Fahar Merchant
Chief Executive Officer 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
- Moving beyond traditional models to accurately replicate the TME and immune system of the human brain
- Outlining the technological innovations that are needed to make glioblastoma models truly predictive
- Standardizing models to ensure they are credible for regulatory submission and inform personalized medicine
- Discussing the limitations of traditional liquid biopsies using ctDNA for GBM monitoring
- Exploring innovative techniques to capture and analyse circulating tumour cells from blood or CSF samples
- Assessing the clinical utility liquid biopsies for GBMs to inform active genetic mutations and methylation status for treatment guidance
- 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
- Advancing organoids and xenografts for high-throughput screening and biomarker identification to effectively evaluate novel therapeutic strategies and reduce failure risk
- Discussing the maintenance of genetic and molecular heterogeneity of human tumors to provide a more predictive platform for preclinical research
- Modelling recurrent tumors with patient-derived models to replicate selection pressure from prior therapies
