Immuno-Oncology Innovator Looks to Start Three Clinical Studies

October 17, 2019

Gerrit Dispersyn is President and CEO of Phio Pharmaceuticals Corp. He joined Phio Pharmaceuticals Corp. in April 2017. Dr. Dispersyn is an accomplished leader in clinical, product and business development. He most recently was Vice President, Global Head of Clinical Affairs at Integra LifeSciences Corporation.

In this role, he was responsible for Integra’s global strategy and execution of clinical development, clinical operations and medical affairs projects and a member of Integra’s senior management leadership team and several of the company’s core teams for M&A projects.

Dr. Dispersyn has also been involved in Integra’s research and business activities related to Human Cells, Tissues, and Cellular and Tissue based Products — HCT/Ps. Earlier, he was the Vice President, Product Development and Portfolio Management for Barrier Therapeutics, Inc., a pharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of products in the field of dermatology.

The company was a spinout of Johnson & Johnson, and currently part of GlaxoSmithKline. There, he led planning and implementation of all aspects of R&D operations and strategy; scientific, competitive and business intelligence; and alliance management. Dr. Dispersyn is the Founder of Ingress, LLC, a consultancy company providing R&D and clinical operations support to startup companies, supporting several pharmaceutical drug development programs.

Dr. Dispersyn holds a Dr. Med. Sc. from the Faculty of Medicine, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands, a postgraduate degree in biomedical imaging and a M.S. in biochemistry, both from the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

In this 2,908 word interview, exclusive to the Wall Street Transcript, Dr. Dispersyn details the propects for this company for investors.

 “The company is focusing on using its proprietary self-delivering RNAi platform in developing innovative immuno-oncology therapeutics. So basically, we have a technology that can address the unmet need specifically occurring in the immuno-oncology space for solid tumors.

So there are two issues at hand. One is that in patients with solid tumors, their immune effector cells, such as T cells or NK cells, have an inherent low functionality. And even if these cells with their low functionality get to the tumor, they are confronted with significant immunobiological barriers within what is referred to as the tumor microenvironment that will further limit their response.

With our technology, we can do two things. We can essentially reprogram a patient’s immune effector cells to increase their inherent functionality. And secondly, we can use our compounds to reduce the immunosuppressive nature of the tumor microenvironment.

And the reason why we can do that is that our proprietary self-delivering RNAi technology is a very elegant, nongenetic way of reprogramming a cell. Essentially, we can silence a gene without the need for genetic engineering.

So it’s simple to use because its self-delivering, meaning that there is no delivery vehicle required or specific formulations. There is no specific machinery required, such as electroporation, to get our compounds into the cell, and that also compares very favorably to, let’s say, other genetic engineering technologies that will need specific formulations and/or specific delivery mechanisms.”

Get the full 2,908 word interview, only in the Wall Street Transcript.