Pablo Umana, PhD

Chief Executive Officer at Biotech Start-up

Speaker

Pablo Umana is currently CEO of a Biotech Start-Up. Previously he was Head of Oncology Discovery, Cancer Immunotherapies at Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED), Roche, and Head of Research at the Roche Innovation Center Zurich. He led the team that discovered and initially developed GAZYVA, a novel Type II CD20 antibody for the treatment of B-cell malignancies. GAZYVA was approved on Nov 1, 2013 by FDA for 1L CLL and is the first ever medicine approved by the FDA under the Breakthrough Therapy regime. In 2001 Pablo co-founded GlycArt Biotechnology AG, and headed its research since the company’s foundation. Pablo, who holds a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, joined Roche when the company acquired GlycArt in 2005. Throughout this time, he has been leading research in the fields of cancer immunotherapy and protein engineering. He has co-invented and led the research group that has generated Roche-pRED’s tumor targeted-T-cell bispecific antibody, -immunocytokine and -immunomodulator platforms and respective drug candidate pipeline in the field of Cancer Immunotherapy.