Immunologist and Clinical Transplant Expert, Dolly B. Tyan, PhD, Joins Aditxt as Senior VP of Clinical Development - Transplantation
Dr. Tyan Will Lead and Advance Organ Transplantation Therapeutic Program
Mountain View, CA, Jan. 29, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire-- Aditx Therapeutics, Inc. (Aditxt) (the “Company”) (Nasdaq: ADTX), a biotech innovation company developing biotechnologies specifically focused on improving the health of the immune system through immune monitoring and reprogramming, today announced the appointment of Dr. Dolly B. Tyan as Senior Vice President of Clinical Development – Transplantation. In this role, Dr. Tyan will be overseeing Aditxt’s therapeutic program for organ rejection including advancing current candidates towards clinical trials and developing new products for new applications.
Dr. Tyan’s career of over 45 years prior to joining Aditxt was devoted to nine solid organ and two bone marrow/stem cell transplant programs for both adult and pediatric patients. She is the inventor of four novel and now patented technologies that have transformed transplantation therapeutics and technology worldwide. The major thrust of Dr. Tyan’s career has been aimed at more accurately and clearly defining the immunological state of the transplant candidate/recipient and monitoring their immune response over time with novel technologies. She has developed new clinical tests to replace the ones in standard use for the last 30-50 years and developed a therapeutic strategy for altering the immune status of a patient to improve their chance of receiving a transplant and long-term acceptance of even an incompatible organ. Key to this is understanding the patient’s immune profile in real time.
Dr. Tyan will begin her work at Aditxt by advancing the Company’s proprietary technology, Apoptotic DNA Immunotherapy™ (ADi™), which is designed to retrain the immune system to induce tolerance, in the field of organ transplantation. The initial focus is on skin allografts. In this role she will join Dr. Friedrich Kapp, MD, PhD, who is leading Aditxt’s Autoimmunity therapeutic program, to guide the clinical advancement of the therapeutic division of the Company.
Amro Albanna, Co-Founder and CEO of Aditxt, commented, “Dr. Tyan will help drive our mission in the important area of immune reprogramming, one of our two core segments – AditxtReprogramming™ and AditxtScore™. She is an Immunologist and Clinical Transplant expert who has spent much of her career working alongside transplant surgeons, acquiring an intimate knowledge and understanding of innovative approaches that are needed to increase organ acceptance. With Dr. Tyan now on board, and together with Dr. Kapp, they will drive AditxtReprogramming™ activities as we work toward the commencement of Phase l/lla clinical trials.”
Dr. Tyan added, “My interest in joining Aditxt is our shared ambition to reach the ultimate goal of transplantation, which is to induce tolerance, where one transplanted organ lasts a lifetime without immunosuppression, as if it were the patient’s own. The Aditxt approach not only holds the promise of a breakthrough in this longstanding, intractable clinical problem, but if further advanced could solve another enormous worldwide problem. There are not enough donor organs for all those who need them; the donation rates are steady, but the need continues to grow annually. Part of the reason for this is that transplanted patients often lose their organs due to incompatibility and drug toxicity as well as the inability of immunosuppressive drugs to maintain control over the long term without themselves injuring the organs, leading to chronic rejection. These patients, if otherwise qualified after losing an organ, come back onto the waiting list, thus adding to the burgeoning numbers of waitlisted patients. I believe that the Aditxt approach can lead to One Organ for Life and this is what draws me to commit my time and experience into making this happen.”
Dolly B. Tyan, PhD, D(ABHI) obtained her PhD in Microbiology & Immunology from the University of California, Los Angeles, became a faculty member there in Pediatrics with an emphasis in Genetics, and was the Clinical Director of the Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics Laboratory at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for 19 years. She was a key faculty member in the immunogenetics of autoimmune disease including Type 1 diabetes and Inflammatory Bowel Disease profiling. Prior to this she led the Histocompatibility Lab at Stanford University for 15 years. She was recruited back to Stanford as Professor of Pathology and Medical Director of the Histocompatibility, Immunogenetics & Disease Profiling Laboratory in 2006, retiring in 2019. She was also the Director of Education & Innovation.
Dr. Tyan has also been very active on the national stage. She was Vice President, President, and Immediate Past President of the American Society for Histocompatibility & Immunogenetics in 2000-2002. From 2000-2016, she served on multiple committees in the United Network for Organ Sharing, the U.S. Government’s contract organization responsible for all solid organ transplant allocation in the U.S. She served on the Executive Board, was Chair of the Histocompatibility Committee, and was a member of the Kidney/ Pancreas, Kidney, Operations, Strategic Planning, Policy Oversight, Quality Assurance and Standards, and Membership and Professional Standards committees.
She also served on the Histocompatibility Committee of the National Marrow Donor Program. On a more regional level, she was on the Medical Advisory Board and the Executive Board of the California Transplant Donor Network (later Donor Network West), the organ procurement organization responsible for solid organ allocation in northern and central California from 2008-2019.
AditxtReprogramming™ Immune Reprogramming Technology
Aditxt is commercializing a nucleic acid-based technology named Apoptotic DNA Immunotherapy™ (ADi™) which utilizes a novel approach that mimics the way the body naturally induces tolerance to our own tissues (therapeutically induced immune tolerance). ADi™ is a technology platform which we believe can be engineered to address a wide variety of indications.
About Aditx Therapeutics
Aditxt is developing technologies specifically focused on improving the health of the immune system through immune monitoring and reprogramming. The immune monitoring technology is designed to provide a personalized comprehensive profile of the immune system. The immune reprogramming technology is currently at the pre-clinical stage and is designed to retrain the immune system to induce tolerance with an objective of addressing rejection of transplanted organs, autoimmune diseases, and allergies. For more information, please visit: www.aditxt.com
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements in this press release constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward looking statements include statements regarding the Company’s intentions, beliefs, projections, outlook, analyses or current expectations concerning, among other things, the Company’s ongoing and planned product development; the Company’s intellectual property position; the Company’s ability to develop commercial functions; expectations regarding product launch and revenue; the Company’s results of operations, cash needs, spending, financial condition, liquidity, prospects, growth and strategies; the industry in which the Company operates; and the trends that may affect the industry or the Company. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, as well as those risks more fully discussed in the section entitled “Risk Factors” in the Company’s prospectus, dated September 1, 2020, that was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission under File No. 333-248491, as well as discussions of potential risks, uncertainties, and other important factors in the Company’s subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All such statements speak only as of the date made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
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