J. Gregory Dolan

Adam Ware, MD is a Pediatric Cardiologist at the University of Utah and Primary Children’s Medical Center. He completed his medical education at the Mayo Clinic and subsequently completed a pediatrics residency and pediatric cardiology fellowship at the University of Utah and Primary Children’s Hospital. Dr. Ware specializes in the care of children and adolescents with congenital heart disease, cholesterol disorders, and other genetic and acquired heart diseases. His current roles include Director in Inpatient Cardiology and Medical Director of the Cardiac Care Unit. He leads the Pediatric Preventive Cardiology Program at the University of Utah and Primary Children's Hospital. His research interests include the care of children hospitalized with heart disease and evaluation and treatment of cardiovascular disease risk factors in children. Dr. Ware is a native of a rural Utah community and provides service to children throughout the state with outreach clinics in Logan, Layton, Riverton, and St. George in addition to his work at Primary Children’s Hospital.

As a pediatric neurosurgeon, I witness first-hand the devastation that malignant brain tumors cause both the patients and families. The desire to help these people motivates me to conduct basic science research, with the goal of translating experiments into therapies. My laboratory has been utilizing a powerful immune-therapy strategy where CD47-SIRPa interactions between tumor cells and macrophages are blocked by Hu5F9-G4 in combination with potent immunotherapies including anti-cancer targeted monoclonal antibodies (anti-PDL1, anti-CD44, anti-Her2/Neu, anti-GD2), and modulators of macrophage activity (anti-CD40). My clinical practice specializing in brain tumor surgery has provided my laboratory with a large number of patient-derived malignant brain tumors from both pediatric and adult patients, which have already been used to conduct an excellent preclinical evaluation of Hu5F9-G4 against five pediatric malignant primary CNS tumors. While I was faculty at Stanford, I was in charge of the preclinical development of Hu5F9-G4 against malignant brain tumors, and I was a participant in the anti-CD47 Disease Team that helped develop the therapy into Phase 1 clinical trial. Since accepting my position at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah School of Medicine as Director of Pediatric Surgical Neuro-Oncology, one of my laboratory’s main goals is to enhance anti-CD47 mediated phagocytosis by promoting the expression of pro-phagocytosis signals on brain cancer cells by irradiation. Irradiation is a well-known enhancer of pro-phagocytosis signal presentation on tumor cells. For example, calreticulin and phosphatidylserine are key pro-phagocytosis signals and are elevated in response to irradiation. I have developed preliminary data demonstrating anti-CD47 in combination with irradiation increased macrophage phagocytosis of human glioblastoma in vitro and increased survival in human glioblastoma-mouse orthotopic PDX models. Given the known efficacy of irradiation against malignant brain tumors, and the large medical infrastructure already present to deliver irradiation to patients, I feel my proposed studies to combine irradiation with anti-CD47, will provide significant data to justify clinical trials utilizing this combination. My current and previous research history have provided me a deep understanding (mechanism, efficacy, toxicity, combinatorial strategies) of anti-CD47 therapy in general. My laboratory can conduct the entire range of preclinical experiments testing anti-CD47 in vitro, as well as, in mouse models (human-mouse PDX, mouse models of primary brain tumors) to obtain data to justify and help design human trials in brain tumor patients. I believe anti-CD47 will be a foundational immune therapy that will be used as a key reagent in combination with other immune therapies and standard of care treatments.

Dr. Herman received his medical degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed his Pediatric residency at Primary Children’s Medical Center/University of Utah. He subsequently completed his Pediatric Emergency Medicine fellowship at Primary Children’s Medical Center/University of Utah. Dr. Herman is board-certified in Pediatrics, Pediatric Emergency Medicine, and Child Abuse Pediatrics. He is currently Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Utah and is in the Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine. He serves as Vice-Chair of the Education Enterprise for the Department of Pediatrics and as the Residency Program Director. His clinical interests are abusive head trauma and the recognition of child abuse in the Emergency Department. His research interests are in competency-based medical education and the early recognition of child abuse. Dr. Herman sees patients within the Emergency Department.