Axel Hoos

Dr. Axel Hoos is Chief Executive Officer of Scorpion Therapeutics. Previously, he was Senior Vice President, R&D Governance Chair, and Therapeutic Area Head for Oncology at GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals (GSK). As R&D Governance Chair he oversees technical and funding review committees. As Therapeutic Area Head he is responsible for the Oncology business including discovery and development with the four focus areas of immuno-oncology, epigenetics, cell & gene therapy, and synthetic lethality. He has also been responsible for leading business development portfolio expansions including the acquisition of Tesaro and the cell & gene therapy licensing agreements with Adaptimmune, Lyell, and Immatics. Dr. Hoos also serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, is Co-founder and Director on the Board of Imugene, a biotech company, Co-Director of the Cancer Immunotherapy Consortium, and Scientific Advisory Board Member of the Cancer Research Institute. Prior to GSK, Dr. Hoos was the Global Medical Lead in Immunology/Oncology at Bristol-Myers Squibb where he developed Yervoy (Ipilimumab) which was the first checkpoint inhibitor drug in immuno-oncology. The discovery of ipilimumab’s scientific mechanism was honored with the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine by Dr. James Allison in 2018. Dr. Hoos was also Senior Director of Clinical Development at Agenus Bio. Dr. Hoos holds an MD from Ruprecht-Karls-University and a Ph.D. in molecular oncology from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). He trained in surgery at the Technical University in Munich and at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City (where he also studied molecular pathology and tumor immunology). He is an alumnus of the Program for Leadership Development at Harvard Business School.