Saman Maleki, PhD
Director, Independent - Member of the Governance Committee
Dr. Maleki is a Translational Immuno-Oncology Scientist with an extensive training background in Immunology, Cancer Biology, and Microbiology. Dr. Maleki also has extensive experience with clinical research in cancer immunotherapy and oncology. Dr. Maleki has pioneered phase I clinical trials in Canada that combine fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) plus immunotherapy in melanoma, renal cell carcinoma, non-small cell lung cancer, and pancreatic cancer patients.
Dr. Maleki is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Oncology, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Medical Biophysics at Western University. He is also a Translational Immuno-Oncology Scientist at Lawson Health Research Institute and a scientist at the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research (OICR).
Dr. Maleki’s academic research focuses on sensitizing hard-to-treat cancers to immunotherapy via tumor vaccine strategies targeting DNA repair pathways in cancer cells or modifying the gut microbiome in the host. As a tumor immunologist, Dr. Maleki is tumor agnostic and brings many years of experience working on various cancers, including neuroblastoma (childhood cancer), melanoma, lung cancer, kidney cancer, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, and head and neck cancer, to IMV.
Dr. Maleki regularly collaborates with biotech companies in the Immuno-Oncology space and has helped move oncology and Immuno-Oncology drug candidates from pre-clinical to phase I clinical trials in patients. In addition, as an advocate of better academia and industry collaborations, Dr. Maleki is involved with several professional societies that aim to increase collaboration between academia and industry and facilitate continuous training and education for scientists and clinicians involved in immunotherapy research and clinical use in both sectors.