Ying Tam, PhD

Chief Scientific Officer at Acuitas Therapeutics

Speaker

Chief Scientific Officer of Acuitas Therapeutics, Dr. Ying K. Tam, is a globally respected expert in the areas of nanotechnology and immunology. He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Developmental and Molecular Biology from the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, ON prior to his post-doctoral fellowship in cancer immunotherapy at the BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver, BC. Dr. Tam has held several academic positions including Instructor and Assistant Professor in the Department of Hematology/Oncology at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago, IL, overseeing the translational stem cell transplant immunotherapy research program. He also served as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of British Columbia.

Prior to Acuitas, Dr. Tam led a program developing a lipid nanoparticle (LNP), nucleic acid-based immunostimulatory drug. Dr. Tam is a founding scientist at Acuitas and helped the company to become a global leader in the application of LNP technology for the delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics. This includes the development of the LNP carriers used in ONPATTRO^® and COMIRNATY^®, a highly effective and safe COVID-19 vaccine produced through a partnership with BioNTech and Pfizer.

Dr. Tam oversees the scientific program at Acuitas and has guided both internal research programs as well as external programs with partners and collaborators. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed studies, including several in high-impact journals such as Nature, Science and Cell, and has contributed to grant applications to secure millions of dollars in funding.