LEADERSHIP

Hassan Javanbakht, Ph.D., received his Ph.D. from McGill University and completed his post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School. He then moved to Hoffman-La Roche Palo Alto LLC where he worked on developing antivirals to treat HIV infection. He was part of the team that advanced Elipida® (RO4970335), a potent and highly selective non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI), into clinical development. He then transferred to Hoffman La-Roche where he began his work on hepatitis B virus (HBV) and Influenza. His group there focused on developing novel direct-acting antivirals and immunomodulatory therapies to treat chronic HBV. He led the teams that developed a first-in-class small-molecule viral expression inhibitor (RG7834), a liver-targeted anti-HBV locked nucleic acid (RG6004), and an immunomodulator, all of which advanced to Phase 1 clinical evaluation. His work also led to discovery of PAPD5/7 as host factors for HBV expression. Subsequently, he moved to Gilead Sciences where he led a research team focused on curing HBV and developing a number of novel therapeutics scheduled to enter clinical studies. He was the head of infectious diseases at SQZ Biotechnologies leading a group of scientists developing cell-based vaccines for treatment of persistent viral infections. Most recently, he served as the chief scientific officer at Bluejay Therapeutics. So far, he has authored more than 45 peer-reviewed scientific publications in high-impact journals and holds more than 11 issued patents and applications.