Industry Experts

Dr. Spear has been working in oncology and gene therapy research and development for over 30 years. He received a B.A. degree from the Johns Hopkins University and an M.D. degree from Stanford University. Post-graduate training was in the Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard University program. He has served as an Associate Professor on the faculty of the USC Keck School of Medicine, and the UCSD Medical School / UCSD Cancer Center where he managed a clinical practice, drug discovery/gene therapy research, and clinical trial programs for cancer. Dr. Spear led multiple oncology clinical development programs at Pfizer. He subsequently served as Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice-President at Nereus Pharmaceuticals, followed by Head of Oncology and Head of Biotherapeutics at Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, then as a Vice-President at Incyte and Sangamo Therapeutics, and Chief Medical Officer at Poseida Therapeutics developing multiple CAR-T cell and gene therapy products. He is currently Chief Development Officer / Chief Medical Officer at Denovo Biopharma. He has also served as a CIRM CAR-T cell principal investigator, NIH / NCI study section, CPRIT grant review panel, biotechnology and pharmaceutical advisory boards, IRB/SRC, and scientific journal editorial review committees related to cancer and gene therapy, as well as authoring numerous scientific papers and patent applications.