Dr. Rita Laeufle brings more than 18 years of experience in drug development in oncology and Immunotherapy, most recently serving as CMO at Imugene Biotech, Australia where she is responsible for their oncolytic virus and B-cell vaccine program. During her previous position at Oncolytics, she developed immunotherapy combination studies with the oncolytic virus pelareorep and anti-PD-L1 inhibitor in breast and GI cancer. Further roles included Vice president of Clinical Development & Medical Affairs at SFJ Pharmaceuticals where she developed a clinical program for a new drug substance class in colon cancer. Dr. Laeufle also worked at Genentech in South San Francisco as Senior Medical Director, U.S. Medical Affairs, gastrointestinal (GI) cancers where she led GI disease across molecules and indications. Prior moving to the United States she was Senior Medical Director and Clinical Science Leader in Oncology at Roche leading a team for the treatment of breast cancer with Avastin among other solid tumor indication fir several years. Prior that she was at Novartis roles included pharmacovigilance for oncology and drug development lead for infectious disease.
Prior joining the industry Dr. Laeufle spend 10 years in academia, she is a board-certified surgeon. She completed her general surgery residency at Buckland Hospital in Dover, England, Basel Switzerland and Ueberlingen, Germany, and was trained in surgical oncology at “Staedtisches Krankenhaus”, Singen Germany, where she focused on gastroenterological, thyroid and breast cancer. Dr. Laeufle completed medical school at Medical School Albert Ludwig University Freiburg i.Br. Germany, where she received her Ph.D. in exploring Her2 oncogenes in brain cancer. Dr. Laeufle’s work has been published in The Lancet Oncology, the European Journal of Cancer, the Journal of Hepatology and Human Pathology and she has had multiple posters presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer (WCGC) and the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO).
