External Advisory Board

Mark Anderson, MD, PhD

Mark Anderson, MD, PhD

Director, Diabetes Center, UCSF

Dr. Mark Anderson is the Robert Friend and Michelle M. Friend Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research, Director of the Diabetes Center, and a leading expert in the understanding of autoimmune diseases and their underpinnings.  His major scientific contributions involve unraveling the mechanisms by which a key transcription factor called Aire promotes immune tolerance.  He continues to make significant contributions in this area of research and has even has developed translational approaches to his findings that involve manipulating this key tolerance mechanism.

As a leader in the translation of immunology to human health, Anderson is a co-founder of ImmunoX, a novel program to harness the immune system for human health at UCSF, and he is also President of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS).   He is a practicing Diabetologist and serves in an advisory capacity for the translation of immunology to autoimmunity, including service as a mechanistic investigator/advisor to Trialnet, a NIH-sponsored multi-center clinical trial consortium whose focus is on preventing and reversing type 1 diabetes.  He has also served as chair of the Hypersensitivity, Autoimmune and Immune-mediated Disease (HAI) study section for the National Institutes of Health.  Anderson also serves as Director of the UCSF MD/PhD training program.  In 2020, he was elected into the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Anderson received his doctorate in immunology in 1992 and his medical degree in 1994 from the University of Chicago.  He engaged in clinical training in Internal Medicine at the University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinics from 1994 to 1998.  He then went on to pursue a clinical fellowship in Adult Endocrinology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School from 1998 to 2001.  He also did a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Diane Mathis and Christophe Benoist at the Joslin Diabetes Center from 1999 to 2002.

Jane Buckner, MD

Jane Buckner, MD

President, Benaroya Research Institute

Dr. Jane Buckner is the President of the Benaroya Research Institute (BRI), the Director of the Translational Research Program at BRI, an Affiliate Professor of Immunology at the University of Washington, and an Affiliate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology, also at the University of Washington.  She is a Partner at the Allen Institute for Immunology, as well as a practicing rheumatologist at the Virginia Mason Medical Center.  Additionally, she is the Scientific Co-Founder and Scientific Advisory Board member of GentiBio, an emerging biotherapeutics company.

Dr. Buckner’s research focuses on identifying the underlying mechanisms by which the adaptive immune response to self-antigens becomes pathogenic in the setting of human autoimmune disease.  To this end, Dr. Buckner’s group studies how both regulatory and effector mechanisms are altered in autoimmunity.  The lab works on three areas of autoimmunity: antigen-specific T cells in rheumatoid arthritis, regulatory T cell-based therapy for T1S and RA, and the influence of genetic variants associated with autoimmune disease and alterations in cytokine signaling pathways on the development and progression of autoimmune disease.

Dr. Buckner graduated from Carleton College in 1983, received her medical degree from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1987 and completed her training in Internal Medicine at the University of Minnesota.  She received postdoctoral training in Rheumatology and Immunology at the University of Washington and the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason.  She joined the faculty of the Benaroya Research Institute in 1999.

Barbara Schilberg, JD

Barbara Schilberg, JD

Advisor and Former CEO, BioAdvance

Ms. Barbara Schilberg has more than 30 years of experience working with academic technologies and start-up companies in the life sciences sector.  Under her leadership as CEO from 2002-2021, BioAdvance committed over $50 million to almost 100 seed-stage companies and technologies focusing in areas including Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and infectious diseases.  Those companies have leveraged over $3.75 billion in subsequent capital from venture capital, grants, collaborations, M&A activity and product revenues.

Ms. Schilberg is or has served as a board member or observer for several BioAdvance portfolio companies including Protez, Avid, Immunome, Jenrin Discovery, Merganser, Novira Pharmaceuticals, Ossianix, Mebias Discovery, One Health, Keriton, ENB Therapeutics and Palvella Therapeutics.  Ms. Schilberg also serves on various boards or advisory boards, including the Alliance for Women Entrepreneurs (AWE), the Drexel-Coulter Translational Research Partnership, the Roy and Diana Vagelos Life Sciences & Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania, the Penn Medicine Research Council Meeting, the University City Keystone Innovation Zone, and the University City Science Center’s Phase 1 Ventures.

Before joining BioAdvance, Ms. Schilberg served as a senior executive with four emerging life sciences companies (Cephalon, Incara Pharmaceuticals, Theravance, and Locus Discovery, Inc.) and prior to that was a partner at Morgan Lewis.  Ms. Schilberg received a JD from the University of Virginia and clerked with the Honorable Edward R. Becker, a Senior Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. 

Mariana Kaplan, MD

Mariana Kaplan, MD

Chief, Systemic Autoimmunity Branch, NIAMS

Dr. Mariana Kaplan joined National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) as Chief of the Systemic Autoimmunity Branch in 2013.  She is also Deputy Scientific Director at NIAMS.

In addition to her research activities, Dr. Kaplan is an active clinician and teacher. She sees lupus patients in the NIH Clinical Research Center and is involved in the development of various clinical trials for patients with autoimmune diseases at NIH.  She has served in numerous roles at the American College of Rheumatology/Rheumatology Research Foundation, the American Association of Immunologists, and the Lupus Foundation of America.  She was inducted to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians (AAP) and received the Henry Kunkel Young Investigator Award and the Edmund L. Dubois Memorial Lectureship, both from the American College of Rheumatology.  Dr. Kaplan received the 2015 Evelyn V. Hess Award from the Lupus Foundation of America in recognition of her significant contributions to lupus research, diagnosis, and treatment.  In 2016, she received the Charles L. Christian Award for significant impact on the understanding of lupus.

Dr. Kaplan is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Clinical Investigation and Deputy Editor of Arthritis & Rheumatology.  She is currently a council member at the AAP.  In 2021, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine for seminal contributions that have significantly advanced the understanding of the pathogenic role of the innate immune system in systemic autoimmune diseases, atherosclerosis, and immune-mediated vasculopathies.

Dr. Kaplan obtained her medical degree at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and did her Internal Medicine Residency at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition in Mexico City.  Dr. Kaplan did her Rheumatology Fellowship and postdoctoral training at the University of Michigan, where she was a member of the faculty for 15 years and an active member of their Multidisciplinary Lupus Clinic.

John Monroe, PhD

John Monroe, PhD

Emeritus Professor, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. John Monroe is an Emeritus Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.  Most recently he led Genentech’s Immunology Discovery Department and was responsible for new target discovery and pre-clinical validation.  He also headed the Genentech Immunology Precision Medicine Department and determined precision medicine strategies and early clinical validation of biomarkers for patient selection.  He was a tenured Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine where for over 20 years he oversaw a research lab and published seminal papers in the field of B lymphocyte biology and immune cell tolerance.

Dr. Monroe received his PhD in Immunology from Duke University studying immune cell receptor signaling and did a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School studying T cell modulation of immune responses.  He is a former Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Pathology at Penn and directed its Cancer Immunology Program.  He has served on many review committees and editorial boards, including as Deputy Editor for Immunological Reviews.