Draft:John Simard

John Simard (born 1962) is a Canadian-born biotechnology entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of XBiotech.

Early life and education
John Simard was born in 1962 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He earned a biochemistry degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1992, then pursued immunology at the University of Toronto's Department of Medical Biophysics.

In 1994, Simard left his graduate program to work with Tak W. Mak at the Amgen Research Institute. Later, he co-authored a textbook on immunology with Mak. He also co-authored a manuscript with Nobel Laureate Rolf Zinkernagel, focusing on the biology of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL).

Career
Simard began his career in biotechnology by establishing CTL Immunotherapies in 1997, which focused on vaccine development. Later, he also founded AlleCure Corp. in Valencia, California, which developed allergy treatments and immune modulating therapies. His first two companies were eventually merged with MannKind Corporation. In 2005, Simard founded XBiotech, which develops cancer vaccines.

Research
Simard has developed therapies targeting interleukin-1a, including a neutralizing antibody that was sold for a total of $1.35 billion in cash and milestone payments. He holds over 300 issued and pending patents in areas such as cancer antigen identification, immunotherapies for cancer and infectious diseases, and techniques for identifying and cloning human antibodies.