VerImmune Expands Scientific Advisory Board with Appointment of Prof. Narayanan Gopalakrishna Iyer MBBS (Hons), PhD , FRCS (Gen), FAMS

BALTIMORE, Maryland – VerImmune, Inc. (“VerImmune”), a biotechnology company developing a first-in-class cancer therapy known as Anti-tumor Immune Redirection (AIR). announced today the appointment of Professor Narayanan Gopalakrishna Iyer (“Dr Gopal Iyer”) , MBBS (Hons), PhD, FRCS, FAMS, Head of both the Division of Medical Sciences, National Cancer Centre Singapore and Department of Head & Neck Surgery, Division of Surgery & Surgical Oncology at Singapore General Hospital

“We are excited to have Dr. Gopal Iyer join VerImmune’s SAB,” said Joshua Wang, VerImmune’s Founding CEO, “Prof. Gopal’s background and expertise in translational medical sciences as well as clinical oncology will be invaluable as we advance our AIR program to the clinic and expand the applications for our ViP platform to other disease areas.”

The appointment of Dr Gopal Iyer expands VerImmune’s SAB to four members with world-class expertise and backgrounds in the fields of vaccinology, immuno-oncology, T-cell memory , and bioengineering.

About Prof Gopal Iyer: Dr Iyer graduated top of his medical school class at NUS in 1998, with Honors and subsequently went on to complete a PhD in molecular carcinogenesis at the University of Cambridge under Prof Carlos Caldas. Trained as a General surgeon at Singapore General Hospital he went on to two separate head and neck surgical fellowships at Sydney Head and Neck Cancer Institute, Australia and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre (MSKCC), New York, USA. At the end of his fellowship at MSKCC, he was awarded the Michael Burt award for being the best fellow in the surgical division both in terms of operative skill and research output. 

Currently, Dr Gopal Iyer is the head of the Department of Head and Neck Surgery in National Cancer Centre and Singapore General Hospital. Dr Gopal has extensive experience in the surgical management of head and neck cancers, as well as surgery for benign diseases in the head and neck (including thyroid, salivary gland and skin lesions). He performs complex resections and reconstructions of cancers involving the oral cavity, oropharynx, larynx, hypopharynx, nasopharynx, paranasal sinuses and neck. He is involved in the robotic and endoscopic head and neck surgical program having performed a number of these procedures locally and mentored the first ever robotic thyroidectomy in Australia in Feb 2012.

He is actively involved in research and leads a number of research programs that study various clinical and translational aspects of head and neck cancer prognostication and therapeutics. He is the principal investigator of the Cancer Therapeutics Research Laboratory (National Cancer Centre) where the over-arching theme is the identification of novel biomarkers that guide therapeutic decisions, identification of novel therapeutic targets and modification of conventional therapy for head and neck cancers for precision oncology. This is achieved through several different approaches. Clinical research is achieved through the establishment and enrichment of good clinical databases to answer specific clinical questions and dilemmas in head and neck oncology. Biomarker discovery is focused on established and state-of the art technologies from next-gen sequencing, immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry to single cell genomics. Functional analyses to modify therapeutic paradigms involve the establishment of patient-derived 2D and 3D cell cultures, stem cell models, as well as modelling the immune micro-environment ex vivo. Apart from using these to test the efficacy of existing compounds, they provide valuable insight into novel mechanism of disease that determine the therapeutic response. The latter includes understanding the role of long non-coding RNAs and alternative splicing. These have been published in a number of high impact journals including Nature Medicine, Nature Communication, Oncogene and Genome Medicine. The overall objective is to translate this knowledge into clinical trials and patient specific outcome, even in the era of shifting focus in the therapeutic spheres