Mongoose Bio

Dr. Yee is Founder and CSO of Mongoose Bio Inc. He holds an academic faculty position as Endowed Professor and medical oncologist in the Division of Cancer Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center where he is appointed Director of Solid Tumor Cell Therapy and Director of the Program in TCR-based Therapeutics. He received his medical training in Canada, residency at Stanford and fellowship at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

He is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigators, CPRIT Scholar, former Co-Leader of the Stand Up to Cancer- AACR/CRI Dream Team and recipient of translational scientist awards from Burroughs Wellcome Fund and Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, and the Rao Potul Basic Science Award. He has an unbroken record of peer-reviewed funding from the NIH as PI / PD/ Project Leader of individual, multi-PI and multi-institutional grants from NCI, DOD and FDA as well as several completed and current academic-industry partnerships for investigator initiated trials.

Over the last 20+ years, Dr. Yee has pioneered a form of Adoptive Cellular Therapy (ACT), known as Endogenous T Cell (ETC) therapy, using peripheral blood to generate a uniform population of antigen-specific memory T cells. He has conceived and executed First-in-Human clinical studies establishing principles of T cell persistence, memory and antigen-spreading as fundamental to the success of adoptive cell therapy, including the first-in-class use of tetramer-guided cell sorting, the first clinical trial using cell therapy in combination with immune checkpoint therapy and first use of antigen-specific memory T cells without lymphodepletion to mediate durable complete responses. Dr. Yee is the senior or lead author in > 100 publications in The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Science, Science Immunology, Science Translational Medicine, Nature Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of Experimental Medicine, JCI, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences garnering more than 17,000 citations for his work in cellular therapy, T cell biology and antigen-discovery.

He has been the chief scientific advisor for several biotechnology companies (Berkeley Lights, Deep Space Bio and Immatics US) and is a current or past member of the SAB for Adaptive Biotechnologies, Obsidian Therapeutics, and Affyimmune, as well as for non-profit entities as the Rare Cancer Research Foundation, Cancer Research institute, InnoHK (Hong Kong), and Yonsei Cancer Center

Dr. Yee’s studies in understanding the intrinsic epigenetic mechanisms contributing to the generation of highly persistent T cells in ETC have been instrumental in the development of reprogrammed memory T cells for TCR-T, CAR-T and TIL therapies. To more broadly apply this principle for all cancer patients, the Yee Lab expanded the portfolio of TCR targets through an antigen discovery pipeline that uses tandem mass spectrometry, proprietary filtering algorithms and a platform that uses ETC technology to empirically validate candidate epitopes. To date, more than 200 novel, shared tumor-associated epitopes have been identified among both common and rare tumors, for alleles representing > 80% of global patient population. The primary assets from these discoveries and inventions have been licensed to Mongoose Bio. Dr. Yee holds more than 11 patents and 15 applications worldwide in the field of cellular therapy and antigen discovery.

Bio coming here…