Wellcome Leap

‘We want to give everyone a new thymus to reboot their immune system’ Thymmune Therapeutics founder Stan Wang, MD, PhD says ARPA-H funding will bring ‘off-the-shelf’ thymus rejuvenation technology to human clinical trials. #longevity #immune #rejuvenation

Today, I’m immensely excited to begin my new role as Wellcome Trust’s CEO.   It is a privilege to lead Wellcome, an organisation I have long admired. I look forward to working alongside my new colleagues in London and Germany to deliver on our mission to support science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone.   I’ll be spending my first few months in London learning more about the organisation’s work, travelling to key research institutions in the UK and visiting researchers in our programmes across Africa and Asia. I hope to have the opportunity to meet many of you and am optimistic about the positive change we can create together. 

As the first biotech startup funded by Wellcome Leap in its inaugural HOPE program, we at Thymmune are proud to be continuing the work at scale as the first biotech funded through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)'s Open BAA. The focused, ambitious, and rapid pace of the work we did as part of HOPE with Annie Moisan and Cara Buchanan was critically enabling for Thymmune. Wellcome Leap executes the ARPA model at global scale--and it was fantastic preparation as we enter this next phase of advancing our cell therapy. We look forward to progressing our approach to providing a new thymus to patients in need.

We’re delighted to announce that Dr John-Arne Røttingen will be joining us in January 2024 as our new Chief Executive Officer. John-Arne, a medical scientist, public health official, diplomat and research administrator, will take up the post in January 2024. “Wellcome believes in the power of science to build a healthier future for everyone, and that science delivers the greatest change through collaborative action across society,” says Julia Gillard, Chair of Wellcome. “John-Arne’s career and experience exemplify these beliefs.”   Read more about the appointment: https://wellc.me/3PUkglP

BREAKING NEWS The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.   The discoveries by the two Nobel Prize laureates were critical for developing effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic that began in early 2020. Through their groundbreaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times. Learn more Press release: https://bit.ly/3LyuMgU Advanced information: https://bit.ly/454TWdZ