Transgene Further Strengthens Scientific Advisory Board with Appointments of Renowned Cancer Immunotherapy Experts Antoine Italiano and Ignacio Melero
Strasbourg, France, January 23, 2026, 8:00 a.m. CET – Transgene (Euronext Paris: TNG), a biotech company that designs and develops virus-based immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer, announced the appointment of two additional key scientific advisors to its Scientific Advisory Board, Prof. Antoine Italiano, MD, PhD, and Prof. Ignacio Melero, MD, PhD, further strengthening its scientific leadership.
“Antoine and Ignacio are world leaders in precision medicine, immune-oncology and cancer immunotherapy, and will bring considerable expertise to Transgene,” said Alessandro Riva, Transgene’s Chairman and CEO. “We are privileged to have them on board and look forward to working together as we accelerate the development of myvac®, our individualized neoantigen therapeutic vaccines platform and take the next important steps in the clinical development of our other viral vector-based cancer vaccine candidates.”
Antoine Italiano, MD, PhD, is a renowned medical oncologist specializing in early drug development and precision medicine. He serves as Head of the Department of Medicine at Institut Bergonié in Bordeaux, France and leads the Precision Medicine program at Gustave Roussy in Paris, France.
Prof. Italiano has been the Principal Investigator for over 50 Phase I trials and more than 40 Phase II and III clinical trials over the past five years. His research focuses on immuno-oncology, targeted therapies, and translational research, particularly in rare tumors such as sarcomas.
He earned his PhD in Molecular Cell Biology in 2008 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Prof. Italiano is a member of ASCO, AACR, and ESMO, and regularly reviews for top oncology journals. He has authored or co-authored over 500 peer-reviewed publications, including in Nature Medicine, Lancet Oncology, and JAMA Oncology.
His work has significantly shaped the field of precision oncology, bridging clinical gaps and driving therapeutic innovation.
Ignacio Melero, MD, PhD, is a professor of immunology at the University of Navarra, Spain and co-director of the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the Clínica Universidad de Navarra.
He is widely recognized for his pioneering work in cancer immunotherapy, particularly on immunostimulatory monoclonal antibodies and co-stimulation of antitumor immune responses.
He spent three years conducting research at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Seattle, returning to Spain in 1998, where he has since led a multidisciplinary team at Center for Applied Medical Research (CIMA) and the Clínica Universidad de Navarra, focusing on cell-based immunotherapy, gene therapy, and monoclonal antibodies.
Prof. Melero has served as Principal Investigator in over 40 clinical trials in immunotherapy, and is a scientific editor for several prestigious journals, including Clinical Cancer Research, Cancer Discovery, and Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer. He sits on multiple international scientific advisory boards, including those of Institut Curie (Paris), Gustave Roussy (Paris), the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), and the Biomedical Research Institute of Granada (Spain). In 2023, he was appointed Kidani Professor of Cancer Immuno-Therapeutics at the University of Oxford.
He has published more than 350 scientific articles and was awarded a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant from the European Union for his research on mRNA-based immunotherapies in 2024.
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About Transgene
Transgene (Euronext: TNG) is a biotechnology company focused on designing and developing targeted immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer. The Company’s clinical-stage programs consist of a portfolio of viral vector-based immunotherapeutics. TG4050, the first individualized therapeutic vaccine based on the myvac® platform is the Company’s lead asset, with demonstrated proof of principle in patients in the adjuvant treatment of head and neck cancers. The Company has other viral vector-based assets, including BT-001, an oncolytic virus based on the Invir.IO® viral backbone, which is in clinical development. The Company also conducts innovative discovery and preclinical work, aimed at developing novel viral vector-based modalities.
With Transgene’s myvac® platform, therapeutic vaccination enters the field of precision medicine with a novel immunotherapy that is fully tailored to each individual. The myvac® approach allows the generation of a virus-based immunotherapy that encodes patient-specific mutations, identified and selected through advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies.
With its proprietary platform Invir.IO®, Transgene is building on its viral vector engineering expertise to design a new generation of multifunctional oncolytic viruses.
Additional information about Transgene is available at:
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Disclaimer
This press release contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. The occurrence of any of these risks could have a significant negative outcome for the Company’s activities, perspectives, financial situation, results, regulatory authorities’ agreement with development phases, and development. The Company’s ability to commercialize its products depends on but is not limited to the following factors: positive pre-clinical data may not be predictive of human clinical results, the success of clinical studies, the ability to obtain financing and/or partnerships for product manufacturing, development and commercialization, and marketing approval by government regulatory authorities. For a discussion of risks and uncertainties which could cause the Company’s actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the Risk Factors (“Facteurs de Risque”) section of the Universal Registration Document, available on the AMF website (-france.org) or on Transgene’s website (). Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and Transgene undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.
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