Member, Scientific Advisory Board
Director, Laboratory of Molecular Immunology
Professor & Director, Infectious and Inflammatory Diseases Center
Sanford-Burnham-Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla, CA

Dr. Carl Ware has been a Member and Head of the Division of Molecular Immunology at the LaJolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology since 1996. He received his Ph.D. in 1979 from the University of California, Irvine, and conducted his postdoctoral work at the University of Texas and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School in Boston. He established his research laboratory in 1981 as an Assistant Professor of Immunology at the University of California, Riverside, advancing to full professor before joining the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology.

Possibilities and challenges are what this researcher, who currently has two important discoveries at various stages of the drug development process, seems to be all about. Dr. Ware discovered the Lymphotoxin-beta receptor, a protein that controls inflammation. A new drug based on this discovery is currently in Phase II clinical trials for people with severe rheumatoid arthritis, while another inflammatory protein, known as LIGHT also discovered in Dr. Ware’s laboratory, is being developed by a pharmaceutical company for use in a variety of autoimmune diseases.

Dr. Ware hopes that his discoveries will help the 30 to 40 percent of rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s sufferers who don’t respond well or at all to the existing TNF based therapies. “There’s an unmet need,” he said. “I hope these new targets can help people who don’t respond to the current therapies.”

Dr. Ware serves on several foundations supporting biomedical research including the Arthritis National Research Foundation and the Sandler Foundation for Asthma Research. In addition, he is the recipient of a MERIT Award from the US Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, a 10 year award which is given for outstanding record of scientific achievement.