Our Team

Mr. Jim Barlow became the CEO of ImmunoGenesis in April 2020. Before joining ImmunoGenesis, Mr. Barlow was Vice President of Operations and Business Development for Geneos Therapeutics. Mr. Barlow played an integral role in the formation of Geneos, a personalized neoantigen‑targeting cancer vaccine company spun off from Inovio Pharmaceuticals. One of 2 initial employees, Mr. Barlow helped to build the management team and establish all key operational aspects of the company. He also led the tumor prioritization efforts, resulting in the design and initiation of the company’s first clinical trial less than 9 months after obtaining Series A financing.

Before joining Geneos, Mr. Barlow drove the development of Inovio’s Immuno‑oncology (IO) product strategy. In this effort, he led a cross‑functional team across Commercial, Clinical, Product Development, R&D, and Business Development to establish a set of key strategic principles. Mr. Barlow led the product prioritization efforts based on these principles, established the IO Advisory Panel, and coordinated key opinion leader and pharma partner interactions to position the company to embark on major clinical programs across 4 tumor types of interest. These programs evaluated combination regimens of Inovio’s cancer immunotherapies with PD‑L1 inhibitors from 3 different pharma partners. Mr. Barlow established 2 of these 3 partnerships, as well as a clinical partnership with the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Prior to Inovio, Mr. Barlow was at Bristol‑Myers Squibb (BMS), where he was the Payer Marketing Lead for Yervoy, the pioneering cancer immunotherapy whose approval set off the current wave of immunotherapy development in oncology. Given the first‑in‑class nature of the product and the premium price associated with it, Mr. Barlow created a number of innovative programs to optimize market access. While at BMS, Mr. Barlow also worked on the overall IO franchise commercial strategy, including the development of communication planning for the groundbreaking immunotherapy Opdivo. Before his tenure at BMS, Mr. Barlow spent 8 years at Merck working in commercial leadership roles with increasing responsibility for the oncology franchise.

Mr. Barlow received an MBA (strategy and marketing) with honors from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. He was awarded the Dean’s Scholarship from Tepper. Mr. Barlow received a BA in Math and Economics from Colgate University, where he was awarded the Alumni Memorial Scholarship and graduated summa cum laude.

Mr. Thomas U. Barton is a hedge fund manager and venture capitalist with more than 40 years of experience. Mr. Barton is the Managing Partner of White Rock Capital, a hedge fund and family office he established in 1993. For 10 years, White Rock Capital managed money for Soros’s funds and other investors who are often referred to as “Masters of the Universe.” During this period, White Rock led investments in USSB (NASDAQ: USSB), a satellite broadcast company that became DirecTV, and was the founder of Microtune (NASDAQ: TUNE), an analog-to-digital semiconductor chip company. Mr. Barton was a cofounder of AveXis (NASDAQ: AVXS), which developed a drug for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and was sold to Novartis for $9 billion. He was also the first investor in gene therapy company Agilis, which sold to PTC Therapeutics (NASDAQ: PTCT) for a significant return on investment. Mr. Barton is an investor and member of the Board of Directors of Renovion, a lung health company, and Myrtelle, a gene therapy company. He is a founding member and former board member of Dallas National Golf Club.

Prior to founding his own firm, Mr. Barton became a General Partner of Feshbach Brothers in 1987, a hedge fund that specialized in short selling. During his tenure, Feshbach Brothers became one of the largest firms of this type in the United States. He started his investment career as COO of Collins Capital. Mr. Barton received a BA from Mercer University and an MBA from Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management.

Mr. Barton’s desire to help others has resulted in various philanthropic efforts that continue to make a lasting impact. He cofounded the ACE Grant in 2003 with the American Junior Golf Association. This grant program provides financial assistance to junior golfers who otherwise could not afford to compete in national tournaments where players are identified for college scholarships. The ACE Grant has helped 2,600 recipients receive more than $15 million in college scholarships. He was the first National Chairman of Major Gifts for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and was a recipient of the CF Foundation Hitchcock Humanitarian Award. Additionally, Mr. Barton has served on the Executive Board of Central Dallas Ministries, a nonprofit providing healthcare, legal, job search, food, and clothing assistance to lower-income families in the Dallas area. Over a span of 4 decades, Mr. Barton chaired many major fundraising events for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).

