Scott Strome

Scott Strome, MD, is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He was recently appointed as the Executive Dean of the College of Medicine and Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. He previously served as interim Chairman of the Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and the Department of Dermatology.

Dr. Strome is an active Head and Neck Surgeon with particular expertise in head & neck malignancies and diseases of the anterior skull base. He has a major interest in medical student and resident education and runs one of the four academic houses to which all medical students are assigned. He has contributed nationally as chairman of two NIH study sections and membership on the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee. He has excelled in creating drugs and procedures with direct clinical impact. For example, as a Harvard Medical Student, Dr. Strome worked with his father and developed the in vivo models that ultimately resulted in the first human larynx transplant. Similarly, at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Strome worked with Lieping Chen, MD, to define the translational potential of two costimulatory molecules, B7-H1 (PD-L1) and 4-1BB. The papers resulting from this collaboration are considered seminal works in the field and the intellectual property portfolio on the use of B7-H1, many patents on which Drs. Strome and Chen are named as inventors, have had a transformative impact on the treatment of cancer.

Dr. Strome has co-developed a new series of Trojan Peptide Vaccines (TPV) for cancer and evaluated their utility in phase I/II clinical trials. These TPVs, in combination with fully recombinant intravenous immunoglobulin mimetics, serve as core technologies for a biotechnology company, Gliknik Inc., of which Dr. Strome is co-founder. In recognition of these academic-industry initiatives, the University of Maryland Baltimore recognized Dr. Strome as the “2011 Entrepreneur of the Year,” and he was named as Entrepreneur of the year for the University of Maryland in 2013. These scientific endeavors have also resulted in over 120 publications in leading basic science and clinical journals.