Living Therapeutics Initiative Announces Director of Scientific Programs

Cammie Edwards, PhD, has been appointed Director of Scientific Programs for the UCSF Living Therapeutics Initiative (LTI).

In this role, Dr. Edwards is responsible for the high-level administration of the LTI, one of UCSF’s most visible cross-departmental endeavors. She will coordinate nearly every aspect of the LTI. The scope of her duties includes creating and developing infrastructure, operations, and RFA award cycles, as well as identifying funding opportunities. She also will deploy critical projects and cultivate business development opportunities.

Dr. Edwards joined UCSF in 2011 as the Program Director for the UCSF Stephen and Nancy Grand Multiple Myeloma Translational Initiative (Grand MMTI). As program director, she helped build the translational, tissue banking, and clinical trials capabilities for the initiative, including a very robust myeloma CAR T-cell program. The Grand MMTI is now the leading myeloma translation program on the West Coast.

In 2012, she joined UCSF’s Strategic Alliances group, initially supporting the high-profile relationship between UCSF and Sanofi, which contributed to the development, clinical assessment and ultimately approval of their anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody (isatuximab) for the treatment of myeloma. Subsequently, she helped secure and oversaw additional partnerships for UCSF, including the recently announced $53M Alliance for Therapies in Neurosciences with Genentech.

For the past five years, she also has been the Administrative Director for the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) collaboration at UCSF. PICI is a collaboration across ten academic centers and PICI Central with the goal accelerating the development of breakthrough immune therapies, including cellular therapies, capable of turning cancer into a curable disease. In this role, she was responsible for the administrative, operational, and financial support of the collaboration, which contributed to the expansion of UCSF’s immunotherapy program and capabilities.