06 May 2020 Dr Gladys Monroy joins GPN Vaccines’ Scientific & Advisory Board
Adelaide, Australia, 6 May 2020 – GPN Vaccines is pleased to announce Dr Gladys Monroy has joined the Company’s Scientific & Advisory Board.
Dr Monroy is a world-leading intellectual property lawyer with expertise in strategic counselling and comprehensive patent portfolio management in the life sciences sector. In 2012 she was recognised as Intellectual Property Lawyer of the Year by Chambers Women in Law USA.
Gladys was a senior partner at Morrison & Foerster LLP where she was a Founder and Chair of the Patent Law Group. One of Gladys’ early assignments at the firm was to write a patent application for the technology that led to a groundbreaking blood-screening test for Hepatitis C. She wrote five successful Hepatitis C-related patent applications for Chiron Corporation (acquired by Novartis), with the patent portfolio now worth an estimated $1 billion. Over the course of her career, Gladys has written (or supervised) over 300 patents covering breakthroughs in everything from cell-based immunology to blood purification to cancer-gene therapeutics.
She has served as president of the Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law Association and sat on the board of the Intellectual Property Committee of the State Bar. She is currently President of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science, a Trustee of the Ameican Association of Cancer Research Foundation and holds several board positions including the Multiple Myeloma Institute and Cancer Commons. Gladys attained her Master of Science and PhD in Biochemistry from New York University and NYU Medical Center. She conducted her Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine. Thereafter, she attained her J.D. from the University of San Francisco and was admitted into the Bar in the State of California in 1986. She is also admitted to practice before the USPTO, the Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court.
GPN Vaccines’ Chairman & CEO Professor Tim Hirst commented, “I’m thrilled to welcome Dr Monroy onto our Scientific & Advisory Board. It’s tremendous to have such a leading patent attorney join the team; having Glady’s input into intellectual property matters will be a great asset to GPN Vaccines”, he said.
Dr Monroy said, “Intellectual property is so important in the biotech sector for securing markets and making deals. I am looking forward to offering my skills and experience to a project that has the potential to save millions of lives each year”.
About GPN Vaccines
GPN Vaccines is a public (unlisted) biotechnology company developing a vaccine against Streptococcus pneumoniae, which is responsible for causing life-threatening pneumonia, bacteraemia and meningitis, as well as otitis media (middle ear infections). Each year it causes 1-2 million deaths worldwide, killing more children than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. There are now 98 different serotypes of S. pneumoniae and the best vaccine currently on the market only protects against 13 of them. Gamma-PNTM – GPN Vaccines’ new S. pneumoniae vaccine is being developed to protect children and adults against all S. pneumoniae strains, regardless of strain serotype.