Karen Aboody's Biography

Karen Aboody, Associate Professor, City of Hope

Karen Aboody received her MD at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and completed her post-doctoral training in Molecular Neurogenetics at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She currently heads a translational stem cell-oncology laboratory at City of Hope, focused on using tumor-tropic stem cells as delivery vehicles to target therapeutic agents to invasive and metastatic solid tumors, including brain tumors. In 2010, she received FDA approval for a first-in-human clinical safety trial for neural stem cell (NSC)-mediated enzyme/prodrug therapy for patients with recurrent high-grade glioma. She also received an $18MM CIRM Disease Team Award in 2010 to bring a second generation NSC-mediated therapeutic product to clinical trial for brain tumors by 2014. Recently, she received an NIH U-01 to translate this NSC-mediated approach for the treatment of metastatic neuroblastoma. Dr. Aboody received the AANS Young Investigator award in 2000, and the ASGT Outstanding New Investigator Award in 2008. In 2011, she founded TheraBiologics Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, to support clinical development of NSC-mediated cancer therapies.