macrophage
(2)
Pheast Therapeutics
Pheast Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotech engineering the innate immune system to attack cancer. Its lead drug, PHST001, is an anti-CD24 macrophage checkpoint inhibitor designed to flip the 'don't eat me' signal that solid tumors use to hide from the body's first-line defenders.
Roy Maute
Roy Maute is co-founder and CEO of Pheast Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech in Redwood City, CA, developing macrophage-targeted cancer immunotherapies. Trained at UC Berkeley, Columbia (PhD, Genetics), and Stanford (postdoc under Irving Weissman), Maute has built a career at the intersection of innate immunology and drug development. Before Pheast, he co-founded Ab Initio Biotherapeutics (acquired by Ligand in 2019) and led translational research at Forty Seven Inc. ahead of its $4.9B acquisition by Gilead in 2020. At Pheast, he is advancing PHST001, a novel anti-CD24 antibody that teaches macrophages to eat cancer cells, currently in Phase 1 clinical trials with FDA Fast Track Designation for ovarian cancer.