Scientific Advisory Board

Glenn Pierce, M.D., Ph.D., joined the Be Biopharma Scientific Advisory Board in June 2023. Dr. Pierce is a globally renowned physician-researcher, tireless patient advocate, hemophilia survivor and deeply respected hematology thought leader who has dedicated decades of his distinguished career to improving the lives of people living with bleeding disorders, their caregivers and families. His expertise is in the areas of tissue regeneration and hematology, including hemophilia, he has been involved in the development and market approval of six therapies for hemophilia.

Dr. Pierce has more than 30 years of experience in bench-to-bedside research and development with several public and private biopharmaceutical companies, including Biogen, Bayer, Inspiration, Avigen, Selective Genetics, and Amgen. At Biogen, Dr. Pierce served as senior vice president of hematology, cell and gene therapies, with overall R&D responsibility for hemophilia and hemoglobinopathies and led the research and clinical development of extended half-life FVIII (Factor VIII) and FIX (Factor IX) Fc fusions. He joined Biogen as chief medical officer in 2009 and was also responsible for global medical affairs for Biogen’s portfolio. He co-founded Ambys Medicines, a cell and gene therapy liver regeneration start-up, where he served as chief medical officer and most recently served as interim CSO of Voyager Therapeutics, where he serves on the board of directors. 

Dr. Pierce currently serves as vice president, medical, with the World Federation of Hemophilia (WFH). With the National Bleeding Disorders (previously the National Hemophilia Foundation), he serves as a member of the U.S. medical and scientific advisory council, and previously served as a member of the board of directors and as board president. Dr. Pierce spearheaded the initiation of the expanded WFH humanitarian aid program providing clotting factor distribution. He also led the initiation of the My Life Our Future (MLOF) program to genotype more than 10,000 individuals in the U.S. bleeding disorder community. He is an entrepreneur-in-residence at Third Rock Ventures as well as a consultant for several gene therapy and hematology biotech companies.

The co-author of more than 200 scientific papers, Dr. Pierce has been awarded over 15 patents. Dr. Pierce also served on the Blood Products Advisory Committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Committee on Blood Safety and Availability for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. in immunology from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and did his postgraduate training in pathology and hematology research at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Dr. Pierce was born with severe hemophilia A and was cured in 2008.

Stephen Gottschalk, M.D., is the Chair of the Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Dr. Gottschalk is leading a team of MD and PhD researchers, who are actively conducting clinical studies with antigen-specific T cells for patients with hematological malignancies, brain and solid tumors. His research areas of interest are cancer immunotherapy, cell therapy and stem cell transplantation. In the laboratory, his team is focused on using genetic approaches to improve T-cell therapy for cancer. Prior to joining St Jude’s in 2017, he was a Professor at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Gottschalk earned an M.D. from Georg August University, Göttingen, Germany, and completed his internship in pediatric medicine at the University of Münster, Germany. He subsequently completed a residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in pediatric hematology-oncology at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas. For his contributions to the fields of pediatric hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and cell-based immunotherapies he was elected into the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2015.

Paula Cannon, Ph.D. is a Distinguished Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. Dr. Cannon’s background as a virologist studying HIV and other RNA viruses led to an interest in how viruses could be exploited as gene therapy vectors. More recently, her lab has focused on the use of gene editing tools such as zinc finger nucleases and CRISPR/Cas9 to engineer blood and immune cells.  A significant area of interest is how such tools could be used to address chronic conditions including HIV. Her lab was the first to demonstrate that gene editing could be harnessed to knock out the HIV co-receptor molecule, CCR5, and thereby create an HIV resistant immune system. Pre-clinical studies in humanized mice supported subsequent clinical trials in people living with HIV. More recently her lab has made advances engineering B cells to express customizable antibodies and non-antibody molecules, in a way that could take advantage of the natural response of B cells to vaccination.

Dr. Cannon is highly regarded as a gene and cell therapist. In 2024-2025, she will become the President of the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy, which is the largest professional organization for academic and industry scientists working in this area of medicine.

