Steve Reed

Steve Reed is the co-founder, President, and CEO of HDT Bio, based in Seattle, USA. His academic appointments include Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Cornell University Medical College Research Professor of Pathobiology at the University of Washington. Dr. Reed received a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Montana in 1979. That year he was appointed as Scientist of the National Institute of Amazon Research in Manaus, Brazil, where he directed research on tropical diseases.

Dr. Reed joined Cornell University Medical College in 1980 as Assistant Professor of Medicine, continuing to work in Brazil as manager of the Cornell-Bahia program in International Medicine. He joined the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute in 1984 where he worked until founding the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) in 1993 when he served in various capacities until 2019. He has received over $140 million in grants from the NIH, BARDA, DARPA, and Gates Foundation. In 1994 he co-founded Corixa Corporation (which was later sold to GlaxoSmithKline, GSK) where he served as Chief Scientific Officer until leaving in 2004. In 2008 Dr. Reed, together with Rick Klausner, David Baltimore, and Ralph Steinman founded Immune Design Corp. (IMDZ, NASDAQ), a cancer therapeutics company, where he served as CEO until 2011. In 2014 he co-founded Afrigen Biologics in Cape Town, where he served as Director until 2019.

Dr. Reed’s research interests have focused on the immunology of intracellular infections, and on the development of vaccines and diagnostics for both cancer and infectious diseases. In partnership with GSK, he led the team that developed the first defined tuberculosis vaccine, now in advanced clinical development. He also developed the first defined vaccines for leishmaniasis and leprosy, as well as the K39-based diagnostic tests currently licensed for leishmaniasis. He has more than 400 original publications, 36 book chapters and reviews, and 109 issued patents on diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics of adjuvants, cancer, and infectious diseases.