Fahar Merchant
President and CEO Medicenna Therapeutics
Dr. Merchant is a biotech veteran with 30 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Medicenna. Previously he was President and CEO of Protox Therapeutics Inc. where he transitioned a pre-clinical start-up to a Phase 3 ready uro-oncology company in six years (2005-2011). In 1992, he co-founded IntelliGene Expressions, Inc., a biologics cGMP compliant CDMO, and built it to one of the fastest-growing companies in Canada ensuring profitability during his tenure as CEO. In 2000, by strategic in-licensing, he co-founded Avicenna Medica, Inc., a clinical stage oncology company, and sold it a year later to KS Biomedix (LSE) for $90 million. Fahar was CTO and Director of KS Biomedix until its acquisition by Xenova (NASDAQ and LSE) in 2003. He has raised over $150 million from public and private sources to fund the development of targeted therapies for oncology and closed corporate transactions valued at over $250 million. Fahar holds a BSc in Biochemistry and Pharmacology from Aston University, MSc in Biotechnology from Birmingham University, and a Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from Western University.
Seminars
- Highlight the necessity of combining intratumoral delivery with the multi-pronged MoA to substantially extend survival in non-resectable rGBM patients
- Integrating paired patient biopsies, intratumoral drug distribution, and patient-derived organoid models to interrogate MoA and support clinical observations
- Scrutinize historical survival outcomes in non-resectable rGBM and their implication on applying external control arms in contemporary clinical trial design
- Join this workshop to collectively work towards standardized and effective preclinical GBM models to ensure convincing preclinical data is produced to reduce regulatory bottlenecks
- Acknowledging the current limitations with preclinical and translational models that mimic the human immune system for immunotherapy research in Glioblastoma
- Discussing strategies to overcome the challenges of in preserving cellular and mutational diversities in primary tumours to overcome the prolonged development time
- Advancing the use of K9 models as an improved model for paediatric Glioblastomas
- Exploring patient-derived glioblastoma organoid models to recapitulate the heterogeneity of glioblastomas to overcome the complexities of developing effective therapeutic strategies
- Evaluating the practical applications of glioblastoma organoids for rapidly testing patient-specific treatment strategies involving correlating mutation profiles with drug responses to advance personalized therapies
