Dr. Ian McGowan
As Orion Biotechnology’s chief medical officer, Dr. Ian McGowan is excited about the company’s lead candidate OB-002, which promises improved results for multiple illnesses, including cancer, and its current project, supported by the Canadian National Research Council, into the potential effectiveness of OB-002 in treating COVID-19-associated ARDS, a life-threatening complication of SARS-CoV-2 infection. “Immunotherapeutic drugs have the potential to transform the treatment landscape for multiple serious conditions, including advanced cancer. It’s a very exciting time to be working in this area,” Ian says.
Ian is a former professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and UCLA who left a longstanding career in academia to join Orion Biotechnology. A physician by training, most of his clinical work has been in infectious diseases and gastroenterology. As Orion’s CMO, he provides oversight for its clinical programs and support for all other aspects of the company. He previously worked with GlaxoSmithKline in the U.K., Gilead Sciences in California, and biotech companies in the U.S. and Europe. Ian holds a medical degree from the University of Liverpool in the U.K. and a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford. He received his post-doctoral training at UCLA in Los Angeles and a second doctoral degree in drug development from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
Dr. Ian McGowan
Chief Medical Officer of Orion Biotechnology
About Orion Biotechnology
Orion Biotechnology is a clinical-stage pharma start-up founded in 2018 to focus on discovering and developing novel drugs for a large range of G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) - promising targets for next generation therapies. Based in Ottawa, Ontario, the company has pioneered a new approach to precision engineering analogs of natural proteins in order to effectively target often ‘difficult to drug’ GPCRs. In the process, Orion created a proprietary drug discovery platform that dramatically reduces the cost and time required to generate new compounds for unmet medical needs in multiple disease categories. The company’s lead candidate – OB-002 – is a first-in-class chemokine analog, developed using the Orion discovery platform, which has shown best-in-class potency as a chemokine-chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5) antagonist. It’s a promising immunotherapeutic candidate specifically designed to overcome the limitations of current treatment modalities, with the potential to provide superior potency and safety and provide effective treatment to patients who have exhausted currently available therapeutic options. Orion’s scientific approach is unique in the industry and it is the company’s goal to deliver the next generation of GPCR targeted therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and other serious disease.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-mcgowan-3270805/?originalSubdomain=es