Andrew Ishizuka, PhD, is CSO of Avidea Technologies, a Baltimore-based biotech company specializing in polymer-based immunotherapies. Avidea’s lead product, a personalized cancer vaccine based on self-assembling nanoparticles co-delivering peptide neoantigens and agonists of Toll-Like Receptors -7 and -8, significantly improves the magnitude and breadth of anti-tumor CD8 T cell immunity. Dr. Ishizuka oversees the pre-clinical proof-of-concept animal testing and translational studies for Avidea’s PCV. Clinical testing of Avidea’s PCV is planned for 2020. Prior to co-founding Avidea, Dr. Ishizuka attended medical school at Duke University and obtained a PhD through the NIH-Oxford-Cambridge Scholars program under the direction of Dr. Robert Seder (Vaccine Research Center, NIH) and Prof. Simon Draper (Jenner Institute, Oxford), focusing on the clinical translation and immunological mechanism of protection of a live-attenuated malaria vaccine.