements of cancer immunity and the cancer-immune set point” and “Oncology meets Immunology:
The Cancer-Immunity Cycle.”
Pablo Umaña, PhD, Head, Cancer Immunotherapy Discovery, Roche Innovation Center Zurich (Roche Glycart AG)
Pablo Umaña is Head of Cancer Immunotherapy Discovery. He obtained his PhD in Chemical Engineering and Biology from the California Institute of Technology in 1998 carrying out experimental work at ETH-Zurich. In 2001, he co-founded GlycArt
Biotechnology AG in Zurich-Switzerland, a company spinning out of research carried out at the ETH-Zurich and headed its research since the company’s foundation. To date, he continues to lead research at the Roche Innovation Center Zurich
as part of the Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED) organization within Roche, after GlycArt was acquired by Hoffmann La Roche AG in 2005. He led the team that discovered and initially developed GAZYVA, a novel Type II CD20 antibody for
the treatment of B-cell malignancies. GAZYVA was approved on Nov 1, 2013 by FDA for 1L CLL and is the first ever medicine approved by the FDA under the Breakthrough Therapy regime. He has also led the research for the generation and initial development
of Roche-pRED’s tumor-targeted-T-cell bispecific, -immunocytokine and -immunomodulator platforms and drug candidates in the field of cancer immunotherapy.