Wayne C. Koff, PhD   

Wayne is a General Partner of the Neuroimmune Catalyst Fund, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in transformative companies and technologies for prevention and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

In addition, since 2024, Wayne is a Managing Partner of Next Frontier Advisors (NFA), a consultancy firm at the nexus of human immunology, vaccine R&D, immunotherapeutic R&D, and artificial intelligence (AI) focused on improving global health. NFA is currently catalyzing the establishment of the Alzheimer’s Vaccine Initiative (AVI), a global consortium focused on ensuring the development of safe, effective, and globally accessible vaccines for prevention and control of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. In 2020-2024, Wayne was Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Epidemiology, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Previously (2016-2023), Wayne was founding President and CEO of the Human Immunome Project (formerly called the Human Vaccines Project) a non-profit R&D consortium focused on decoding the human immune system and creating AI models of human immunity to accelerate vaccine and therapeutic development. In 2019, in honor of his work on vaccine R&D, Wayne was named by Foreign Policy along with Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Melinda Gates, Angela Merkel, and others as one of the 100 Global Thinkers who have “had a profound impact on the planet in the last 12 months.” Prior to establishing the Human Vaccines Project, Wayne served as Sr. Vice President R&D and Chief Scientific Officer at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), leading IAVI’s research and development program between 1999-2016.

At IAVI, Wayne led its Innovation Fund, a venture capital fund which invested in early-stage companies with novel technologies applicable to accelerating AIDS vaccine development. The Innovation Fund’s early investment in VaxDesign, a privately held U.S. biotechnology company that develops, manufactures and markets in vitro models of the human immune system, led directly to Sanofi Pasteur’s acquisition of VaxDesign in 2010. In addition, Wayne established and led IAVI’s Neutralizing Antibody Consortium, a social venture capital-based consortium which identified broad and potent neutralizing antibodies against HIV that are currently in commercial development. Prior to IAVI, Wayne served in the biotechnology industry as Vice President of vaccine R&D at United Biomedical Inc. (UBI), where he was responsible for its vaccine R&D program. During his tenure at UBI (1992-1998), the company developed and patented a novel synthetic peptide-based technology platform; developed and later commercialized a foot and mouth disease vaccine based on this platform, developed experimental vaccines for infectious and non-communicable diseases which advanced to clinical trials, and conducted the first HIV vaccine trials in low- and middle-income countries. Prior to UBI, Wayne served as Chief of the Vaccine Research and Development Branch, Division of AIDS, at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, where he led the team that established the pre-clinical and clinical AIDS vaccine development programs for the National Institutes of Health (1988-1992) and was twice honored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with the Special Act of Service Award.

Wayne is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and has published over 100 scientific papers in leading journals such as Nature and Science, edited eight books on vaccine research and development, and is co-author of several issued and pending patents.