Actokine Therapeutics

ActoKine Therapeutics has assembled an expert team with leading edge expertise in the area of drug research, discovery, and development.

The management team consists of the following individuals.
Their biographies are given below.

Chief Executive Officer (Asia & USA)- Grace Wong, PhD

Chief Executive Officer (Europe) - Heinz-Kurt Hochkeppel, PhD

President and Chief Scientific Officer - Grace Wong, PhD (founder)

Chief Medical Officer - Claude G. Biava, MD

Chief Technology Officer - William A. Cafruny, PhD

Vice President of Quality Control - Arvind Chopra, PhD

Vice President of Chemistry- Marek Cholody, PhD

Vice President of Biomarkers & Genomics- Reinhard Ebner, PhD

Vice President of Biologics - Green Zhang, PhD

Director of CNS - Michael Howard, PhD

Chief Executive Officer (Asia & USA)- Grace Wong PhD
Dr. Grace earned a PhD under Dr. John Schrader and Sir Gus Nossal at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Australia. She was the first scientist to discover that IFN-g but not IFN-a induces expression of Class II-MHC on mast cells (PNAS 79, p6989) and in the brain (Nature 310, p688). This discovery has profound implications for the understanding of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. She did a postdoc with Dr. David Goeddel (who cloned and expressed human insulin, GH, TPA and IFNs) at Genentech and she discovered that virus infection induces cytokines production (Nature, 323, p819) and cytokines induce the MnSOD gene (Science 242, p941) which is essential for protecting cells from oxidative stress (Cell 58, p923). After promotion to Scientist at Genentech, she successfully shepherded basic research discoveries to product development with Dr. Gordon Vehar.

Dr. Grace became Head of Apoptosis Research at Millennium, where she identified genes involved in drug resistance; she later joined AstraZeneca, where she investigated gene induction by b-amyloid in Alzheimer’s disease. She then joined Serono as Head of Functional Genomics and discovered genes regulated in women’s diseases. Her work with biologics has made her valuable to biotech and pharma, receiving job offers from Glaxo, Amgen, Biogen, HGS and Cell Therapeutics, in addition to the positions she was able to accept.

Dr Grace has been invited to present at 193 international conferences, including the Nobel Symposium in Sweden; received five recognition awards from Genentech; published 93 papers (including 12 Nature, 1 Science, 3 Cell, 5 PNAS and 7 J. Immunol) and is an inventor on 28 patents. Dr. Grace founded ActoKine Therapeutics to discover new drugs for cancer, CNS and viral diseases (www.actokine.com), and founded Student Vision (www.studentvision.org) and Nobel-Pauling (www.nobel-pauling.org) to inspire and help students in biotechnology.

Chief Executive Officer (Europe)- Heinz-Kurt Hochkeppel, PhD
Dr. Hochkeppel was the global Oncology Research Project Manager for the Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research. Prior to this position, he held a variety of research and management positions at Ciba-Geigy and Novartis.

Dr. Hochkeppel did his undergraduate work at the University of Cologne, and received his doctoral degree in Biochemistry from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding at the University of Cologne in 1972. He did post-doctoral fellowships in Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, Wisconsin, USA and at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland. Dr. Hochkeppel is an authority on Immunology and Oncology.

After his post-doctoral work, Dr. Hochkeppel was a member of the research team at the Institute for Biotechnology Research in the Department of Genetics at the University of Braunschweig, Germany, where he did some of the first work on production of antibodies against human interferon beta and gamma. In 1982, he joined Ciba-Geigy as a staff scientist in Immunology and Oncology, moving into management in 1997.

Chief Scientific Officer - Grace Wong, PhD
Dr. Grace earned a PhD under Dr. John Schrader and Sir Gus Nossal at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Australia. She was the first scientist to discover that IFN-g but not IFN-a induces expression of Class II-MHC on mast cells (PNAS 79, p6989) and in the brain (Nature 310, p688). This discovery has profound implications for the understanding of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. She did a postdoc with Dr. David Goeddel (who cloned and expressed human insulin, GH, TPA and IFNs) at Genentech and she discovered that virus infection induces cytokines production (Nature, 323, p819) and cytokines induce the MnSOD gene (Science 242, p941) which is essential for protecting cells from oxidative stress (Cell 58, p923). After promotion to Scientist at Genentech, she successfully shepherded basic research discoveries to product development with Dr. Gordon Vehar.

Dr. Grace became Head of Apoptosis Research at Millennium, where she identified genes involved in drug resistance; she later joined AstraZeneca, where she investigated gene induction by b-amyloid in Alzheimer’s disease. She then joined Serono as Head of Functional Genomics and discovered genes regulated in women’s diseases. Her work with biologics has made her valuable to biotech and pharma, receiving job offers from Glaxo, Amgen, Biogen, HGS and Cell Therapeutics, in addition to the positions she was able to accept.

Dr Grace has been invited to present at 193 international conferences, including the Nobel Symposium in Sweden; received five recognition awards from Genentech; published 93 papers (including 12 Nature, 1 Science, 3 Cell, 5 PNAS and 7 J. Immunol) and is an inventor on 28 patents. She founded ActoKine Therapeutics to discover new drugs for cancer, CNS and viral diseases (www.actokine.com), and founded Student Vision (www.studentvision.org) and Nobel-Pauling (www.nobel-pauling.org) to inspire and help students in biotechnology.

