Research Innovation Spotlight Series Archive

The Research Innovation Spotlight Series presented by the Alliance for SoCal Innovation in partnership with BioscienceLA

The Research Innovation Spotlight Series is an invite-only virtual program led by the Alliance in collaboration with BioscienceLA (for Life Science) that connects industry with researchers developing innovative technologies and life science breakthroughs at Southern California’s top research universities and institutions. These highly technical presentations provide corporate leaders and early stage investors an early look at the innovations entering the potential pipeline of market-moving, disruptive developments and thus inform decision makers as well as create valuable connections to researchers and the universities before they enter the market.

Each spotlight session consists of 4 presentations where each researcher gets 20 minutes of ‘airtime’ of which 10 minutes is a technical presentation followed by 10 minutes for audience Q&A.

Presenting Researchers

Dr. Matthew Rettig, M.D.; Medical Director, Prostate Cancer Program of the Institute of Urologic Oncology at UCLA (profile).

​Research presenting: analogs of JN103 that have similar in vitro performance as JN103 with improved PK, which we have already partially demonstrated to be the case with one of our analogs (JN185).

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​Dr. Wendong Huang, Ph.D.; Professor, Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope; Adjunct Professor of USC Keck Medical School; Professor, Department of Diabetes Complications & Metabolism at City of Hope (profile).

​Research presenting: a promising clinical strategy to treat lymphoma and other Myc-positive tumors with development of a potent berbamine derivative compound which selectively targets CamkII kinase.

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​Dr. Mohan Kaadige, Ph.D.; Research Associate Professor, Applied Cancer Research and Drug Discovery Translational Genomics Research Institute, part of City of Hope (profile).

​Research presenting: findings from our preclinical investigation of TGN-1062, a dual CDK7 and FLT3 inhibitor which shows potent anti-AML activity and synergizes with Venetoclax

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​Dr. Jean Shih, Ph.D.; Boyd & Elsie Welin Professor, Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences at USC (profile).

​Research presenting: NMI, a near-infrared MAO-A inhibitor, is a potent dual-action theranostic molecule enabling non-invasive diagnosis and treatment of brain, prostate, and colon cancers, with added utility for tumor margin visualization during surgery.

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​Event Moderator: Chris LeMasters, CEO at XinThera, a Gilead Company (profile)

​XinThera, Inc., a privately held biotechnology company focused on small molecule discovery and development of oncology and immunology therapeutics.