Michael O’Dwyer, MD
Founder & Director
Michael O’Dwyer is an experienced Clinician Scientist with a strong track record in clinical and translational research in blood cancers and has been involved in the clinical drug development of many ground-breaking treatments for Leukemia and Multiple Myeloma.
He is a Professor of Hematology responsible for clinical and translational research in blood cancers at the University of Galway, Ireland, and Founder, Director and Advisor to ONK Therapeutics. From 2020-2022 Michael was the company’s CSO, where he played a key role in the development of ONK’s optimally engineered NK cell therapy platform.
In recent years his main research focus has been on Multiple Myeloma where he is studying the immune microenvironment, the impact of glycosylation on cell trafficking and immune evasion and the genetic modification of Natural Killer (NK) cells to enable cell therapy for cancer.
He has over 100 peer reviewed publications and is listed as an inventor on more than 10 patents.
Michael is a member of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), the European Hematology Association (EHA) Scientific Working Party on Immunotherapy of Hematologic Malignancies and the International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG). He is also on the Scientific Advisory Board of Carrick Therapeutics.
Earlier in his career Michael was Assistant Professor at Oregon Health & Sciences University (OHSU), Portland, USA, where he worked on the development of imatinib.
Michael has an MD degree from NUI Galway (now University of Galway, Ireland) and undertook training in Hematology in Ireland followed by a Fellowship in Hematology and Medical Oncology at OHSU.
