management
Andrew Gengos, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Mr. Gengos joined the company in December 2012. With more than 20 years in the life science industry, his experience includes executive leadership positions in both large and emerging companies, with broad expertise in corporate strategy, business development and transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, financing, operations, commercial planning and healthcare policy.
Mr. Gengos was most recently the President and Chief Executive Officer of Neuraltus Pharmaceuticals, where he led implementation of the company’s clinical, regulatory, fundraising and business development strategies while operating the company on a virtual business model. Previously, he served for more than seven years with Amgen where, as Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development, he managed Amgen's worldwide in-and-outbound business development activities, including acquisitions, licensing, spin-outs, divestitures, corporate venture capital investments, and alliance management.
Before joining Amgen, Mr. Gengos was Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Business Officer of Dynavax Technologies, where he led the company's business functions, including finance and accounting, fundraising, budgeting and planning, and business development. Earlier in his career, Mr. Gengos served as Vice President of Strategy at the Chiron Corporation and as Senior Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company. Mr. Gengos holds an MBA degree from the Anderson School of Business at the University of California, Los Angeles and a BS degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
John S. Yu, M.D., Founder, Chief Scientific Officer and Chairman
Dr. Yu is a founder and scientific impetus behind ImmunoCellular Therapeutics. The technology was licensed from his NIH-funded laboratory where he conducts extensive research in immunotherapies. As a physician-scientist, his area of expertise is in immunotherapies and in the nascent field of cancer stem cell biology.
He was inducted into Castle and Connelly's America's Top Doctors in 2005. Dr. Yu has published articles in a number of prestigious journals, including The Lancet, Cancer Research, Cancer Gene Therapy, Human Gene Therapy, Journal of Neuroimmunology, Journal of Neurological Science and Journal of Neurosurgery.
Dr. Yu earned his bachelor's degree in French literature and biological sciences from Stanford University and spent a year at the Sorbonne in Paris studying French literature. He also pursued a fellowship in immunology at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. He earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and master's degree from the Harvard University's Department of Genetics. He completed his neurosurgical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. In addition, he was a Neuroscience Fellow at the National Institutes of Mental Health in the Neuroimmunology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1988 to 1989 and was a Culpepper Scholar at the Molecular Neurogenetics Unit at that hospital from 1993 to 1995.
Dr. Yu's other honors include the Preuss Award, Joint Section on Tumors, American Association of Neurological Surgeons and Congress of Neurologic Surgeons in 1995. He received the Academy Award from the American Academy of Neurological Surgery at its 1996 annual meeting. Other honors include the Young Investigator Award from the Congress of Neurological Surgeons in 2000, the National Brain Tumor Foundation Grant in 2001, and the Mahaley Clinical Research award from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons in 2005. Dr. Yu is a member of the full-time faculty in the Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. An internationally renowned neurosurgeon, Dr. Yu's clinical focus is on the treatment of malignant and benign brain and spinal tumors.
David Fractor, Vice President, Finance and Principal Accounting Officer
Mr. Fractor has served as our Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer on a part-time basis since April 2011. Since 2003, Mr. Fractor has been a consultant providing financial consulting and strategic planning services, including Sarbanes-Oxley compliance consulting services, to a variety of companies in a variety of industries. From 1999 through 2003, Mr. Fractor was the Chief Financial Officer of HemaCare Corporation, a publicly traded corporation which collects, manufactures, tests and distributes blood products to hospitals and provides blood services to patients in hospital settings on an outsourcing basis. Previously, Mr. Fractor was in public practice of accounting where he was an audit manager at Deloitte and also served in a similar capacity in a regional accounting firm. Mr. Fractor received his B.S. in Accounting from the University of Southern California in 1982 and is a certified public accountant and a member of AICPA and the California Society of CPA's.
James G. Bender, Ph.D., M.P.H., Vice President, Product Development and Manufacturing
Dr. Bender, who joined IMUC in 2008, brings more than 20 years of clinical development experience to the company. He joined the company from IDM Pharma, where he was from 2002 through 2008, serving most recently as director of product development where he led the efforts relating to the clinical development of dendritic cell vaccines for melanoma and colon cancer and IDM-2101, a peptide vaccine for lung cancer. Prior to that, he was at Nexell Therapeutics where he led the research team developing therapeutic stem cell and cancer vaccine products. Prior to that, Dr. Bender spent 10 years with Baxter Healthcare Corporation in the corporate research group and eight years with the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He has over 75 scientific publications, is an inventor on 11 U.S. patents and holds a Ph.D. degree in immunology from the University of New Mexico and an M.P.H. in laboratory management from the University of Michigan.
Peter Ho
Dr. Ho joined the company in 2011 to head business development and licensing efforts. He brings to the company a broad range of science and business experience. Prior to IMUC, Dr. Ho worked in venture capital at D.E. Shaw Ventures, where he was involved in assessing early-stage life science investments. Dr. Ho also has experience in business development at Allergan, where he worked on licensing as well as M&A. Prior to Allergan, he was an equity research analyst at Prudential Equity Group covering major pharmaceutical companies, such as GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Dr. Ho has an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and a PhD from UC San Diego.