DR. STEPHEN GILLIES

Dr. Gillies has over 30 years of biotech and pharmaceutical research and management experience. He currently holds multiple CEO and CSO positions in several Boston-based biotech companies, including Provenance Biopharmaceuticals, Alopexx Oncology and LinkedUp Bioscience.

Prior to founding Provenance Biopharmaceuticals, Dr. Gillies led all scientific and business endeavors of Lexigen Pharmaceuticals since its founding in 1992. He was responsible for numerous funding activities and corporate partnerships, including acquisition of the Company by Merck KGaA in 1999. Since then until 2008, Dr. Gillies led Global Oncology Pre-clinical research for Merck KGaA. Previously, he was Vice President of Research at Damon Biotech and Abbott Biotech Inc., where he oversaw development of recombinant antibodies and pro-urokinase, an anti-clotting protein.

During Dr. Gillies’ post-doctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he identified the first cellular enhancer sequences that were found to be critical for the regulation of antibody expression. This discovery proved a key part of the commercial success of Erbitux, a cancer drug marketed by Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Merck KGaA, as well as Dinutuximab, an anti-GD2 antibody that is part of the standard of care for neuroblastoma.

Dr. Gillies expanded on this early scientific breakthrough with other protein expression technologies including Fc-fusion (Fc-X) technology. As part of his recombinant antibody work, Dr. Gillies invented and implemented immunocytokine technology, and leveraged his academic network to achieve the first proof of principle of this approach. Multiple immunocytokines developed by Dr. Gillies are in clinical development in both the US and in China.

Dr. Gillies received his M.S. degree and Ph.D. in Microbiology from the College of Medicine and Dentistry, Rutgers University and his B.S. degree in Microbiology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.