Working on fetal/maternal medicine focused on immune tolerance and autoimmune diseases.

Transplant Center - Long School of Medicine

Signature Biologics is a biopharmaceutical company bringing innovative Mesenchymal Stem/Stromal Cells (MSCs), and biologic drugs to the market to treat degenerative and autoimmune unmet clinical conditions. Products not available for sale in the US. Currently under Phase 1 clinical trial for one of our assets.

Pelican Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company focused on cellular/biologics advanced therapeutics to solve unmet medical needs. Pelican Therapeutics is a subsidiary of NightHawk Biosciences Inc. (NYSE:NHWK).PTX-35: Our lead product candidate is a humanized monoclonal antibody that is a functional agonist of human TNFRSF25. This antibody provides highly selective and potent stimulation of ‘memory’ CD8+ cytotoxic T cells. This is the class of T cell that is responsible for eliminating tumor cells in patients. Due to the preferential specificity of PTX-35 to CD8+ T cells, this agent represents a promising candidate as a T cell costimulator in cancer patients. Currently in clinical Phase 1 trial.PTX-45: Our second product candidate is a human TL1A-Ig fusion protein that can be used to cause proliferation of regulatory T cells in patients. Pre-clinical studies have demonstrated that neo-adjuvant administration of TNFRSF25 agonist leads to Treg expansion and long-term tolerance toward allogeneic bone marrow transplantation, heart transplantation and islet transplantation in the absence of maintenance immunosuppression.

We discovered, developed, and clinically translated active immunoregulatory molecules with regenerative and anti-inflammatory properties, with the goal of replacing toxic corticosteroids. This company was acquired.

We built a private research institute with the capabilities to do molecular, cellular, animal, and translatable clinical research to advance therapies (cell/biologics) to help fulfill human unmet medical needs in the autoimmune, chronic inflammation, and transplantation immune biology. This company was acquired.

Our services allows veterinary clinics to offer advanced medical services to pet owners without having to heavily invest in equipment or pay technical/expert assistance.

Graduate Research Associate for the Extremity and Trauma Research group under Ph.D., Robert Christy and M.D., Glenn A. Halff from US Army Institute of Surgical Research and Univeristy of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio – UT Transplant Center, respectively. Currently working on the development of decellularized adipose tissue (pig and human) and whole liver (rat and pig) as a biological platform for human adipose derived stem cells integration and differentiation with the purpose of forming functional tissues/organs that can be later implanted into a patient

Graduate Research Associate for the Cellular and Tissue Engineering Laboratory under Ph.D., Rena Bizios and Ph.D., Duong from the University of Texas at San Antonio and University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, respectively. This project was based on in vitro studies with the objective of developing a model to test select retinal cells responses to bio-physical stimuli cues (i.e., pressure and oxygen concentration) pertinent to glaucomatous eye pathology (2010-2011).Graduate Research Associate for the Cellular and Tissue Engineering Laboratory in collaboration with the Functional Hybrid Smart Biomaterial Laboratory under Ph.D., Rena Bizios and Ph.D., Sunho Oh, respectively. This project had the objective of studying sequential delivery of diverse drugs loaded in polymer micro-particles integrated to a biodegradable scaffold, with the objective of enhancing wound healing during bone repair (2010-2011).Graduate Research Associate for the Vascular Bioengineering Laboratory under Ph.D., Anand Ramasubramanian designing and testing new biomaterials-fungie-protein interactions for vascular applications and drug delivery systems, using high-throughput screening techniques. Also, provided consultation and performed testing of thermal properties of biodegradable implantable polymer staples for the biotechnology company ENTrigue Surgical® (2009-2010).