Haval Shirwan

Dr. Shirwan obtained his PhD, supported by a NATO scholarship, at the University of California, Santa Barbara followed by post-doctoral training at the California Institute of Technology. He joined Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, to establish a Molecular Immunology Program with focus on transplantation tolerance, which has remained a long-term career pursuit. He took faculty positions at various institutions in the US and recently relocated to the University of Missouri, Columbia. The primary focus of Dr. Shirwan’s translational research program is to develop safe and practical immunomodulatory approaches with applications to transplantation, autoimmunity, cancer, and infections. To achieve this goal, Dr. Shirwan co-pioneered with Dr. Esma S. Yolcu a proprietary platform technology, ProtEx™, that allows for the generation of novel recombinant immune ligands and their positional display as single agents or in combination on biological surfaces as a practical and safe alternative to gene therapy for localized immunomodulation. This concept generated over a dozen of patents that have been licensed by FasCure Therapeutics and iTolerance.

Dr. Shirwan is also assessing various vehicles, including live bacterial vectors and nanoparticles, for targeted delivery of these biologics in vivo to modulate immune effector and regulatory cells for therapeutic outcomes. Ongoing studies demonstrated the efficacy of two lead therapeutic candidates, one being FasL presented by microgels as the iTolerance platform technology, in treating type 1 diabetes in rodents and are presently being assessed for tolerogenic efficacy in humanized mouse and nonhuman primate models as a prelude to clinical translation. In parallel, candidate immunostimulatory molecules are also being developed for cancer immunoprevention and immunotherapy. A lead candidate in this category was shown to train the immune system for long-term protection against various cancer types, the first report of its kind with significant translational potential as prophylactic for cancer and infections.