Leadership Team
Leadership Team
Nazli Azimi Pharm.D., Ph.D., Founder and President
Dr. Azimi started her career in the biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health and one of the leading laboratories for transitional research at the National Cancer Institute under the supervision of Dr. Thomas Waldmann. As a post-doctoral fellow, she studied cytokine immunology and contributed to this field by studying the transcriptional regulation of the newly discovered cytokine IL-15. Later, she expanded her research to investigate the pathophysiology of several diseases as they related to IL-15 such as cancer and a virally associated neurological disorder. He research laid the groundwork for entering a monoclonal antibody against IL-15 receptor into clinical trials. Throughout these years at the NIH, she trained and managed Ph.D. students, post docs, and technicians. She successfully set up collaborations with other institutions in the US and abroad which produced numerous peer-reviewed publications.
In 2005, she joined Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA as an associate member to study the immunological responses on the Herpes Virus. Finally, in 2006 she left the academia and co-founded her company, Dermaheal USA to develop and formulate a wound healing gel based on a patented peptide. In 2009, Dr. Azimi was joined by one of her long time colleagues from the NIH, Dr. Yutaka Tagaya who is an expert in the field of cytokine biology, to start an R&D biotechnology company to discover peptides directed at various cellular components. This company was later become Bioniz, LLC.
Dr. Yutaka Tagaya, MD, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Tagaya graduated from the Kyoto University Medical School in 1986. He then enrolled in the graduate-school to pursue research career in the field of molecular immunology. His early accomplishments include the molecular cloning of an ATL-derived factor, a cytokine that bears redox-controlling activity as a mammalian homolog of a bacterial enzyme thioredoxin. Dr. Tagaya then received his post-doctoral training in Dr. Kimishige Ishizaka’s group at the La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology, where Dr. Tagaya successfully integrated the elements of cellular immunology and animal research into his original training in the field of molecular biology and biochemistry. Later, he joined the Metabolism Branch of the National Cancer Institute (Dr. Thomas Waldmann. Branch Chief).
While at the NCI, Dr. Tagaya has made seminal discoveries in the field of cytokine biology, in particular about those, which utilize a common receptor called common-gamma (IL-2, -4, -7, -9, -15, and -21). He has been asked to write reviews on this subject in prestigious journals and has been recognized as one of the international leaders in this field. Furthermore, Dr. Tagaya has generated animal models to study the biology of cytokines and through his work has demonstrated a direct correlation between cytokines and some diseases such as cancer and autoimmune diseases. These animal models are of great value, since they provide models for testing therapeutic molecules.
In 2009, Dr. Tagaya joined his long time friend Dr. Azimi to act as the Chief Scientific Officer of Bioniz, LLC. With his deep and diverse expertise in biochemistry, molecular biology, cellular signaling, and microarray-based bioinformatics, Dr. Tagaya is now trying to develop novel antagonists using small peptide technology against the gc-family cytokines. Such peptides could efficiently inhibit the cytokine action in vivo to cure inflammatory and autoimmune diseases in a much more flexible way than anti-cytokine antibodies. Similarly a small molecule agonistic cytokine peptide could prove more efficient than the entire cytokine in enhancing potent adjuvant activity upon immunization and anti-cancer therapeutics. Dr. Tagaya is also interested in applying the small peptide strategy in manipulating nuclear and epigenetic events upon cellular reprogramming and tissue regeneration in wound healing.