Golden, Colorado, Thursday June 26, 2020, 1:00am MDT (BUSINESS WIRE)—Reven Holdings, Inc. (“Reven”), a privately held clinical stage biotechnology and pharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery and development of novel treatment platforms for cancer, viral illnesses—including COVID-19—and inflammatory disorders, today announced the appointment of Dr. Fatih M. Uckun as its Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Uckun will provide executive oversight for Reven’s global Research & Development and clinical programs. In addition, Dr. Uckun will contribute medical-scientific leadership and direction for Reven’s basic and translational research activities, R&D and clinical development programs in cancer, transplantation immunology, sepsis, metabolic disorders, inflammatory disorders, and the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in patients with sepsis, including COVID-19 patients with viral sepsis.
About Dr. Uckun
Dr. Uckun is an elected Member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), an honor society for physician-scientists, and an active member of several professional organizations. He received numerous awards for his work on monoclonal antibodies, recombinant cytokines and fusion proteins, radiation sensitizers, kinase inhibitors and targeted therapeutics for difficult-to-treat cancers, including the Stohlman Memorial Award of the Leukemia Society of America, the highest honor given to a Leukemia Society Scholar. He has served as a member of several editorial boards and National Institutes of Health grant review/special emphasis panels.
Dr. Uckun earned his doctoral degrees at the University of Heidelberg, Germany where he also served as an active member of the autologous bone marrow transplant and peripheral stem cell transplant clinical research teams of the Tumor Center. Dr. Uckun completed his residency training in pediatrics, clinical fellowship training in Hematology/Oncology/Blood and Bone Marrow Stem Cell Transplantation, as well as postdoctoral research training in immunology and microbiology at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Uckun has more than thirty years of professional experience in developmental therapeutics with a special emphasis on targeted therapeutics/precision medicines and biopharmaceuticals. He has published more than 500 peer-reviewed papers, authored numerous review articles and book chapters, and is an inventor on numerous patents.
For eleven years, Dr. Uckun worked as a Professor of Bone Marrow Transplantation, Therapeutic Radiology-Radiation Oncology, Pharmacology, and Pediatrics as well as Director of the Biotherapy Institute at the University of Minnesota, where he became the first recipient of the Endowed Hughes Chair in Biotherapy. At the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, he was a Professor and Head of Translational Research in Leukemia and Lymphoma of the CCBD and a Principal Investigator of the Stem Cell-Regenerative Medicine Initiative for six years. From 2012 to 2015, Dr. Uckun served as chair of the Biotargeting Working Group and a Member of the Coordination and Governance Committee of the National Cancer Institute Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer.
Dr. Uckun has held executive positions in multiple biotechnology companies and has extensive regulatory experience. Prior to joining Reven, Dr. Uckun served as Vice President of Scientific Solutions at Worldwide Clinical Trials, Chief Medical Officer of Oncotelic and Mateon Therapeutics, Head of Immuno-Oncology at Ares Pharmaceuticals, and as Executive Medical Director and Strategy Lead in Global Oncology and Hematology at Syneos Health. Previously, he was Vice President of Research and Clinical Development at Nantkwest, and Chief Scientific Officer of both Jupiter Research Institute and Paradigm Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Uckun is a former Vice Chair of the New Agents Committee as well as a Member of the Leukemia Steering Committee of the Children’s Cancer Study Group, an NCI-funded cooperative clinical trials consortium that coordinated pediatric and adolescent/young adult leukemia trials at 120 institutions in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe.
Dr. Uckun has deep knowledge and experience in the treatment of infectious diseases and their complications as well. In particular, he has extensive experience in viral, fungal, and bacterial infections of immunocompromised hosts, septic shock, ARDS, systemic capillary leak syndrome and cytokine release syndrome (CRS). He served as the Principal Investigator of a virus neutralizer project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as part of its unconventional countermeasures program. Dr. Uckun directed several federally funded virology/innate immunity projects and published numerous peer-reviewed papers on RNA viruses and anti-viral agents.
Contact:
Vincent Vanderbent
Director of Corporate Communications
Reven, LLC
+1 425.305.9547
vincent.vanderbent@reven.com
600 Corporate Circle, Suite D
Golden, CO 80401, USA