Inaugural Lecture of Professor Nicki Panoskaltsis

Nicki Panoskaltsis, MD PhD FRCP - Bio

Professor Panoskaltsis is a clinician-scientist with niche expertise in translational interdisciplinary research and personalised therapeutics, with a clinical and research focus in Leukaemia. She completed her MD at the University of Toronto (Canada), clinical training and American Board Certification in Internal Medicine, Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplantation at the University of Rochester (USA) and a PhD in Immunology at Imperial College London (UK) where she stayed on as faculty until 2018. She then moved her programme to the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University, an NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Centre, where she was Senior Faculty within the Department of Hematology & Medical Oncology, an Attending Physician and Clinical Researcher in the Leukemia Program, and Program Faculty in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. While at Emory and Georgia Tech, she was presented with the Emory EmpowHER Award for innovation. She is now a Professor of Personalised Therapeutics in the School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences and the School of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin and an Adjunct Principal Investigator at the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research & Training (NIBRT). Over her career, she has led an interdisciplinary applied research programme with unique expertise in 3D biomimetic cultures and organoids of human normal and leukaemic bone marrow and in silico modelling of chemo-immunotherapy for optimised treatment in patients with leukaemia. Professor Panoskaltsis has an international reputation in cytokine release syndrome and defensive clinical trial design based on her seminal research and handling of the aftermath of the TGN1412 CD28 super-agonist immunotherapy first-in-human clinical trial in 2006 (London UK). The successful handling of this singular event at every level – clinical, scientific, translational, regulatory, and legal - resulted in changes in the conduct of first-in-human trials internationally for novel higher-risk therapeutics, and enabled safe implementation of immunotherapy (now standard of care) on an international scale, creating a positive and lasting impact on the lives of millions of patients world-wide, and for which she was directly made a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London). She has received numerous awards for excellence in clinical care, research and entrepreneurship, has several patents, and co-founded a spin-out company that raised $3million in non-diluting funding, including from the NIH, before moving to Trinity. She is a member of numerous Societies of Haematology, Oncology, Immunotherapy and Cell Therapy and currently serves on numerous committees for the American Society of Hematology (ASH) which is the premier society for basic, clinical and translational research in Hematology internationally, including the ASH Committee on Educational Affairs, is an invited member of the ASH Task Force on PhD Careers in Hematology, and the ASH Scientific Committee on Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine. Professor Panoskaltsis has extensive experience in conducting clinical trials, created and led successful research and clinical departments and clinical trials units, and co-supervised numerous PhD, MSc students, post-doctoral researchers and over 100 Clinical Trainees in an interdisciplinary setting and spanning healthcare systems in Canada, the US, the UK and now Ireland.