Gary Firestein, M.D. is Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy & Immunology at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, where he also serves as Director of the UCSD Clinical Investigation Institute.  He is a former Chairman of the FDA Advisory Panel for Arthritis, and has published over 200 peer review articles, books and book chapters.  Dr. Firestein’s research helped define the role of cytokines like TNFalpha, interleukin 1, and interleukin 6 in rheumatoid arthritis and identified these as therapeutic targets. His research also showed that cells accumulate in chronic inflammatory disease partly due to impaired apoptosis.

Gale A. Granger, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, School of Biological Sciences, University of California Irvine, where he taught, lectured and published for over thirty years. He is an expert in the field of tumor immunology, immunotherapy, cellular immunology, and cytokines.  As a result of his work beginning in the late 1960’s, Dr. Granger is considered one the pioneers in the field of cytokine biology, and is credited as one of the first to isolate and characterize Tumor Necrosis Factor Beta.

Gregg Morin, Ph.D. is Head of Proteomics at the Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.  His objective is to discover functions for poorly annotated portions of the human genome using genomics and proteomics.  The ultimate goal is to understand the causes and identify therapeutic targets for multi-factorial diseases. Dr. Morin was previously Director of the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Department at Geron Corporation, where he cloned the human telomerase catalytic subunit (hTERT), a target for cancer therapy.