Renowned Geneticist Dr. George Church Joins Celestial Therapeutics Scientific Advisory Board
Image courtesy of Wyss Institute at Harvard University
Celestial Therapeutics Inc. (“Celestial”) is excited to announce that Dr. George Church, a Professor at Harvard and MIT, has joined Celestial’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB).
Dr. Church is a Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also the Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Technology Center and Director of the National Institutes of Health Center of Excellence in Genomic Science. He leads the Synthetic Biology Platform at Harvard’s Wyss Institute. He developed the first direct genomic sequencing method which resulted in the first genome sequence of H. pylori, and helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984, the Personal Genome Project in 2005, and GP-Write in 2016. He has participated in the founding of more than 14 biotech companies, such as Editas, Gen9bio, Veritas Genetics and eGenesis. He has received numerous awards including the 2011 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science from the Franklin Institute and election to the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering.
"The science of mRNA has undergone a veritable revolution, and self-adjuvating mRNA is an illustrative example of just how far the field has come. Self-adjuvating mRNA technology sets the stage for the development of next-generation vaccines and therapies for the treatment and prevention of a range of infectious diseases and cancers.” says Dr. Church.
The role of the scientific advisory board is to provide independent, outside expertise, and members of the SAB do not have an executive role in the company.
“It is a real privilege and honor to have Dr. Church join our SAB,” says Celestial CEO Dr. Ajay Gupta. "He brings solid expertise in genetics and synthetic biology. His addition to our SAB will further strengthen our scientific team consisting of world-renowned scientists from prominent academic institutions. We look forward to working with him to explore the development of novel self-adjuvanting mRNA vaccines”.
About Celestial Therapeutics
Celestial is a California based biotechnology company developing a new class of dual-modal anti-infective and anti-inflammatory drugs for conditions which currently lack safe and effective treatments. Celestial’s lead product, CT-02, is being developed as a first-ever broad spectrum dual-modal antiviral & anti-inflammatory inhalation therapeutic for treating lung infections due to Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), Influenza Virus (IV), and Rhinoviruses (RV). Celestial’s new class of pulmonary surfactant lipid drugs are broad-spectrum for treating a variety of viral infections while also acting as safe and effective anti-inflammatories as demonstrated in several preclinical studies conducted to date. Celestial’s treatments have the potential to overcome drug resistance and to provide novel therapies for pandemic flu. In addition, Celestial is developing next generation mRNA vaccines and therapeutics for the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases and cancers.