Dr. Ted Koutouzis is a venture capitalist and physician. He is an analyst at Magnetar Capital and the Managing Director at Reimagined Ventures. Dr. Koutouzis graduated from Florida State University with a BS in Nutrition/Exercise Science and earned an MD from the University of Miami School of Medicine. He received a graduate degree in Emergency Medicine from Northwestern University. Dr. Koutouzis practices emergency medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. In addition, Dr. Koutouzis has worked at Magnetar Capital since 2006. For the first 10 years, he focused on risk arbitrage investments at the equity desk and later moved to the fixed income team, where he was responsible for the underwriting process for structured finance solutions across the life sciences. He is the Managing Director at Reimagined Ventures, where he comanages all healthcare investments. He is also on the board at Neural Analytics, a company that received a $10 million investment from Reimagined Ventures.

Dr. Robert Stein is the Principal Consultant at RBS Biotech. He was formerly the Chief Scientific Officer of Agenus, where he led the Research Preclinical Development and Translational Medicine functions. He helped shape clinical development strategy for vaccines and adjuvants. Additionally, he led integration of the 4-Antibody acquisition, which included the company’s fully human antibody drug discovery and optimization technology platform and a portfolio of immune checkpoint antibody programs. Throughout his 30 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, he has played a pivotal role in bringing to the market Sustiva, Fablyn, Viviant, Panretin, Targretin, Promacta, and Eliquis. Before joining Agenus, he held executive management positions at Ligand Pharmaceuticals, DuPont Merck, Incyte Pharmaceuticals, Roche Palo Alto, and KineMed. Dr. Stein began his career at Merck Sharp & Dohme. He holds an MD and a PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology from Duke University.

Mr. Clifford Stocks has nearly 30 years of experience in the biotech industry and is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of OncoResponse, Inc, a Seattle-based immuno-oncology company formed as a broad strategic alliance with MD Anderson Cancer Center. Before OncoResponse, he served as Chief Executive Officer at Theraclone Sciences, where he was responsible for leading all aspects of the company’s efforts to discover and develop novel therapeutic antibody immunotherapies for the treatment of infectious disease, including HIV-cure antibodies licensed to Gilead Sciences. Prior to Theraclone, Mr. Stocks served as Chief Business Officer of Calistoga Pharmaceuticals, where he led the partnering activities and M&A teamwork that resulted in the acquisition of Calistoga by Gilead for $600 million in 2011. Mr. Stocks spent over 15 years at ICOS Corporation, where he served as an Executive Officer and Vice President of Business Development. While at ICOS, he led acquisitions and joint venture activities, as well as alliance formation, strategy, licensing, and deal making. He played an instrumental role on the leadership team that developed and launched Cialis, and he was a key architect of the Lilly ICOS joint venture partnership that led to the $2.3 billion acquisition of ICOS in 2007. Mr. Stocks’ early career includes a turn as a management consultant in the Health Services practice of Booz, Allen & Hamilton, as well as academic research in the Department of Immunology at the University of Utah and the Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago. Mr. Stocks received an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business and a BS in Biology from the University of Utah.

Dr. Lawrence Fong is the Efim Guzik Distinguished Professor in Cancer Biology in the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco, where he leads the Cancer Immunotherapy Program. He also co-directs the Parker Institute of Cancer Immunotherapy at UCSF and co-leads the Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy Program in the Cancer Center. He is a physician-scientist in the Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, directing both a translational research program and a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research lab. He has more than 20 years of experience in cancer immunotherapy and has been involved in both preclinical and clinical studies of FDA-approved immunotherapies such as sipuleucel-T and immune checkpoint inhibitors. He has also been involved in multiple first-in-human clinical trials, including trials of dendritic cell vaccines, ipilimumab, and an adenosine receptor antagonist. Dr. Fong’s research examines the mechanisms that underlie clinical response and resistance to immunotherapies. This work includes tracking antigen-specific T-cell responses in treated cancer patients and developing biomarkers that are associated with clinical outcomes. The Cancer Immunotherapy Program that he directs performs early-phase and high-risk clinical trials across different disease indications. The program also includes a translational laboratory that performs mechanistic studies on samples derived from patients undergoing treatment. Throughout his career, Dr. Fong has received multiple awards, including the NIH Outstanding Investigator Award.

Dr. Fong obtained a BA from Columbia University and an MD from Stanford University. He completed internal medicine training at the University of Washington and oncology fellowship and postdoctoral training at Stanford in 2002. He then moved to UCSF as an assistant professor, where he is now a distinguished professor. He is an elected member of Alpha Omega Alpha and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He has over 100 publications in academic journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Nature Medicine, Cell, Immunity, and Cancer Discovery. He has served on multiple NIH study sections, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Steering Committees for Genitourinary Cancer, the NCI Investigational Drugs-Immunotherapy Task Force, the Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program Vision Setting Committee, and the NCI Immuno-oncology Translation Network Steering Committee. He has also served on the editorial boards of multiple journals, including the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the Journal of Immunotherapy of Cancer, and Cancer Immunology Research.

