Naiyer Rizvi was named chief medical officer of Synthekine Inc.
Rizvi most recently served as the Price Family Professor of Medicine, director of thoracic oncology and co-director of cancer immunotherapy at Columbia University Medical Center.
He will lead Synthekine’s efforts in advancing its maturing pipeline through clinical investigation, the company said.
Rizvi’s research into mechanisms of sensitivity and resistance to immunotherapy has laid the foundation to the understanding of clinical responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors. Rizvi conducted clinical studies of novel immunotherapy drugs and immunotherapy combinations, including the landmark study to demonstrate a correlation between mutations and neoantigens with durable benefit to immune-checkpoint blockade.
His clinical research has helped deliver FDA approvals of several landmark immunotherapies, including nivolumab in squamous lung cancer and pembrolizumab in non-small cell lung cancer.
He was recently research director of the Price Family Comprehensive Center for Chest Care at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