Eun-Hyung Lee, MD is an associate professor in pulmonary, allergy, critical care, and sleep medicine and the Lowance Center for Human Immunology in the department of medicine at Emory University and the director of the emory asthma, allergy, immunology program. Frances is also a member of the Emory Vaccine Center and Center for Childhood Infections and Vaccines (CCIV) at the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Her research focus is to understand the biology of human protective and pathogenic plasma cells in health and disease in blood, bone marrow (BM) and respiratory tissues. Her laboratory has identified a unique phenotype of human long-lived plasma cells (LLPC) in the BM and the special survival factors within the BM microniche where LLPC reside. Using the different qualities of the human plasmablasts/antibody secreting cells (ASC) in the blood, respiratory tissues and bone marrow, she is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms of LLPC maturation and maintenance. She also pioneered using a novel matrix from circulating ASC in the blood called MENSA (media enriched with newly synthesized antibodies) to diagnose acute viral, bacterial and fungal infections.

Frances completed her undergraduate and medical school education at the Johns Hopkins University. She trained in internal medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC), served as chief medical resident, and then completed her pulmonary & critical care medicine fellowship at Boston University and URMC. She stayed on as faculty at URMC until she eventually moved to Emory University in 2012. Frances is an NIH study section member and ad hoc reviewer for various grant programs and journals. She also co-leads a project from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop human B cell therapies.

Dr. Shiv Pillai is a professor of medicine and health sciences & technology (HST) at Harvard Medical School. He is the program director of the NIH-funded Autoimmune Center of Excellence at Massachusetts General Hospital and the director of the Harvard immunology Ph.D. and master’s in medical sciences programs. Shiv is also director of MD-student research for the Harvard-MIT HST program. He is a group leader at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard; a member of the MGH Cancer Center; and an associate member of the Broad Institute.

Shiv is a world leader in the study of fundamental B-cell immunology. His laboratory at MGH postulated and provided evidence for the first ligand-independent signaling model during lymphocyte development, now a widely accepted mechanism for both pre-B receptor and pre-T receptor signaling. Shiv’s laboratory also showed that Btk, the product of the gene mutated in X-linked agammaglobulinemia, is functionally linked to the pre-B receptor and the B-cell receptor. Btk inhibitors are now widely used in lymphoid malignancies and autoimmunity. In addition, his group defined a functional niche for B cells (around sinusoids in the bone marrow); identified the first two mutants that abrogate marginal-zone B-lymphocyte development; developed the concept of a follicular versus marginal zone B-lymphoid cell-fate decision; and discovered two new defined stages of peripheral B-cell development, the marginal zone precursor (MZP) B cell and the follicular type II B cell.

In addition, Shiv’s work has contributed to breakthroughs in understanding the pathogenic mechanisms underlying an autoimmune fibrotic disorder, IgG4-related disease, with ongoing investigations involving the study of systemic sclerosis and common variable immunodeficiency (CVID). These findings have generated several clinical trials targeting the activated lymphocytes responsible for chronic inflammation and fibrosis in patients with these autoimmune disorders.

Shiv is the author of a monograph “Lymphocyte Development” and co-author with Abul Abbas and Andrew Lichtman of two widely used textbooks of immunology. He is the course director of immunology courses at Harvard Medical School and Harvard College and for the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies. Shiv received a medical degree from Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, and a doctorate in biochemistry from Calcutta University. He subsequently completed postdoctoral training in the lab of David Baltimore at MIT.

Dr. Richard James is an associate professor in pediatrics and pharmacology at the University of Washington and a principal investigator at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Richard’s research is focused on understanding how genetic variants lead to dysregulated signaling in lymphoma and in immune dysregulation. He is the co-leader of the B cell engineering program at Seattle Children’s.

Plasma cells are dedicated protein producing machines. The James lab is interested in understanding which proteins are responsible for differentiation of B cells into plasma cells including: activation of naive B cells, response to T cell help, plasmablast expansion and antibody production on a per cell basis. The James lab recently developed genome engineering techniques that can be used to edit primary human B cells, which can subsequently differentiate into plasma cells ex vivo. In collaboration with other projects, Richard uses genome engineering to ask whether oncogenic variants associated with lymphoma or those associated with lupus alter B cell development. Richard is also developing new ways to express and secrete human proteins in plasma cells, with the eventual goal of developing engineered plasma cells as immunotherapies for diseases caused by defects in secreted proteins (e.g. hemophilia).