unlocking the complexity of human immune responses to enable precision immunology

Founded in late 2020, ImmuneID is a precision immunology company that uses its genome-wide, high-throughput platform to provide a comprehensive understanding of individual immune responses. We employ our massively parallel, multiplexed, and unbiased systems to develop therapeutics for autoimmunity, severe allergy, oncology and infectious disease. We were founded by Longwood Fund and are backed by other top-tier venture investors, including Alexandria Venture Investments, Alta Partners, Arch Venture Partners, In-Q-Tel, Pitango, Section 32, Tekla Capital Management and Xfund.

Contact Us

275 Second Ave, Suite 100
Waltham, MA 02451
info@immuneidrx.com

Christoph Westphal, MD, PhD

ImmuneID, Co-founder and Chair

BA Columbia
MD/PhD Harvard

Dr. Westphal is co-founder and General Partner of Longwood Fund and has spent 20 years as a biotech CEO, entrepreneur, and investor. Dr. Westphal has been the co-founder, CEO, and lead investor of seven biotechnology companies that have completed initial public offerings (IPOs) and created sustained market value of over $40 billion and have developed and received FDA approval for over 10 important drugs. These include: Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: MNTA, acquired by J&J in 2020), Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALNY), Acceleron Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLRN, acquired by Merck in 2021), Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRT, acquired by GSK in 2008), Verastem (NASDAQ: VSTM), and TScan Therapeutics (NASDAQ: TCRX). Dr. Westphal is also co-founder of Alnara Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Eli Lilly in 2010); co-founder of DEM Bio Pharma, co-founder/Chair of ImmuneID; co-founder/former CEO/Chair of Immunitas Therapeutics; co-founder of Pyxis Oncology (NASDAQ: PYXS); and co-founder of Concert Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: CNCE). Companies founded by Dr. Westphal have created over 6,000 jobs in the Boston area.

Companies founded by Dr. Westphal have developed and received FDA approval for over 10 important drugs, including the first RNAi therapy; for currently incurable cancers; the largest-selling heparin in the United States; a therapy for MS; for Beta Thalassemia and Myelodysplastic Syndrome; and several experimental medicines: for cystic fibrosis (phase 3); for serious inflammatory disorders (phase 2).

Dr. Westphal earned his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard University; and he graduated with a B.A. summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University. Dr. Westphal has served or currently serves as a member or director of: the Boston Commercial Club, the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s (BIO) Emerging Companies Section Governing Board, the Board of Fellows of Harvard Medical School, and the Board of Trustees of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; he is also a member of the ownership group of the Boston Celtics. Dr. Westphal has been the lead or senior author on several patent applications and scientific papers in journals such as Cell, Nature, and Nature Genetics. Dr. Westphal has been featured on 60 Minutes with Morley Safer, CNN’s Vital Signs with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, an ABC News Special hosted by Barbara Walters, and as the subject of Fortune, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal cover articles. Dr. Westphal has generally avoided media interviews since 2010.

Michael Mina, MD, PhD

SAB, ImmuneID

Assistant Professor, Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Department of Epidemiology
Core member, Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics
Assistant Professor in Immunology and Infectious Diseases
Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Associate Medical Director in Clinical Microbiology (molecular diagnostics) in the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School

MD/PhD Emory
BA Dartmouth

Dr. Mina earned his MD and PhD degrees from Emory University, with doctoral work split between CDC, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit in Johannesburg, South Africa and the Emory Vaccine Center. He completed his post-doctoral work at Princeton University in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (of infectious disease dynamics) with Prof. Bryan Grenfell and at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Genetics with Prof. Stephen Elledge. He completed his residency training in clinical pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School.

Michael’s research combines mathematical and epidemiological models with high-throughput phage-display based serological laboratory investigations, including development of new technologies and statistical pipelines to better understand the population and immunological consequences and patterns underlying infectious diseases. Much of the work towards new technology development is performed in close collaboration with Steve Elledge at HMS. Major themes of his lab include (i) development of new approaches (laboratory and statistical methods) to enable extremely high-throughput serological surveillance of infectious pathogens; (ii) use of high-complexity antibody profiling and epidemiological data to understand the pathogenesis of vaccine preventable diseases, with a specific focus on measles infections and vaccines; (iii) elucidating broad unintended / heterologous effects of vaccines to alter transmission patterns of unrelated infectious pathogens – using serology and dynamical models; and (iv) understanding the life-history of infectious pathogens across ages, genders, geographies and times. In addition to his interests in infectious diseases, his research also explores more fundamental questions of immunity and immune repertoires: how they form, how they persist, how they are passed on and how they become perturbed during natural life-events.

