Bolt Biotherapeutics announced the addition of Priti Hegde, Ph.D., to its scientific advisory board. Dr. Hegde, who currently serves as chief scientific officer at Foundation Medicine, has spent nearly two decades in the biopharmaceutical industry and has extensive experience with the development, registration and commercialization of therapeutics in cancer immunotherapy.
"Dr. Hegde's expertise in cancer immunotherapy drug development will be invaluable as we begin our first clinical study this year and continue to expand our pipeline of innovative myeloid-targeting therapies," said David Dornan, Ph.D., Bolt's senior vice president of Research. "We have been fortunate that our strong preclinical data and growing team have attracted a world renowned scientific advisory board, and with the addition of Dr. Hegde, we know that their collective wisdom will assist in expediting our ISACs toward those cancer patients unresponsive to checkpoint inhibitors."
"Bolt's novel ISAC technology and mechanistic understanding of anti-tumor efficacy provides a real scientific advantage to target patients that are unresponsive to immune checkpoint blockade. Having dedicated a significant portion of my career to the field of immunotherapies, this technology registers as one of the most exciting approaches at systemically delivering an agent that has a local immune-stimulating effect at the tumor," said Dr. Hegde. "I'm thrilled by this opportunity to join Bolt's SAB and look forward to helping the team drive this important technology through clinical development."
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At Foundation Medicine, Dr. Hegde currently oversees clinical product development, cancer genomics and early-stage research, as well as regulatory strategies for the company's comprehensive genomic profiling portfolio. Prior to joining Foundation Medicine, Dr. Hegde spent 12 years at Genentech, a member of Roche Group, most recently serving as senior director and principal scientist in oncology biomarker development, during which she established and led the biomarker group accountable for translational science strategies in cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Hegde was instrumental in the approvals for atezolizumab in both the United States and European Union as well as its forthcoming diagnostic filings. Prior to Genentech, she worked at GlaxoSmithKline. Dr. Hegde completed her post-doctoral fellow at The Institute for Genomic Research and holds a Ph.D. in Biochemical Pharmacology from SUNY Buffalo, as well as a B. Pharmacy from Mumbai University, India.
The Boltbody™ platform consists of Immune-Stimulating Antibody Conjugates (ISAC) that harness the ability of innate immune agonists to convert cold tumors into immunologically hot tumors thereby illuminating tumors to the immune system and allowing them to be invaded by tumor killing cells. Boltbody™ ISACs have demonstrated the ability to eliminate tumors following systemic administration in preclinical models and have also led to the development of immunological memory, which is predicted to translate into more durable clinical responses for patients.