Steven G. Reed, Founded the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) in Seattle in 1993 (https://www.idri.org/). His current appointments include Founder and Distinguished scientist, IDRI, CEO on OnCo Inc., Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Cornell University Medical College in New York and Research Professor of Pathobiology at the University of Washington. He serves on several editorial review committees, has served as a member of the Tropical Medicine Review Board of the National Institutes of Health, and as a member of the Vaccine Development Steering Committee of the World Health Organization.
Dr. Reed received a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Montana in 1979. That year he was appointed as Scientist of the National Institute of Amazon Research in Manaus, Brazil, where he directed research on tropical diseases. Dr. Reed joined Cornell University Medical College in 1980 as Assistant Professor of Medicine, continuing to work in Brazil as manager of the Cornell-Bahia program in International Medicine. He joined the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute in 1984 where he worked until founding IDRI in 1993. At IDRI he has received over $130 million in grants from the US NIH, BARDA, DARPA, and the Gates Foundation. In 1994 he co-founded Corixa Corporation (which was later sold to GlaxoSmithKline, GSK) where he served as Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer until leaving in 2004. He also founded Dharma Therapeutics, a transdermal patch company, where he served as President from 2005-2008. In 2008 Dr. Reed, together with Rick Klausner, David Baltimore, and Ralph Steinman founded Immune Design Corp. (IMDZ, NASDAQ), a cancer therapeutics company, where he served as co-founder and CEO until 2011.
Dr. Reed’s research interests have focused on the immunology of intracellular infections, immune-therapeutics, and on the development of vaccines and diagnostics for both cancer and infectious diseases. In partnership with GSK, he led the team that developed the first defined tuberculosis vaccine to advance to clinical trials and show clinical efficacy. He also developed the first defined vaccines for leishmaniasis, as well as the K39-based diagnostic tests currently licensed for leishmaniasis and used in several countries. He has more than 380 original publications, 35 book chapters and reviews, and 105 issued patents on diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics of infectious diseases and cancer.
