Renowned Vaccinologist Dr. George Siber Joins Celestial Therapeutics Board of Directors
Irvine, CA - Celestial Therapeutics Inc. (“Celestial”), a biotechnology company developing novel next-generation vaccines and therapeutics leveraging its proprietary platform technologies to treat, prevent and cure infectious diseases, inflammatory conditions and cancers is excited to announce that Dr. George Siber has joined Celestial’s Board of Directors.
George R. Siber, MD is an internationally recognized vaccine expert with over 40 years of experience in developing numerous innovative vaccines. From 1975 to 1996, Dr. Siber served on the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University as Assistant and Associate Professor of Medicine based at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA. Concurrently, from 1982 to 1996, Dr. Siber was Director of the Massachusetts Biologic Laboratories. Under his leadership, the laboratory developed specific immune globulins to CMV (Cytogam) and to RSV (Respigam) the precursor product to Synagis, both of which were licensed to MedImmune (now AstraZeneca). From 1996 to 2007, Dr. Siber was Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Wyeth Vaccines (now Pfizer), overseeing a staff of 800 scientists in the development, approval and marketing of six innovative childhood vaccines including Prevnar 7, the first pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, Meningitec, the first Meningococcal C conjugate vaccine, Rotashield, the first rotavirus vaccine and FluMist, the first live nasal influenza vaccine. Prevnar 7 and its follow-on product, Prevnar 13, have significantly reduced the burden of pneumococcal disease and have become one of the largest selling vaccines of all time. Dr. Siber was most recently Co-founder and Board Member of Affinivax, a biotechnology company developing novel next-generation pneumococcal vaccines which was acquired by GSK in August 2022 for $2.1 billion upfront plus $1.2 billion in milestone payments. Dr. Siber has served on the Board of Directors as well as on the Scientific Advisory Boards of several biotechnology companies. Dr. Siber is currently Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School and was awarded the Sabin Gold Medal in 2016. Dr. Siber holds an MD degree from McGill University in Canada, received post-doctoral training in Internal Medicine at Rush-Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago and Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and training in Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at Children’s Hospital and Beth Israel Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston.
“It is a real privilege and an honor to have Dr. Siber join our Board of Directors” says Celestial’s CEO Dr. Ajay Gupta. "He brings significant experience and expertise in virology, immunology, vaccines and antibody discovery & development. His addition to our board of directors will further strengthen our board and will help us achieve our mission to treat, prevent and cure infectious diseases, inflammatory conditions and cancers as he brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise in vaccines and therapeutics discovery and development as well as his invaluable experience as an accomplished biotech entrepreneur with the successful exit and sale of his company, Affinivax to a big pharma company”.
"I am delighted to join the Board of Directors of Celestial. I am really impressed with their science and the progress that they have achieved in a relatively short period of time. I very much look forward to working with Celestial on achieving their mission and their continued progress on advancing their new class of dual modal antivirals with anti-inflammatory properties as well as their novel mRNA vaccines & therapeutics platforms and help bring them to patients." says Dr. Siber.
About Celestial Therapeutics
Celestial is a California based startup biotechnology company developing a first in class of a new class of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, a new class of dual-modal antiviral and anti-inflammatory drugs and novel mRNA vaccines & therapeutics for conditions which currently lack safe and effective treatments. Celestial’s mission is to effectively treat respiratory infections & inflammatory conditions, cancers, prevent pandemics, save lives, reduce healthcare costs and address unmet medical needs for millions of patients worldwide. Founded in 2019, Celestial has rapidly built a diverse portfolio based on its innovative innate immunity platform technologies. Celestial’s lead therapeutic candidate, 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). Celestial’s new mRNA vaccine, CT-03 is being developed for the prevention of viral infections arising from Chikungunya leveraging its novel and proprietary next generation Stellar-mRNA platform. Celestial’s anti-inflammatory therapeutics have the potential to provide safer and more effective alternative treatments to the existing steroidal and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories currently on the market. The Celestial team consists of industry veterans and prominent academicians with a proven track record.
To learn more, visit https://www.celestialtherapeutics.com
Contacts:
Leontis Teryazos – CFO