The Relief Therapeutics Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) was formed to support the Company’s genetic medicines initiative. The SAB serves as an integral resource, providing scientific review and high-level technical and strategic guidance related to gene therapy targets, research and pre-clinical development and strategic research alliances. Additional appointments to the SAB are forthcoming.
Guangping Gao, Ph.D., Scientific Advisory Board Chair
Guangping Gao, Ph.D. is co-director of the Li Weibo Institute for Rare Diseases Research, director of the Horae Gene Therapy Center and Viral Vector Core, professor of microbiology and physiological systems, and Penelope Booth Rockwell Chair in biomedical research at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in Worcester, Mass. Dr. Gao is an elected fellow, both at the U.S. National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and American Academy of Microbiology.
For more than 30 years, Dr. Gao has primarily focused on molecular genetics and viral vector gene therapy of rare genetic diseases, encompassing disease gene cloning, causative mutation identification, pathomechanism investigation, animal modeling, novel viral vector discovery and engineering for in vivo gene delivery, vector biology, pre-clinical and clinical gene therapy product development, viral vector manufacturing for pre-clinical and clinical gene therapy applications as well as technology platform development as novel approaches for human gene therapy.
Dr. Gao has published nearly 350 research papers, six book chapters and five edited books. He holds 233 patents with 480 more patent applications pending. Dr. Gao serves as the executive editor-in-chief of Human Gene Therapy, senior editor of the Gene and Cell Therapy book series, associate editor of Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy and serves on the editorial boards of several other gene therapy and virology journals.
Nature Biotechnology has ranked Dr. Gao as one of the top 20 translational researchers in the world for several years in a row. From 2017 to 2020, he served as vice president, president-elect and president of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy.
Dr. Gao is a co-founder of Voyager Therapeutics, Adrenas Therapeutics and Aspa Therapeutics, which are focused on developing recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) gene therapeutics for treating a variety of devastating rare diseases.
Dr. Gao earned a bachelor of medicine degree from West China School of Medicine, Sichuan University in Chengdu, China. He earned both a master of science degree and doctor of philosophy degree in biological sciences from Florida International University in Miami. Dr. Gao completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia.