Immune Design Leadership
Steve Reed Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Reed is the founder and scientific director of the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI). He co-founded Corixa Corporation in 1994, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer. In 2005 he founded Dharma Therapeutics, a Seattle biotech developing transdermal delivery systems. His academic appointments include Professor of Medicine at Cornell University Medical College in New York and Research Professor of Pathobiology at the University of Washington. He serves on several editorial review committees, has served as a member of the Tropical Medicine Review Board of the National Institutes of Health and is a member of the Vaccine Development Steering Committee of the World Health Organization. Dr. Reed's research interests have focused on the immunology of intracellular infections, and on the development of vaccines and diagnostics for both cancer and infectious diseases. He has more than 200 published original articles, several book chapters, and holds 90 issued patents for diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics of infectious diseases and cancer.
Thomas W. Dubensky Jr., Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer
Tom was a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Anza Therapeutics, which was spun out from Cerus Corporation in 2007, where he served as the vice president of research beginning in 2002. At Cerus and at Anza he helped to develop vaccine platforms based on intracellular bacteria that were evaluated in clinical trials in oncology and infectious disease settings. Tom joined Cerus from Onyx Pharmaceuticals where, in his final position, he was vice president for research, responsible for the preclinical studies to discover and develop oncolytic adenoviruses. Prior to Onyx, Tom was a scientific director and gene therapy program head at Chiron Corporation and a research director at Viagene. At these companies, he led the development of diverse recombinant viral vector platforms, including lentiviruses and alphavirus-based vaccine platforms that are currently being evaluated in human clinical trials. Prior to that, he held prior positions within the biotech industry related to directing viral therapeutics and DNA probe diagnostics programs. Tom has co-authored more than 50 scientific papers and is an inventor on 18 issued U.S. patents and multiple pending applications. He received his B.A. in bacteriology and immunology from the University of California, Berkeley and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Pathology. Tom is a member of the board of directors of the Bay Area Tumor Institute.
Christopher H. Clegg Ph.D.
Vice President of Operations and Technology
Dr. Clegg has nearly 20 years experience in biomedical research. He was the founding head of both the Immunology and Cancer Research Departments at ZymoGenetics Inc. where his responsibilities involved the implementation and supervision of a genomics-based drug discovery platform. This work resulted in the validation of 3 drug candidates that are currently being tested in the clinic; TACI-Ig for autoimmunity (SLE and RA), IL-21 for metastatic cancer, and Interferon lambda (IL-29) for Hepatitis C infection. Prior to this, Dr. Clegg established the mouse Molecule Genetics Department at the Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute where he annotated the activity of a number of genes associated with immunological disease in mice and helped pioneer the use of yeast artificial chromosomes for the characterization of large human multi-gene loci.
Cassie Ostrander
Director of Administration
Cassie Ostrander has over 25 years of varied legal, clinical and administrative management experience. She received her BS from Auburn University in 1981 and obtained her Paralegal Certification from Florida International University in 1983 and her Clinical Research Associate Certification from University of Washington in 2005. After fifteen years as a corporate/healthcare law paralegal, Cassie entered the biotech scientific research community in 1996 when she worked at Corixa Corporation as a Contracts Associate/Corporate Paralegal. In 2007 she joined Dharma Therapeutics, Inc. where she served as their Contracts Manager and Clinical Research Associate. She recently joined Immune Design Corp. as Director of Administration and manages administrative matters, legal affairs and clinical operations.
James Allen Ph.D.
Director of Development
Prior to joining Immune Design, Dr. Allen served as the Director of the Paul D. Wellstone Viral Vector core laboratory at the University of Washington. He also served as a Senior Research Scientist at the Avigen Corporation before being promoted to Associate Director. Dr. Allen spent three years as a Senior Research Fellow and one year as a Staff Scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center working with Dr. Dusty Miller. Prior to his work with Dr. Miller, Dr. Allen was a Staff Scientist at the Targeted Genetics Corporation. Dr. Allen obtained post-doctoral training with Dr. Roger Perlmutter at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Washington and earned his Ph.D. from the Biochemistry Department at the University of Washington in Dr. Richard Palmiter's laboratory. He holds a B.A. in chemistry, biology and anthropology from the University of Oregon.
Nancy Hosken Ph.D.
Principal Scientist, Immunology
Dr. Hosken was a Senior Scientist and Project Leader at ZymoGenetics, where she led research to validate novel targets and protein therapeutics (antibodies and soluble-receptors) for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. She was also a research scientist in positions of increasing responsibility in the Immunology department at Corixa Corporation (now GSKBio). While at Corixa, she led the vaccine antigen-discovery effort for HSV-2 and HCMV, developed a novel process that greatly accelerated preclinical immunogenicity research on Corixa's vaccine candidates, led a team that provided the preclinical immunogenicity data for two clinical IND's, and established the clinical immunomonitoring group. Dr. Hosken has a strong scientific background in T cell biology. She received her postdoctoral training with Dr. Anne O'Garra at DNAX Research Institute (Palo Alto, CA) and with Dr. Steve Reed at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (Seattle, WA). Dr. Hosken received a B.S. in Biochemistry from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in the laboratories of Dr. Michael Bevan at both Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Washington (Seattle, WA).