Opsona's Scientific Advisory Board are world opinion leaders

The members of Opsona Therapeutics’ Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) are world opinion leaders in their fields of inflammatory and infectious diseases/cancer. 

Our current SAB members include:

Professor Luke O’Neill

Professor O'Neill is a co-founder of Opsona and an international expert in the field of Toll-Like Receptors (TLRs), innate immunity and signal transduction in inflammation.

He has published over 150 papers in leading journals, and a number of patents. He has won numerous awards for his research, including the International Cytokine Society Investigator Award, the Royal Irish Academy Medal for Biochemistry and the Irish Society for Immunology Medal and the 2009 Boyle Medal. 

He has been elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, the European Molecular Biology Organisation and is a Counsellor of the International Cytokine Society. He chairs the European Science Foundation Immunology panel, and is currently Professor of Biochemistry & Immunology at Trinity College Dublin.

Professor Kingston Mills

Professor Mills is the Head of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin an internationally renowned scientist who is a Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator and Professor of Experimental Immunology at Trinity College Dublin.

Professor Mills leads a large research group whose expertise is in regulatory T-cells and adaptive immunity, and its interface with the innate immune system. 

He has collaborated with many biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and also has significant exposure to regulatory agencies through his involvement as a scientist in the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in South Mimms (UK).

He is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, and was awarded the prestigious Royal Irish Academy Medal for Biochemistry in 2004. He publishes frequently in leading peer-reviewed publications on all aspects of immunology.

Professor Dermot Kelleher

Professor Kelleher is currently Professor (and Head of School) of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin and director of a large research group that focuses on the areas of immunology and cell biology of the gastrointestinal tract.

He is a consultant gastroenterologist at St James’s Hospital in Dublin, which provides Opsona with strong links into the clinical community.

He trained in Dublin and in San Diego, California, including two years at UC San Diego and one year in biotech at Eli Lilly Research Laboratories, where his research focused on lymphocyte signal transduction.

He has obtained funding from a wide range of sources, including The Wellcome Trust, European Union 4th and 5th Frameworks, and the US National Institute of Health.

Professor Kelleher has been involved in international clinical trials with pharmaceutical companies and is active in the Irish biotechnology community.

Dr Andy Gearing

Dr Gearing has been involved with the European biotechnology industry throughout his career.

He has a successful track record in research management in both government at the National Institute of Biological Standards and Control and in the commercial sector with British Biotech.

He was responsible for identifying and in-licensing compounds into British Biotech’s portfolio, as well as leading teams involved in the out-licensing of British Biotech’s Metalloenzyme technology.

He has published over 100 scientific papers, books and patents and organised international conferences. He has also managed research and development projects in cytokine biology, immunology, inflammation and neurobiology.

Dr Gearing moved to Australia early in 2001 to become CEO of Biocomm. He has been instrumental in Biocomm’s expansion in to Europe, North America and Japan through a new venture, Biocomm2.

Prof Iain McInnes

After training in Medicine and Immunology at the University of Glasgow and the National Institutes of Health, USA, Iain McInnes was appointed Professor of Experimental Medicine in the University of Glasgow in 2002. He is currently Head of Division of Immunology, Infection and Inflammation in the Faculty of Medicine and a Consultant Rheumatologist based in Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

His research interests focus on mechanisms of inflammatory synovitis in rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis resulting in over 120 research publications. He also leads a translational program encompassing basic cellular immunology through to clinical intervention in phase I and phase II trials.

His work has been recognised by many awards notably the Michael Mason Medal (BSR 2002), Albrecht Hasinger Lectureship (Berlin 2003) and recently the Nana Svartz Lectureship (Swedish Medical Society 2008).

Professor McInnes is a past chair of the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) Scientific Committee and current Chair of the EULAR Committee for Clinical Affairs.

Dr Michael Gresser

Dr Michael Gresser is the founder of Clarity Therapeutics Consulting where he provides consulting services to the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology industries, and to those interested in founding or investing in companies in these industries. Dr Gresser is a Visiting Scholar at the Molecular Biology Institute in UCLA and sits on scientific advisory boards for several companies and not-for-profit organisations.

Previously he was a Professor of Chemistry at Simon Fraser University, then Executive Director of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Merck-Frosst Canada, where he worked with the teams that created Singulair, Vioxx and Arcoxia, and introduced many other molecules into clinical development, several of which are currently progressing towards regulatory approval.

After leaving Merck-Frosst, he served as Vice Presiednt Research for Inflammation and Neuroscience at Amgen, Inc., where he worked with teams that introduced many small molecules, antibodies and other proteins into clinical development.

Prof Eicke Latz

Prof Eicke Latz received clinical training in Intensive Care Medicine at the Charite University in Berlin. After postdoctural research training in the pharmaceutical industry and the University of Massachusetts he was appointed to faculty at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Bonn.

Professor Latz founded and heads the UMass NanoMedicine Institute, within which novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for inflammatory diseases are engineered. He is also an adjunct Professor at the Norwegian Technical University in Trondheim at the Centre for Molecular Imaging.

Professor Latz has extensive experience in the field of innate immunity and Toll-ike receptor biology. His lab focuses on investigating the molecular mechanisms of innate immune receptor activation. His group develops molecular imaging techniques and methods that are applicable to high-throughput screening.

He has published seminal work in innate immunity in the highest ranking scientific journals and received numerous awards for his work.