Brian H. Johnston, Ph.D., Founder and CEO

Dr. Johnston has over 30 years of experience in scientific innovation and product development. He holds a Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and did post-doctoral research at UCSF and MIT. Dr. Johnston was previously Director of the Nucleic Acids Program at SRI International and Consulting Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine. He has coauthored 56 scientific papers and 24 patents.

Stephen T. Isaacs, Ph.D.

Stephen T Isaacs has served as Aduro Biotech’s Chairman, Director, President and Chief Executive Officer since 2008. Aduro is a publicly traded clinical stage biotechnology company focused on immuno-oncology, with additional programs in autoimmunity and infectious disease. Prior to Aduro, Mr. Isaacs founded Cerus Corporation in 1991, a biomedical products company commercializing the Intercept Blood Systems. The Intercept systems are now globally available and used to prevent a variety of diseases from blood transfusion. He served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Cerus from 1991 to 2004. Prior to Cerus, Mr. Isaacs founded and served as Chief Executive Officer and President of HRI Associates and HRI Research, both biotechnology companies focusing on research and development in various areas. He held a non-teaching faculty position in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California Berkeley from 1978 to 1986. Mr. Isaacs has published over 20 peer-reviewed scientific articles and is an inventor on over 40 issued patents.

In addition to leading multiple biotechnology companies, Mr. Isaacs has spent considerable time on the African continent working on various non-profit activities. With his family, he founded “A Better Education” (ABE) Club, which provides educational opportunities, microfinance training and healthcare for remote villagers in the south of Kenya. More recently, he founded the Alliance for Global Health and Science with the Department of Public Health at UC Berkeley, which undertakes capacity building at universities and medical schools in Uganda and Zimbabwe. He also established the Immunotherapeutics and Vaccine Research Initiative at UC Berkeley, which is an Aduro-sponsored campus-wide organization to promote immunological research for cancer and infectious disease.

Mr. Isaacs holds an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, where he also pursued Ph.D. studies in organic chemistry.