Novastra Builds Expert Board to Steer Cancer Therapy

Novastra Therapeutics announced Nov. 05, 2026, that it created a Scientific Advisory Board and named senior advisors to guide its cancer-therapy programs, alongside appointing Gus Khursigara, PhD, as Head of Clinical Development. The company says researchers, physicians and industry specialists will oversee scientific validation and clinical development, while patients with solid tumors remain the people its proposed therapies aim to reach.

Who Gets to Steer the Work

The board’s inaugural members are Stephanie Dougan, PhD, Associate Professor of Cancer Immunology and Virology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Associate Professor of Immunology at Harvard Medical School; Van Morris, MD, Associate Professor, Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, Section Chief, Colorectal Cancer, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center; and Saraswati Sukumar, PhD, Professor of Oncology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and member of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Novastra says its board and senior advisors will support programs based on the proprietary OmniAntigen™ Platform (OAP), providing scientific validation and guiding further development. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with an operations hub in Shanghai. Its announcement describes no patient-led body or community-run process in those decisions.

Dougan studies cellular interactions that shape the tumor microenvironment and immune response to tumors that don't induce a T cell response. “The tumors that don't provoke a T cell response are exactly where we need new ideas,” she said. “I'm excited to support Novastra's work to change what the immune system can recognize.”

Morris focuses on colorectal and anal cancers, immunotherapy, targeted therapies and emerging biomarkers. He serves as Principal Investigator for a Phase 2/3 study of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) as a predictive biomarker for adjuvant chemotherapy in stage II colon cancer. “Too many patients with solid tumors don't benefit from the immunotherapies we have today,” he said. “I look forward to helping address that gap at its root.”

Sukumar studies molecular and epigenetic alterations that drive breast cancer, with the aim of advancing early detection and therapy. Her work has examined how homeobox (HOX) genes and epigenetically silenced pathways contribute to resistance to chemotherapy and endocrine therapy. “Tumors find a way around almost everything we throw at them,” she said. “Novastra rethinks the problem of immune priming, and I look forward to contributing to it.”

The Company’s Proposed Route to Patients

Novastra says OAP enables systematic immune reprogramming therapy (XIRT™), using off-the-shelf in situ and autologous approaches. These approaches are designed to coordinate tumor-antigen presentation with innate immune activation and prime tumor-directed immunity. The company says they aim to address resistance in poorly immunogenic solid tumors and serve as an immune-amplification companion for antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

OAP is designed to rapidly encapsulate antigens with a supramolecular nanocloak for presentation to the immune system. Novastra says the nanocloak pairs antigen delivery with innate immune stimulation, including activation of the cGAS-STING pathway. For in situ applications, the company is designing a method for the nanocloak to self-assemble inside a tumor and capture tumor-derived antigens released by ADCs, chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

Many patients with solid tumors continue to experience treatment resistance despite advances in checkpoint inhibition and ADCs, the company says. Novastra’s autologous candidate OAP-101 draws support from preclinical evidence and initial results from an investigator-initiated Phase 1 study in advanced, checkpoint-refractory melanoma. The company describes these results; its announcement also cautions that interim or early clinical data may not predict future results.

Experts, Regulation and the Fine Print

Senior advisors Jerome Ritz, MD, and Lisa Loram, PhD, bring research and regulatory experience, respectively. Ritz’s research helped define donor T-cell and B-cell roles in beneficial graft-versus-leukemia responses and graft-versus-host disease in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Loram has led regulatory affairs for advanced therapies, including Investigational New Drug (IND) applications and interactions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Khursigara will lead and integrate expert recommendations to establish and carry out clinical development plans for OAP/XIRT. The announcement describes no election or legislative proposal, and no grassroots or mutual-aid response; its stated route runs through company programs, expert recommendations, clinical studies and regulatory milestones.

Novastra says its forward-looking statements cover therapy development, clinical studies, anticipated regulatory milestones, and strategic and financial plans. It identifies clinical study outcomes, regulatory decisions and availability of capital as risks that could cause actual results to differ materially. The company says it won't update those statements except as required by law. Chief Executive Junling Guo, PhD, called the approach an effort to make poorly immunogenic solid tumors visible to the immune system, and said the experts would support scientific validation and clinical development.