Dr. Lillian Siu Joins Pangea Biomed’s Scientific Advisory Board

Pangea Biomed, the RNA-focused precision oncology biotech company, announced today that Dr. Lillian L. Siu, MD, FASCO, has joined the company’s scientific advisory board.

Dr. Siu, an internationally-renowned cancer researcher, is currently a senior medical oncologist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, where she is also the director of the Phase 1 of its clinical trials program, co-director of the Bras and Family Drug Development Program, and clinical leader for the Tumor Immunotherapy Program. Dr. Siu is also a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and previously served a four-year term on the board of directors at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and a three-year term for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).

“As we continue to work with pharmaceutical companies to identify key mediators of response and resistance to cancer treatments, Dr. Siu’s expertise in anticancer drug development and her experience with clinical trials will be invaluable to our team,” said Pangea CEO Tuvik Beker. “We’re honored to learn from Dr. Siu and to welcome her as the newest member of our scientific advisory board.”

Dr. Siu was the recipient of the US National Cancer Institute Michaele C. Christian Award in Oncology Drug Development in 2010. She has been awarded the Targeted Anticancer Therapies 2020 Honorary Award for contributions in the development of anticancer drugs. In addition, she has published over 370 peer-reviewed manuscripts and is currently the co-editor-in-chief for AACR’s newest journal Cancer Research Communications.

“Joining Pangea’s scientific advisory board affords me the opportunity to support the critical work of democratizing precision oncology to ensure all cancer patients get their best chance at a treatment that works,” said Dr. Siu. “I’m very proud of the work this team has already accomplished, and am looking forward to helping them scale their technology and bring it to market so we can provide care accessibility for those who need it most.”

This announcement follows a series of milestones for the company including new funding led by NFX, bringing their total seed funding to $12M. Additionally, Pangea recently announced a research collaboration with a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, Onconova Therapeutics, to leverage Pangea’s advanced multi-cancer response predictor – ENLIGHT. The company’s ENLIGHT platform combines RNA sequencing with machine learning to pinpoint the best path toward combating a patient’s cancer, with a goal to increase patient benefits from precision oncology by 5x and democratize personalized cancer care.

In addition to Dr. Siu, the scientific advisory board includes:

• Ezra Cohen, MD, FRCPSC, FASCO, Ph.D., Co-Director of UC San Diego Health’s Precision Immunotherapy Clinic

• Raanan Berger, MD, Ph.D., Director of the Cancer Center at Sheba Medical Center

• Eyal Gottlieb, Ph.D., Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Chair of Cancer Research for the Faculty of Medicine at Technion Israel Institute of Technology

• J. Silvio Gutkind, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology at UCSD School of Medicine and Associate Director for Basic Science at Moores Cancer Center

• Dan A. Landau, MD, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at Weill Cornell Medical College and Core Member at the New York Genome Center

• Gideon Rechavi, MD, Ph.D., head of Sheba Cancer Research Center and head of the Wohl Institute for Translational Medicine

• Ze’ev Ronai, Ph.D., Director of the NCI-Designated Cancer Center at Sanford Burnham Prebys Discovery Institute

• Eytan Ruppin, MD, Ph.D., Chief of the Cancer Data Science Lab at the National Cancer Institute

To learn more about Pangea and ENLIGHT, please visit https://pangeabiomed.com.

About Pangea Biomed

Founded in 2018, Pangea Biomed developed ENLIGHT – the world’s most advanced multi-cancer, multi-therapy response predictor. By combining machine learning and deep RNA analysis, the company is mapping tumor molecular signatures to dynamically and adaptively personalize cancer care for a healthier world. Pangea aims to bring effective precision oncology to cancer patients, improve oncology drug development and empower oncologists to treat patients with success. Pangea is backed by NFX, and its technology has been published in leading journals, including Cell, Med, Science Advances, Cancer Cell, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer and Nature Communications

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