Speaker: Tak W. Mak, PhD,
Title: Does the Immune System Think?
Time: Monday, March 26, 2018, 11:00 am
Location: Academic report hall, BinglinLibrary,
Speaker Biography:
Dr. Tak Wah Mak first became widely knownfor his discovery of the T-cell receptor in 1984 and pioneering work in thegenetics of immunology, In 1995, Dr. Mak published a landmark paper on thediscovery of the function of the immune checkpoint protein CTLA-4, thus openingthe path for immunotherapy/checkpoint inhibitors as a means of cancertreatment, Dr. Mak is also the founder of Agios Pharmaceuticals, whose leadcompound IDHIFA , was approved by the FDA for Acute myeloid leukemia inAugust 2017, becoming the first drug specifically targeting cancer metabolismto be used for cancer treatment. He was working in a variety of areas includingbiochemistry, immunology, and cancer genetics. His ground breaking work on theT-cell receptor has been postulated several times to be in consideration for aNobel prize. Dr. Mak has 950 publications with over 150 in Nature, Science, andCell. His publications have been cited over 100,000 times with a h-index of160. He has 50 patents and authored over 10 books.