Dr. Hassan Javanbakht

Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Javanbakht received his Ph.D. from McGill University and completed his post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School. He then moved to Roche Palo Alto LLC where he worked on developing antivirals to treat HIV infection. He was part of the team that advanced Elipida® (RO4970335), a potent and highly selective non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI), into clinical development. He then transferred to Hoffman La-Roche where he began his work on hepatitis B virus (HBV) and Influenza. His group there focused on developing novel direct-acting antivirals and immunomodulatory therapies to treat chronic HBV. He led the teams that developed a first-in-class small-molecule viral expression inhibitor (RG7834), a liver-targeted anti-HBV locked nucleic acid (RG6004), and an immunomodulator, all of which advanced to Phase 1 clinical evaluation. His work also led to discovery of PAPD5/7 as host factors for HBV expression. Subsequently, he moved to Gilead Sciences where he led a research team focused on curing HBV and developing a number of novel therapeutics scheduled to enter clinical studies. Most recently, he was the head of infectious diseases at SQZ Biotechnologies leading a group of scientists developing cell-based vaccines for treatment of persistent viral infections. So far, he has authored more than 45 peer-reviewed scientific publications in high-impact journals and holds more than 11 issued patents and applications.