Dr. Jacques Galipeau Brings Personalized Stem Cell Treatment to UW Carbone

An international leader in harnessing a patient’s own stem cells to fight cancer and autoimmune diseases joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center on September 1.

Dr. Jacques Galipeau came from the Winship Cancer Center at Emory University, where he founded the Emory Personalized Immunotherapy Center and launched clinical trials on autoimmune diseases including Crohn’s disease and graft-versus-host disease. Prior to that, he spent most of his career at McGill University in Montreal.

Galipeau is arriving just as University Hospital completes a $1 million addition to its Clinical Hematopoietic Cell Processing Laboratory (CHCPL), where Galipeau will join Dr. Peiman Hematti in creating therapies based on the patient’s own cells.

“Dr. Galipeau is internationally known as a translational researcher in immunology and cell-mediated therapies,” says Dr. Howard Bailey, UW Carbone Cancer Center director. “His coming to Madison will allow us to continue to expand and grow our abilities for immunologic-based research and therapies.”

Galipeau, who will be the first-ever assistant dean of therapeutics discovery and development in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, says he was attracted to the Wisconsin job because of the strength of the research faculty, noting that many of them had “shovel-ready” products that are poised to move into human clinical trials.

“My goal is to bring to (our patients) clinical trials based on all the wonderful innovations in cell science that exist in the laboratories,” he says.

“I really like the concept, too, of the Wisconsin Idea; it’s very Canadian! (The idea of) public universities making a concerted effort to bring to the population the technologies it discovered in a way that can impact human lives. I really like that. I’m very impressed with the University of Wisconsin and how it promotes that.”

For more, see the interview with Galipeau on the UW Department of Medicine web site.