QUALIGEN THERAPEUTICS, INC. Qualigen Therapeutics, Inc. announced it has formed a Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Christopher Slapak has 25 years of broad pharmaceutical development experience. Dr. Slapak served as the Chief Medical Officer at Vor Biopharma from 2019 to 2022.
He held executive positions for over 20 years at Eli Lilly and Company as Distinguished Lilly Scholar and also Vice President Early Phase Oncology Clinical Development. In that role, he oversaw the global clinical development of all early-stage oncology compounds for Lilly and Imclone.Dr. Slapak consults on scientific and medical aspects of hematology and oncology drug development. Areas of focus include pre-clinical data packages to support clinical development, implementation of first-in-human studies, and proof- of-concept designs in targeted patient populations.
Prior consulting clients included Prelude Therapeutics (where Dr. Slapak served as their consultant CMO), Takeda Oncology, and Translational Drug Development (TD2). He is board certified in internal medicine, medical oncology and hematology and currently has a joint appointment as Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at the Indiana University School of Medicine.Stephen Neidle, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, University College London School of PharmacyProfessor Neidle and his team at the UCL School of Pharmacy originated and developed Qualigen's QN-302 program. He has extensive experience in the discovery and development of anti-cancer and anti-infective drugs and has a distinguished and long history in nucleic acid research and drug design with over 500 published papers and 14 patents.
He was educated at Imperial College London and was one of the first Cancer Research Campaign Career Development Awardees and subsequently a Life Fellow and Professorial Fellow of Cancer Research UK. His awards include the Sosnovsky and Aventis Prizes for work on the medicinal chemistry of cancer, the Interdisciplinary and Medicinal Chemistry Awards of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Paul Ehrlich, Kelland and Guggenheim Lectureships, and a visiting Professorship at the University of Rome. He has held senior posts at The Institute of Cancer Research UK (Professor of Biophysics and Dean) and at the School of Pharmacy, University College London (Professor of Chemical Biology), where he is now an Emeritus Professor.
Dr. Neidle was Founding Chair of the Royal Society of Chemistry Chemical Biology Forum and Chair of the Chemistry in Cancer Research Working Group, American Association for Cancer Research, 2011-12. He has been Editor-in-Chief of " Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters" and is currently an editorial board member of it and the journals "Nucleic Acids Research," and "Methods". He chaired the "Annual Reports in Medicinal Chemistry" editorial board and was Chairman of the Editorial Boards of Tetrahedron Journals and the RSC Biomolecular Sciences book series.
He has served on numerous grant panels nationally and internationally; including the Wellcome Trust and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in the UK and was a member of the UK Blavatnik Awards Panel for Chemistry 2017-2019. Internationally he has chaired the Science Foundation of Ireland grants panels 2017, 2018, 2021, and chaired the Medical and Health Sciences Panel, Czech Academy of Sciences, 2020.Wayne Klohs, Ph.D., Chair of Scientific Advisory Board Dr. Klohs is an R&D executive and scientist with over thirty-five years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. He is currently a consultant for over 10 biotechnology companies and serves on the Board of Directors and Scientific Advisory Boards for a number of biotechnology companies.
During his distinguished career, Dr. Klohs served as acting head of Oncology Clinical Sciences at Takeda Global R&D, and Executive Director of Drug Development at Pfizer, Inc. At Takeda, he led both early and late-stage Development Teams in Oncology and was a member of Takeda's Global Oncology Licensing Team. At Pfizer, he led development from mid- Discovery through proof of concept (POC) with additional experience in NDA filings including pentostatin/Nipent and suramin/Metaret. He led development teams to more than 14 successful IND filings and Phase 1 starts including a pan-erbB irreversible tyrosine kinase inhibitor, two MEK inhibitors for both oncology and inflammation, a cell cycle inhibitor, several P38 inhibitors, among others.
Dr. Klohs served as a Senior Vice President and Global Therapeutic Area Head of Oncology for Astellas Pharmaceutical, Inc. where he successfully filed NDAs and MAAs for Xtandi (enzalutamide) and Tarceva. He also led discovery efforts at Warner-Lambert/Parke Davis Pharmaceutical Research in oncology. About Qualigen Therapeutics, Inc.Qualigen Therapeutics, Inc. is a diversified life sciences company focused on developing treatments for adult and pediatric cancer, as well as maintaining and expanding its core FDA-cleared FastPack(R) System, which has been used successfully in diagnostics for over 20 years.
investigational QN-302 compound is a small molecule selective transcription inhibitor with strong binding affinity to G4s prevalent in cancer cells; such binding could, by stabilizing the G4s against "unwinding," help inhibit cancer cell proliferation. investigational QN-247 compound inhibits nucleolin, a key multi-functional regulatory protein that is overexpressed in cancer cells; QN-247 may thereby be able to inhibit the cells' proliferation. QN-247 has shown promise in preclinical studies for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
The investigational compounds within Qualigen's RAS-F family of RAS oncogene protein-protein interaction inhibitor small molecules are believed to inhibit or block the binding of mutated RAS genes' proteins to their effector proteins, thereby leaving the proteins from the mutated RAS unable to cause further harm. In theory, such mechanism of action may be effective in the treatment of about one quarter of all cancers, including certain forms of pancreatic, colorectal, and lung cancers. In addition to its oncology drug pipeline, Qualigen has an established diagnostics business which manufactures and distributes proprietary and highly accurate rapid blood testing systems to physician offices and small hospitals for the management of prostate cancer and other diseases and health conditions.