Chief Medical Officer - Claude G. Biava, MD
Dr. Biava has more than 30 years of experience in pre-clinical and clinical research studies. From 1968-1971, as the Director of the Department of Pathology and Toxicology in the Experimental Therapy Division at Abbott Laboratories, he was responsible for pre-clinical safety evaluation of new drug candidates and their approval for clinical testing, preparation of data for submission of INDs and NDAs. As Vice President for R&D and Clinical Research in the Hospital Products Division at Abbott Laboratories from 1971-1973, he was responsible for R&D and clinical studies of hospital products, including anesthetics, intravenous therapeutics, urological products, and intraperitoneal dialysis kits.

From 1973 to 1993, he was an Associate Professor and Director of the Laboratory of Ultrastructural and Renal Pathology Services at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. Dr. Biava received his M.D. from Louvain University in Belgium and completed his residency as a Royal Canadian Research Fellow at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He is the author of more than 50 publications.

Chief Technology Officer - William A. Cafruny, PhD
Dr. William A. Cafruny is an immunologist with major research interests in viral immunology and mechanisms of viral transmission. He received his PhD in microbiology from the Medical University of Ohio, and did postdoctoral training in virology at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.

As a professor at the University of South Dakota School of Medicine, Dr. Cafruny studied virus-host interactions and antiviral mechanisms. These studies, in collaboration with Dr. Grace Wong, have characterized novel antiviral actions of various small molecules as well as cytokines, and have provided new avenues for antiviral drug development.

Dr. Cafruny has published numerous peer-reviewed papers, and received support for his research from government and industry. Dr. Cafruny has also taught immunology to medical, graduate, and undergraduate students, and his 5 PhD students have gone on to productive careers in industry and government.

Vice President of Quality Control - Arvind Chopra, PhD
Dr. Chopra was Director of Quality Control at Virxsys Corporation, a gene therapy company, which developed a lentivirus vector for the treatment of HIV. He received his doctorate in Biochemistry from Punjab University, Chandigarh, India. Earlier, he investigated the structure-activity relationships of cardiac glycosides and the development of resistance and toxicity to heavy metals in mammalian cultured cells using somatic cell genetic techniques. Later, at the National Research Council Biotechnology Research Institute in Montreal, Canada, he was involved in identification of the measles virus human receptor (CD46). At Human Genome Sciences (now GlaxoSmithKline plc) he was involved in the expression, purification, formulation, and development of the quality control bioassays for several receptor ligands (KGF2 and Blys), fusion proteins (HSA-human growth hormone, Albutropin, and HAS-interferon, Albufuron) and antibodies (anti-Blys antibody, belimemab, and anti-anthrax antibody, raxibacumab). In 2007, he joined the Molecular Imaging and Contrast Agents database (MICAD) at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, NIH. He has contributed significantly to the development and the enhanced utility of MICAD by the scientific imaging community. Dr. Chopra has spoken about his research and MICAD at several national and international conferences. He has authored more than 35 original research publications and written at least 350 articles about molecular imaging and contrast agents that are available “free access” on the PubMed database and the MICAD website. He is also listed as an inventor on the patents of several potentially biotherapeutic proteins.

Vice President of Chemistry - Marek Cholody, PhD
Dr. Cholody has been involved in drug discovery for over 20 years. Upon completion of his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at the Technical University of Gdansk, Poland, he joined the faculty of the Department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biochemistry where he conducted research focused on the design and synthesis of small molecule anticancer agents. This led to the discovery of a new class of drugs – the imidazoacridones. The leading compound in this class, C-1311, is presently in Phase 2 clinical trials under the name Symadex. In 1993, Dr. Cholody joined the Molecular Aspects of Drug Design team at the National Cancer Institute, where he discovered and developed two new classes of potential anticancer and anti-AIDS agents. In 2001, he joined Avalon Pharmaceuticals as a Research Group Leader in the Medicinal Chemistry Department where he was instrumental in establishing and validating Avalon’s gene expression-based drug discovery platform. His work at Avalon led to AVN316 which was nominated as clinical candidate in company’s beta-catenin program. Dr. Cholody is an expert in DNA-interacting anticancer agents. He has published 26 papers and has 9 issued patents on anticancer drugs.

Vice President of Genomics and Biomarkers - Reinhard Ebner, PhD
Dr. Ebner was a Scientific Director at Avalon Pharmaceuticals. He received his undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Regensburg and his doctorate in Microbiology and Genetics from the University of OsnabrŸck, Germany, where he then served on the faculty of the Genetics department. In 1989, he identified and cloned the type I TGF-b receptor at Genentech. He has made a series of substantial contributions to the fields of cytokine biology, receptor-ligand interactions and intracellular trafficking, cell differentiation, early development and tissue repair, first at Genentech and then at the University of California, San Francisco and at Stanford University Medical School. He has discovered several proteins now in preclinical and clinical development, including such molecules as LIGHT, IL-17B and its receptor, BlyS and TR6.

In 2000, he joined Avalon Pharmaceuticals where he was instrumental in the initiation of intramural and external research programs and contributed to corporate and scientific infrastructure development. Dr. Ebner is a frequently invited plenary speaker at national and international conferences and member of scientific advisory panels. He is the author of >37 original research publications, including several articles in Science magazine, and is the primary inventor on more than 100 patent applications.