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Joseph Balthasar, PhD
Professor at State University of New York at BuffaloDr. Balthasar is the David and Jane Chu Endowed Chair in Drug Discovery and Development and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Dr. Balthasar received a B.S. in Pharmacy (1991) and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics (1996) from the University at Buffalo. He served as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutics at the University at Buffalo from 1996-1997 and, from 1997-1999, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Utah. Dr. Balthasar rejoined the University at Buffalo as an Assistant Professor in 1999, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2003 and to Full Professor in 2008. Dr. Balthasar also serves as the Director of the Center for Protein Therapeutics and as UB’s Executive Director for Research Initiatives. Dr. Balthasar’s research utilizes pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic analyses to guide the development of new immunotherapies. Current research in the Balthasar Lab, which is funded by the National Cancer Institute and the Center for Protein Therapeutics, focuses on the development of new platform strategies to improve the safety and efficacy of antibody-based treatments for cancer. Balthasar’s Payload Binding Selectivity Enhancer (PBSE) platform is under development by Abceutics Inc., a UB start-up company, and the lab’s Anti-Idiotypic Distribution Enhancer (AIDE) platform is being pursued via the Empire Discovery Institute.
Jennifer Hawks Bland
Chief Executive Officer at NewYorkBIOJennifer Hawks Bland is the Chief Executive Officer of NewYorkBIO. Prior to joining NewYorkBIO, Ms. Bland was an Executive Director in the State Government Affairs & Policy group at Merck. She has also held government affairs positions at GlaxoSmithKline and the Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA), the 136-year old trade association representing manufacturers of over-the- counter medicines. Ms. Bland previously was an associate with the Jackson, MS law firm of Butler, Snow, O’Mara, Stevens, & Cannada, PLLC where she principally practiced in the area of products liability litigation. Before entering the practice of law, she worked for six years for U.S. Senator Thad Cochran (RMiss.). Ms. Bland is a member of both the District of Columbia and Mississippi Bar Associations. She also has extensive volunteer experience and is currently the PTA co-president of her child’s school and sits on the Board of the Pelham Art Center. Ms. Bland currently resides in Pelham, New York with her husband, R. Trabue Bland and their two sons.
Roberto Pili
Associate Dean for Cancer Research and Integrative Oncology at University at BuffaloRoberto Pili, MD, is associate dean for cancer research and integrative oncology, and professor and chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology in the Department of Medicine.
As associate dean, he is responsible for building the academic infrastructure for innovative and collaborative cancer research at UB and on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, particularly in the areas of immunotherapies, drug development and delivery, epigenetics and lifestyle-dietary interventions. He is the founder of the UB Cancer Research Consortium.
An international recognized expert in genitourinary malignancies, Pili specializes in research on the role of epigenetic modifications in overcoming drug resistance and modulating response to immunotherapies. His laboratory is also studying the impact of dietary interventions as adjuvant tools in patients receiving cancer treatments.
Pili holds several patent applications and is conducting several investigators-initiated clinical trials for the treatment of genitourinary malignancies. His laboratory is based at the school’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and his work is funded by grants from the National Cancer Institutes and the Department of Defense.
Pili received his medical degree from Catholic University School of Medicine in Rome and completed fellowships with National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging in biological chemistry and Johns Hopkins University in medical oncology. He has published 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and serves as a reviewer for several medical journals and grants study sections of the National Cancer Institutes and the Department of Defense.