Lorenzo Galluzzi is Assistant Professor of Cell Biology in Radiation Oncology at the Department of Radiation Oncology of the Weill Cornell Medical College, Honorary Assistant Professor Adjunct with the Department of Dermatology of the Yale School of Medicine, Honorary Associate Professor with the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris, and Faculty Member with the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and Biotechnology of the University of Ferrara, the Graduate School of Pharmacological Sciences of the University of Padova, and the Graduate School of Network Oncology and Precision Medicine of the University of Rome La Sapienza. Moreover, he is Associate Director of the European Academy for Tumor Immunology and Founding Member of the European Research Institute for Integrated Cellular Pathology. Galluzzi is best known for major experimental and conceptual contributions to the fields of cell death, autophagy, tumor metabolism and tumor immunology. He has published over 450 articles in international peer-reviewed journals and is the Editor-in-Chief of four journals: OncoImmunology (which he co-founded in 2011), International Review of Cell and Molecular Biology, Methods in Cell biology, and Molecular and Cellular Oncology (which he co-founded in 2013). Additionally, he serves as Founding Editor for Microbial Cell and Cell Stress, and Associate Editor for Cell Death and Disease, Pharmacological Research and iScience. Viralkumar Davra is an accomplished biochemist and molecular biologist working currently as a postdoctoral fellow in Raymond Birges laboratory at the Rutgers University. He has received Bachelor of Pharmacy degree from the Rajiv Gandhi University, Bangalore (2008), followed by M.Sc. in Pharmacology and Toxicology at Long Island University (2012) and Ph.D. in Molecular biology and cancer genetics from Rutgers University (2019). He has identified and validated a novel therapeutic target, Mertk receptor, and developed first-in-class anti-Mertk monoclonal antibody in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies. The antibody has shown strong anti-tumor efficacy in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors and is currently being developed for clinical trial studies. Further, he has also invented and developed novel Phosphatidylserine (PS) targeting immuno-biologicals (Gas6-IFN fusion proteins) and shown them to be effective as anti-cancer therapeutic in the breast, colon and melanoma mouse models as well as anti-viral therapeutics by using highly infectious influenza mouse model. His work has direct implication in the health care industry with pressing need of highly effective therapeutics for cancer and infectious diseases. He has published about 14 peer reviewer publications, filled 2 patents internationally and won 3 prestigious awards during his Graduate study.
