James Trager

Dr. Trager joined Nkarta in 2016 and leads all new product discovery efforts. Dr. Trager is deeply versed in the development and application of cellular therapies for cancer. He previously served as Vice President of Research and Development at Dendreon, where he was responsible for product development, clinical immunology, analytical development, and process automation, supporting the late stage development of sipuleucel-T through clinical study, approval, and commercialization. Prior to Dendreon, Dr. Trager was a Senior Scientist at Geron, where he was part of the team that cloned human telomerase, and later established a Quality Control function to enable the manufacture and clinical development of a telomerase inhibitor.

Dr. Trager is a graduate of St. John’s College in Santa Fe New Mexico; and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African Republic. He received his doctorate in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, where he performed mechanistic studies on the src oncogene.