Inside Kyverna

Transforming the Practice of Medicine for Autoimmune Disease

Our Story

Kyverna is building a company singularly focused on freeing patients from the siege of autoimmune disease. With our platform of targeted cellular therapies, we are working diligently to address the complexities of the immune system as we strive to transform the standard of care with better treatment options designed to tame autoimmunity.

Based in the San Francisco East Bay, Kyverna was founded in 2018 on the premise that advances in cell engineering for cancer could be applied to autoimmune disease, where a vast number of conditions are not adequately treated by currently available therapies.

In January 2020, the company announced a Series A investment from Vida Ventures, Westlake Village BioPartners, and Gilead, followed by a Series B financing in January 2022 led by Northpond Ventures.

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Cell therapy represents a sophisticated approach to treating autoimmune disease without requiring extreme procedures such as bone marrow or stem cell transplants. This new type of therapy involves engineering immune cells from a patient or healthy donor and infusing those cells to correct an identified defective or pathogenic mechanism. This therapeutic approach may help restore balance to the patient’s immune system and offer sustained therapeutic benefits, eliminating the need for chronic or suboptimal therapies.

Our Philosophy

Great minds don’t always think alike.

We’ve turned this universal truth into a guiding principle at Kyverna, where we are building a multi-disciplinary team that translates industry experience and academic exuberance into scientific excellence. As leaders, we are committed to fostering a collegial, collaborative and open environment where we welcome and nurture “science of all minds” to help fulfill the promise of developing transformative cell therapies for patients with autoimmune disease.

Leadership Team

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Peter Maag, PhD

Chief Executive Officer

Image for Dominic Borie, MD, PhD
Dominic Borie, MD, PhD

President, Research and Development

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James Chung, MD, PhD

Chief Medical Officer

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Karen Walker

Chief Technology Officer

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Tom Van Blarcom, PhD

Senior Vice President and Head of Research

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Gregory J. Giotta, PhD, JD

Chief Legal Counsel

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Julie Winter, MBA

Vice President, Business Development

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Ryan Jones, MBA

Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Finance

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Penny Wong

Head of Human Resources

Board of Directors

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Beth Seidenberg, MD

Founding Managing Director, Westlake Village BioPartners; General Partner, Kleiner Perkins

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Fred Cohen, MD

Co-Founder and Sr. Managing Director at Vida Ventures

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Steve Liapis, PhD

Principal, Northpond Ventures

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Brian Kotzin, MD

Independent Director

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Dan Spiegelman

Independent Director

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Ian Clark

Chairman of the Board

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Peter Maag, PhD

Chief Executive Officer

Scientific Advisors

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Peter A. Merkel, MD, MPH

Chief of Rheumatology and Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania

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Ignacio Sanz, MD

Mason I. Lowance Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics, Chief of the Division of Rheumatology, and Director of the Lowance Center for Human Immunology at Emory University

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Georg Schett, MD

Professor and Head of Department of Internal Medicine 3 at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

Join Our Team

If you are a thoughtful risk-taker, team player and swing-for-the-fences kind of person, we may have a role for you!
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