David R. Walt, PhD

Advisor, ImmuneID

Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering. Harvard Medical School
Professor of Pathology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Institute Professor, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

PhD SUNY Stony Brook
BS University of Michigan

David pioneered the use of microwell arrays for single-molecule detection and analysis, which has revolutionized the process of genetic and proteomic sequencing, enabling the cost of DNA sequencing, and genotyping to plummet nearly a millionfold in the last decade. This technology is now the gold standard for sequencing in a wide variety of applications including screening embryos for genetic defects before in vitro fertilization, studying disease in preserved/frozen tissues, improving crop disease resistance, and identifying individuals’ metabolic profiles to ensure proper drug dosage. David’s current research employs optical fiber microarrays for the detection and analysis of single enzyme molecules to provide mechanistic insight into enzyme mechanisms. In another project, his lab is investigating the limits of creating high-density sensing arrays containing thousands of microsensors and nanosensors and are preparing arrays to perform high-density nucleic acid and protein analysis. One application of this effort is an integrated diagnostic platform for performing medical diagnostics using saliva as a sample instead of blood. The arrays can also be used to study living cells, both as cell populations and as individual cells, and analyze the contents of individual cells by integrating microfluidics with single-molecule detection. They are also studying the behavior of large numbers of cells to understand the distribution of cell behaviors in a population.

David is a member of the faculty at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Pathology, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. He is the Scientific Founder of Illumina, Inc. and Quanterix Corp, and has co-founded several other life sciences startups. Previously, he was a University Professor, Professor of Neuroscience, and Professor of Oral Medicine at Tufts University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the 2017 American Chemical Society Kathryn C. Hach Award for Entrepreneurial Success, the 2016 Ralph Adams Award in Bioanalytical Chemistry, the 2014 American Chemical Society Gustavus John Esselen Award, the 2013 Analytical Chemistry Spectrochemical Analysis Award, the 2013 Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award, and the 2010 ACS National Award for Creative Invention.

Stephen Elledge, PhD

Co-founder, ImmuneID

Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Gregor Mendel Professor of Genetics and of Medicine, Genetics, Harvard Medical School
Professor, Genetics, Brigham And Women’s Hospital

PhD MIT
BS University of Illinois

Steve is widely cited for his many seminal contributions and in particular for his work on the mechanics of both cellular proliferation and the DNA Damage Response. He was awarded the Albert Lasker Prize in Basic Medicine in 2015 for his body of work elucidating how cells sense DNA damage and initiate self-repair. His pioneering research in that field has had a significant impact on understanding human birth defects and aging as well as the genomics of cancer and shows great promise for finding cures. He is also a leader in promoting new genetic technologies and designing methodologies to help researchers better analyze the development of various disorders including cancer, autoimmune diseases and neurodegenerative conditions.

The recipient of numerous other awards including the 2013 Gairdner Foundation international Award, the 2015 Wiley Prize, and the 2017 Gruber Prize in Genetics and the 2017 Breakthrough Prize for Life Sciences for paradigm-shifting research. Dr. Elledge was also a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow, an American Cancer Society Senior Fellow and a Pew Scholar.

Dr. Elledge received his Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his B.S. from the University of Illinois. He completed his post-doctoral studies in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University and then joined the faculty of the Baylor College of Medicine in the Department of Biochemistry in 1989 prior to joining Harvard Medical School in 2003.

Elledge’s team is also developing new immunological tools to probe autoimmunity and viral function. One technology they created, called VirScan, detects antibodies against all human viruses in blood. Using a single drop of blood, the method enables researchers to test for current and past viral infections. Others such as T Scan identify the targets of T cells

Elledge’s team recently identified multiple genes that control cell proliferation. The scientists are using this information to reconstruct the higher-order regulatory networks that drive the cell cycle and cancer proliferation. The group has also uncovered many new tumor suppressors and oncogenes by examining the mutational profiles of tumors. They discovered that the distribution of these genes on chromosomes is predictive of the pattern of aneuploidy seen in cancers, providing a new hypothesis of how aneuploidy drives tumorigenesis.

unlocking the complexity of human immune responses to enable precision immunology

Contact Us

Christoph Westphal, MD, PhD

Thomas Haag, PhD

Head of IP

Annalisa D’Andrea, PhD

President and CSO

Tomasz Kula, PhD

Co-founder, ImmuneID

Michael Mina, MD, PhD

SAB, ImmuneID

David R. Walt, PhD

Advisor, ImmuneID

Ben Larman, PhD

Co-founder, ImmuneID

Stephen Elledge, PhD

Co-founder, ImmuneID

James S. Scibetta

Jeff Capello

CFO/COO

Ittai Harel

Steve Kafka, PhD

Dan Janney