Jessie English

Jessie English, Ph.D. joined our Board of Directors in 2021 and currently serves as Chief Scientific Officer of Bakx Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing novel cancer therapeutics targeting apoptosis. Dr. English was most recently the Chief Scientific Officer of Tilos Therapeutics, a company focused on developing therapeutic antibodies targeting LAP as a novel approach to targeting TGF-beta and acquired by Merck in 2019. Prior to Tilos, she was Vice President and Head of Discovery Research Immuno-Oncology Translational Innovation Platform at EMD Serono/ Merck KGaA. Her previous positions include Head of Research at the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, VP of Kinase Biology at ArQule, Oncology Site Lead for External Discovery at Merck and Head of Pfizer’s Kinase Center of Emphasis. Dr. English began her industry career in oncology drug discovery at Schering-Plough Research Institute. Her industry experiences include serving on the leadership counsel of AACR Women in Cancer Research and as its Chairperson from 2014-2015. Dr. English earned her B.S. with honors in biochemistry from Kansas State University and her Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was a postdoctoral fellow at UT Southwestern Medical Center, in Dr. Melanie Cobb’s laboratory where she discovered the WNK family of protein kinases and the MEK5 MAPK pathway.