BLUESTONE Jeffrey

Dr. Jeff Bluestone is a co-founder and previous CEO and President of Sonoma Biotherapeutics and the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Emeritus Professor in the Diabetes Center at University of California San Francisco. He received his PhD at Cornell in 1980 and spent 8 years at the National Cancer Institute, arrived at the University of Chicago in 1987 where he directed the Ben May Institute for Cancer Biology.  He was the founding Director of the Immune Tolerance Network, an NIH-funded multicenter clinical immunology research program, testing novel immunotherapies in transplantation, autoimmunity, and asthma/allergy. He joined UCSF in 2000, serving as Director of the UCSF Diabetes Center, Provost and CEO of the Parker Institute of Cancer Immunotherapy. He has published more than 500 papers focused on understanding the basic processes that control T-cell activation and immune tolerance in autoimmunity, organ transplantation and cancer. His work has informed the development of abatacept, which blocks T-cell co-stimulation to treat autoimmune disease and organ transplantation and ipilimumab, the 1st checkpoint inhibitor approved for the treatment multiple cancers. His lab developed teplizumab, the 1st immunotherapy to treat Type 1 Diabetes. His recent efforts have focused on the critical role of regulatory T cells (Tregs) in autoimmune diseases wherein he and Sonoma Biotherapeutics are developing novel engineered Tregs to treat multiple autoimmune diseases. He has received numerous honors, including inductee into the Hall of Distinguished Alumni at Rutgers University, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Medicine and National Academy of Sciences.