Dr. Fong co-founded several companies, including FWB LLC (acquired by Streamlogic), Techbargains.com LLC (acquired by Exponential), and Keyhole Therapeutics. He has ongoing research collaborations with Abbvie, Amgen, Bavarian Nordic, Bristol Myer Squibb, Dendreon, Janssen, Merck, and Roche/Genentech. He sits on the steering committee of the Roche/Genentech imCORE network and has served on multiple scientific advisory boards, including Alector, Atreca, Bioatla, Bolt, Ideaya, Innovent, Nutcracker, RAPT, Senti, Soteria, TeneoBio (acquired by Amgen), and Xyphos (acquired by Astellas).

Dr. David Hong is a Professor and Deputy Chairman in the Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics (Phase I Program), Clinical Medical Director of the Clinical Translational Research Center (CTRC), and Associate Vice President of Clinical Research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Hong was instrumental in forming one of the largest and most innovative phase 1 clinical trial units in the world, with over 1300 patients enrolled in clinical trials in 2021 and over 400 active ongoing clinical trials. Dr. Hong has been the principal investigator of over 120 research protocols involving a wide range of sponsors, including the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program at the National Cancer Institute. He has published over 374 publications in peer-reviewed journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, and Nature. He has been involved in the early development of cabozantinib, siltuximab, dabrafenib, trametinib, regorafenib, lenvatinib, larotrectinib, tisotumab vendotin, and sotorasib (the first KRAS-targeting drug that has received FDA approval). He has also helped found 2 companies: OncoResponse and Telperian. He is an expert on c-Met, NTRK, KRAS, and adoptive cellular therapy in solid tumors and has led several national trials, such as the c-Met amplified, c-Met exon 14 deleted, and NTRK arms of the NCI-MATCH trial. He has been awarded the ASCO Young Investigator Award, the Jesse Jones Award, the Best Boss Award at MD Anderson, the Irwin Krakoff Award for Clinical Research, the Gerald P. Bodey Award for Excellence in Education, and Mentor of the Year in the Division of Cancer Medicine, MD Anderson.

Dr. Taha Merghoub is the Deputy Director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. He is also the Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor of Oncology Research, Professor of Pharmacology, and Professor of Immunology Research in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Merghoub directs a translational tumor immunology laboratory and is currently investigating the means for developing immune-based therapies to treat cancer. In addition, some of his work aims to research the pathogenesis and treatment of melanoma and is directed in part at developing tools to study melanoma and immune responses in multiple cancers. His projects are heavily collaborative within the institution and across different disciplines with multiple entities. His projects can be divided into 4 categories: overcoming resistance to immune checkpoint blockade therapy by modulating the immune system, using the immune modulatory properties of modalities that target and kill tumor cells directly, defining biomarkers and genetic determinants of response to immune therapy, and developing a tissue repository for the immunotherapy and melanoma groups.

Dr. Ingunn Stromnes obtained a PhD in Immunology from the University of Washington in 2007. She did her postdoctoral training with Dr. Phil Greenberg at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where she spearheaded a novel T-cell receptor (TCR)-engineered T-cell therapy that is now in phase 1 clinical trials for pancreatic cancer patient treatment. In 2017, she became a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the Center for Immunology at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Her goal is to improve the treatment of patients with intractable malignancies by harnessing the immune system, and she has a particular focus on the highly lethal pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. She has extensive expertise on T lymphocytes, immunotherapies, the tumor microenvironment, and TCR-engineered T-cell therapies for targeting cancer. In particular, her lab has developed cutting-edge mouse cancer models to interrogate the fate of endogenous and engineered T cells during immunotherapy. Through her studies, she is uncovering how to overcome the hurdle of the suppressive tumor microenvironment to promote and sustain anticancer T cells.

Dr. XingXing Zang holds the Louis Goldstein Swan Chair in Cancer Research and is a Professor of Immunology, Oncology, Medicine, and Urology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Dr. Zang’s research has focused on new immune checkpoint pathways, from basic discoveries to translational clinical trials. He discovered the B7 molecules B7x and HHLA2 as well as HHLA2’s functionally opposed receptors, TMIGD2 and KIR3DL3. Dr. Zang has also demonstrated new mechanisms and structures of other immune checkpoints, such as B7-H3, ICOS, Tim-3, KIR2DL5/PVR, PD-L1/PD-1, and BTNL2, and has developed new immunotherapies. Dr. Zang is the scientific founder of NextPoint Therapeutics and has served on scientific advisory boards of several biopharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Zang received a MMed from Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in China, a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in the laboratory of Rick M. Maizels, and had postdoctoral training with James P. Allison at the University of California at Berkeley and at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.