David Lebwohl, MD Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation

David Lebwohl, M.D. is Senior Vice President and Franchise Global Program Head for the CAR-T Program at Novartis, based in East Hanover, NJ, USA.  In this position he heads up the development of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies at Novartis.  In August 2017 Novartis gained the first FDA approval of a gene (and CAR-T) therapy, Kymriah. David was formerly global head of Oncology Clinical Development, and Global Program Head for Afinitor, an oral mTOR inhibitor, within Novartis Oncology. He graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude in Biochemical Sciences and was then a Graduate Research Student in Tumour Immunology at University College London. He graduated as doctor of medicine from the Yale University School of Medicine.

Following post-graduate training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in internal medicine, hematology and medical oncology, he joined the staff of Memorial Sloan-Kettering on the Breast Cancer Service. More recently, Dr. Lebwohl has focused on the clinical development of new cancer drugs, first at Bristol Myers Squibb. He joined Novartis Oncology in 2002 where he was responsible for the development of Afinitor (RAD001) from phase 1 through five NDA/MAA approvals. He also led the clinical development of PTK787, a VEGFR inhibitor, panobinostat, a deacetylase inhibitor, and PKC412, a FLT3 kinase inhibitor, as well as MEK and RAF inhibitor programs.