SIRPant Team

Dr. Kijlstra brings to the company extensive clinical development and regulatory experience with cellular immunotherapy. Over a career spanning 33 years in positions based in Europe and the USA, he worked in roles of increasing responsibility for Zeneca, PathoGenesis, Dendreon, AngioDynamics, Spectrum, Atossa Therapeutics and Covance. Besides early development experience, over the years he led pivotal studies that supported FDA-approval of over 10 oncology and immuno-oncology therapeutics and 2 oncology surgical devices. Most recently, he was CMO at Sound Biologics, an antibody engineering company that develops checkpoint inhibitor combination therapy. Dr. Kijlstra received his medical degree (MD) and hematology training from the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) and his MBA from Northwestern University (Chicago), where he was the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Scholar in Health Policy. Dr. Kijlstra has presented to FDA and MHRA regulatory advisory boards, published over 60 peer-reviewed papers and abstracts, and is co-inventor of Provenge™ (sipuleucel-T), the world’s first cellular immunotherapy product approved for cancer by both FDA (2010) and EMA (2013).