Andrea van Elsas, PhD
Andrea van Elsas, PhD
Andrea van Elsas joined Clasp Therapeutics as Interim Chief Scientific Officer in 2021. He is currently a Partner at Third Rock Ventures. He previously served as Chief Scientific Officer at Aduro Biotech following the acquisition of BioNovion, a company he co-founded 2011. From 1999 to 2011, he held various positions at Organon (acquired by Schering-Plough and later by Merck) in Oss, The Netherlands, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. As Director of Tumor Immunology, he oversaw the immuno-oncology portfolio and led the anti-PD1 program that later became known as pembrolizumab. As a postdoctoral researcher, Andrea worked in the lab of Nobel laureate Jim Allison at the University of California, Berkeley and is a co-inventor on the original anti-CTLA-4 patents that formed the basis for the development of ipilimumab, the first checkpoint inhibitor, which was approved in 2011 by the FDA for the treatment of melanoma. He currently serves on the boards of Celsius Therapeutics and Mendus A/B and chairs the Scientific Advisory Board of Lava Therapeutics. Andrea has an M.S. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the Universiteit van Amsterdam and a Ph.D. in Immunology and Oncology from the University of Leiden.