Laura A Johnson

Dr. Laura Johnson joined Verismo Therapeutics as Chief Scientific Officer, overseeing the company’s research and development. Dr. Johnson brings over 20 years of experience in molecular and cellular immunology, including 16 years of gene-engineered T cell immunotherapy translational expertise. Following her Master’s degree in Pathology & Laboratory Medicine and Doctorate in Immunology, Dr. Johnson did a four-year postdoctoral fellowship under Dr. Steven Rosenberg at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda MD. Throughout this fellowship, she pioneered some of the first successful gene-engineered T cell therapy clinical trials for patients with advanced cancers (metastatic melanoma and synovial sarcoma). Her experience covered the full span of translational science from beginning to end, from target selection and bench research through manufacture and testing of the clinical cell product, to formation and implementation of biomarker strategy and conducting clinical analyses. Following her fellowship at the NCI and as an Assistant Professor at Duke University Medical Center, Dr. Johnson shifted her focus to patients with brain tumors, with funding from multiple awards, including from the American Brain Tumor Association. While at Duke, she developed both syngeneic and immune-deficient preclinical models to investigate chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies on glioblastoma (GBM). From Duke, Dr. Johnson was recruited to the University of Pennsylvania to work with Prof. Carl June. Dr. June is an inventor of the CD19 CAR T technology that became Kymriah ®, the first global registered gene-engineered immunotherapy for patients with hematologic malignancies. As a director, she built the solid tumor immunotherapy lab, one of the founding groups in the Penn Center for Cellular Immunotherapies. Her laboratory provided translational research for multiple solid tumor targets and data to enable clinical trials using EGFRvIII CAR T for GBM. Dr. Johnson’s work resulted in 3 patents for advances in gene-engineered cell therapies. While at the University of Pennsylvania, she received an NIH New Innovator award, and her laboratory research was funded by the NIH, Novartis, Internal awards, and GlaxoSmithKline. Dr. Johnson made the move from academia to industry by joining GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) as a Senior Director and the first Head of Translational Medicine for their nascent Oncology Cell Therapy Research Unit. At GSK, she created subdivisions for preclinical research and clinical development. From as a Head of Preclinical Translational Research to Head of Clinical Biomarkers in the newly formed Experimental Medicine Unit, Dr. Johnson successfully established strategy and implementation for global clinical cell therapy trials, including NY-ESO-1 T cell receptor (TCR), ranging from first in human through pivotal trials across multiple indications (lung, synovial sarcoma, MRCLS, myeloma). Dr. Johnson received a BSc in Biology/Biological Sciences from Simon Fraser University and a MSc and a PhD in cellular and molecular immunology from the University of British Columbia.