Shahram Salek-Ardakani

Dr. Salek-Ardakani leads the scientific advancement of Janux’s proprietary Tumor Activated T Cell Engager (TRACTr) platform technology to expand Janux’s pipeline of next-generation T cell engager immunotherapies. He brings more than 20 years of experience as a scientific leader and drug developer in multiple disease areas. Prior to joining Janux, Dr. Salek-Ardakani was the Senior Director of Cancer Immunology at Pfizer, Inc., where he was responsible for formulating first-in-class discovery programs and platform initiatives to implement Pfizer’s T-cell-targeted therapeutics strategy. Previous to that, he was an associate professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine. Before that, Dr. Salek-Ardakani was a postdoctoral fellow and principal investigator at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in San Diego. During that time, he received several institutional investigator awards from the National Institute of Health (NIH) for his work on T cell memory, mucosal vaccines, and immune regulation by members of the immunoglobulin and tumor necrosis factor receptor family. Dr. Salek-Ardakani has co-authored more than 70 publications in peer-reviewed journals. He has also served on several grant review study sections and special emphasis panels for the NIH. Dr. Salek-Ardakani holds a Ph.D. in oncology and M.Sc. in immunology and immunogenetics from the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute.