About

W. Nicholas Haining, BM, BCh, is chief scientific officer and co-founder of ArsenalBio. He is a physician-scientist, and prior to co-founding ArsenalBio, he was the vice president of discovery oncology and immunology at Merck Research Laboratories. Dr. Haining received his undergraduate and medical degree from Oxford University and completed his medical training in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, and subsequently in pediatric hematology/oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. As an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, his lab defined some of the key transcriptional and epigenetic regulators of T cell exhaustion and used in vivo genetic screens to identify immune vulnerabilities of cancer cells in mouse models. He also led a multi-disciplinary organization at Merck that focused on using innovative approaches to identify new therapeutic strategies for cancer and immunological disease.

Susan Kaech, Ph.D., is professor and director of the NOMIS Center for Immunobiology & Microbial Pathogenesis and holds the NOMIS Chair at the Salk Institute. Her work focuses on understanding how memory T cells are produced during infection and vaccination to provide long-term immunity and sometimes fail to do so. She is also a leader in field of cancer immunology and elucidating metabolic control of immune cells in cancer. She was previously a Waldemar Von Zedwitz Professor in the Department of Immunology at Yale University. She holds a Ph.D. in developmental biology from Stanford University and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the department of microbiology and immunology at Emory University

Jeffrey Miller, M.D., is professor of medicine, University of Minnesota and deputy director, Masonic Cancer Center and the Roger L. and Lynn C. Headrick Chair in cancer therapeutics. Dr. Miller has more than 25 years of experience studying the biology of natural killer (NK) cells and other immune effector cells and their use in clinical immunotherapy with over 300 peer-reviewed publications. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship in hematology, oncology and transplantation at the University of Minnesota, he joined the faculty in 1991. Previously, he completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Dr. Miller received a BSc degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, US and received his M.D. from Northwestern University School of Medicine.

Emmett Schmidt, M.D., Ph.D., is vice president of early oncology development for Merck Research Labs where he oversees more than 46 company collaborations involving more than 95 clinical studies. He joined Merck in 2010 as a senior principal scientist and has continued to take on additional responsibilities in the development of oncology therapies. Prior to joining Merck, Dr. Schmidt was a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Schmidt holds M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University and earned a M.A in biology from Harvard University.

Mario Sznol, M.D., professor of medicine and clinical research leader in the melanoma program and co-leader, cancer immunology program at Yale Cancer Center. Dr. Sznol conducts clinical research for melanoma and kidney cancer patients with a major focus on immunotherapies. Before joining Yale in 2004, Dr. Sznol served as vice president, clinical affairs of Vion Pharmaceuticals where he oversaw development of the company’s anticancer drug candidates. Prior to that, he served as head of the Biologics Evaluation Section, Investigational Drug Branch at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Sznol earned a M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine and a B.S. in biochemistry from Rice University.