Inside the Expert Network Guiding TGN-S15 to Market

In the fourth part of her interview with Pharmaceutical Executive, Sandra Coufal, MD, CEO, Toragen, introduces the members of the company’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) and explains the specific, often irreplaceable, value each brings to the TGN-S15 development program.

Coufal notes how behind every successful drug program is a scientific network capable of asking the right questions, avoiding costly mistakes, and opening doors that would otherwise remain closed.

At the center of the SAB is Dr. Aldo Venuti, Chair, and arguably the world’s leading authority on the HPV E5 protein. Venuti founded and runs the Regina Elena Institute in Rome, which serves as a sub-awardee on Toragen’s Gates Foundation grant. His lab’s contribution goes beyond expertise: it provides access to W12 cells, a rare pre-cancerous cervical cell line originally licensed from the University of Cambridge and no longer available to new licensees.

That access opens the possibility of eventually testing TGN-S15 against abnormal Pap smear diagnoses—a potential indication that could expand the drug’s reach significantly and address a major unmet need in women’s reproductive health. Alongside Venuti is Dr. Ezra Cohen, the lead principal investigator for Keytruda’s clinical trials in HPV-positive head and neck cancer. His direct experience navigating those trials gives Toragen an insider’s view of the clinical pitfalls to avoid as it designs its own Phase 2 program.

Together, the SAB represents a concentration of expertise that would be difficult to assemble and impossible to replicate outside of Toragen’s specific scientific network.