Cristiana Pires

Co-founder and CEO at Asgard Therapeutics

Speaker

Cristiana Pires is Chief Executive Officer and scientific co-founder of Asgard Therapeutics, a pre-clinical stage company developing in-vivo direct reprogramming approaches for cancer immunotherapy. As CEO, Dr. Pires spearheads Asgard’s mission to pioneer off-the-shelf therapies capable of recreating functional immune cells within the patient´s body, overcoming the manufacturing and logistic hurdles of traditional cell therapies.

Dr. Pires holds a PharmD from University of Porto and a PhD in cellular reprogramming for regenerative medicine from NOVA Medical School, Portugal. She conducted her postdoctoral studies at the Pereira Lab at Lund University, Sweden, where she focused on cell fate reprogramming towards dendritic cells opening the field to immunotherapy. This groundbreaking work laid the foundation for the establishment of Asgard Therapeutics. Asgard’s lead program, AT-108, is a first-in-class, off-the-shelf approach that converts tumor cells into highly immunogenic antigen presenting cells, kick-starting systemic and personalized anti-tumor responses. AT-108 is supported by strong research and PoC, published in Science and Science Immunology.

Under Cristiana’s leadership, the company secured over EUR 38 million in funding - including a €30 million Series A in 2024, a €6 million Seed in 2021 round supported by leading VC investors, and non-dilutive funding through grants such as Eurostars and EIC, to advance AT-108 to FIH trials and further develop the company’s pipeline.