Karen S. Aboody

Dr. Karen Aboody, MD, is a professor at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center and founder, chief scientific officer, and director of TheraBiologics. Aboody received her MD at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and completed her postdoctoral training in molecular neurogenetics at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. In 2011, she founded TheraBiologics, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, to support clinical development of neural stem cell-mediated cancer therapies. Aboody currently heads a translational stem-cell oncology laboratory at City of Hope focused on therapeutic stem cell applications for invasive brain tumors and metastatic cancers. In 2010, she received FDA approval for a first-in-human safety/feasibility clinical trial for neural stem cell-mediated enzyme/prodrug therapy for patients with recurrent high-grade glioma. The study was completed in 2013, and a phase I trial dose-escalation study is planned for July, 2014.

Aboody received an $18 million Disease Team Award from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine that has led to a second generation NSC-mediated therapeutic product for brain tumors, with a phase I trial planned for 2014. She also received an NIH U-01 to translate this same NSC-mediated approach for intravenous administration for the treatment metastatic cancer with clinical trials planned for 2017. Aboody received the 2000 Young Investigator Award from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the 2008 Outstanding New Investigator Award from the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy.