Jasper Therapeutics – Transforming the Field of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Therapies

Dr. Wendy Pang, Senior Vice President, Research and Translational Medicine at Jasper Therapeutics, a company transforming the field of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) therapies discusses how cell and gene therapies are important and potentially curative therapies for people with life-threatening leukemias/lymphomas, other hematologic cancers and inherited genetic diseases. Current conditioning regimens, which are used to help make space for the transplanted cells, unfortunately, have significant toxicities that can limit their use. The company is using new insights into HSC biology to enable new approaches to improve the safety and efficacy of cell transplant-based therapies, and to develop standalone therapeutics. The company’s lead candidate, JSP191, is being evaluated as both a conditioning agent and a standalone therapy.

Dr. Pang joined Jasper with the Series A funding and has led early research and development, including leading creation of the company’s mRNA stem cell graft platform and playing a pivotal role in advancing JSP191 across multiple clinical studies. Prior to Jasper, Dr. Pang was an Instructor in the Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Stanford University, where she had an active clinical practice and conducted translational research in hematology / oncology and stem cell biology. Prior to that, Dr. Pang was a Resident and Fellow in hematology at Stanford University School of Medicine. She was a Walter and Idun Berry Postdoctoral Fellow in the Judith Shizuru laboratory at Stanford University. She was the lead author on the proof-of-concept studies showing that an anti-CD117 antibody therapy targets disease-initiating human hematopoietic (blood cell-forming) stem cells in myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). She was also a National Institutes of Health Regenerative Medicine Predoctoral Fellow in the Irving Weissman laboratory at Stanford University. She authored numerous publications on the identification and characterization of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell behavior in aging, non-malignant hematopoietic diseases, as well as hematopoietic malignancies, including MDS and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Dr. Pang has multiple patents and patent applications. Dr. Pang holds an MD and PhD in Cancer Biology from Stanford University, and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in Biology from Harvard University.