Speaker Biographies by Name

Dr. Jarrett Adams is a research associate at the University of Toronto and the Associate Director of the Toronto Recombinant Antibody Centre. He is trained in the fields of protein engineering, molecular biology and structural biology at University of Toronto and Stanford University and Queen’s University. He directs a synthetic antibody discovery pipeline for academic and pharmaceutical programs.

Dr. Wasfi AlAzzam is the Chief Scientific Officer at TechnoPharmaSphere (TPS), and in this role, he provides scientific, research, development and technology development consultations for pharmaceutical and biotechnology products in the early and late stages. He helps technology/method developers develop and promote their technologies. Additionally, he helps intellectual property law firms evaluate data and identify infringement, acts as an expert witness, and drafts patents. He helps review, draft, and address questions on regulatory submissions. Before this, Dr. AlAzzam was a Fellow in CMC analytical development at GlaxoSmithKline, and formulation and delivery lead at Bayer Healthcare. His experience includes CMC development (cell culture, purification process, formulation, and analytical methods) and interfacing with regulatory and clinical development for multiple marketing and clinical stage biologics. Dr. AlAzzam was also the CMC lead for developing several unique radio labelled products for PET imaging clinical studies. He has done several international collaborations with academic, regulatory, and industrial institutions, and he contributes to the scientific community by serving on organizing committees and forums.

Arun Alphonse Ignatius is a Principal Scientist and Group Leader in the Pharmaceutical R&D group at Pfizer. He manages a group of scientists and as a matrix team(s) lead he is responsible for CMC aspects of drug product development for early and late-stage programs. He is currently involved in advancing the GTx portfolio and building platform formulation and process development capabilities. He is the unit point of contact in Pfizer Worldwide R&D postdoctoral program committee and a current postdoctoral mentor. His research focuses on the applications of NMR in the higher-order structural characterization of antibodies and fusion proteins. He has over 30 peer-reviewed publications in the area of protein formulation, biophysical characterization and structural biology.

Rich Altman has 30 years of experience in protein expression and production. In early 2019, he joined Thermo Fisher Scientific as a Field Application Scientist.  Previously, he worked for several pharmaceutical companies, including Amgen, Alexion, Bayer, and Upjohn, on the cloning, expression, purification and characterization of recombinant proteins. This work supported both small-molecule high-throughput screening and protein therapeutic efforts. He received his MS degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry.

Dr. Hamsell Alvarez was born in Lima, Perú. In 2002 he received a MS degree in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina working with synthetic models of Ni-Fe hydrogenases. He obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from Northwestern University in 2008 where he studied protein structure-based drug design of novel chemotherapeutic agents. Following the completion of his PhD, Dr. Alvarez was a postdoctoral research fellow at Merck Research Laboratories working with immunocytokines for oncology. Dr. Alvarez joined the Department of Oncology Discovery at AbbVie since 2011, where he leads a team working on bispecifics for cancer immunotherapy.

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Paolo Arosio is a tenure-track Assistant Professor for Biochemical Engineering at the Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering (ICB) at ETH Zurich. He obtained his doctoral degree from ETH Zurich in 2011, working under the supervision of Prof. M. Morbidelli. Subsequently, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. T.P.J. Knowles at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, U.K. His research interests include the development, characterization and formulation of therapeutic proteins.

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Dr George Badescu is Vice President Scientific Affairs at Heidelberg Pharma and has over 15 years of experience in the biotechnology sector. He most recently served as Vice President Scientific Affairs at Abzena Plc where he led the scientific promotion and commercialization of Abzena’s Technologies and Chemistry Research and Manufacturing Services. Prior to this, he led PolyTherics’ Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs) program since its inception and is co-inventor on several patents in the field of bioconjugation and ADCs. Prior to this, George has worked on lead identification by viral display technologies, antibody engineering and characterisation of antibody-hapten interactions. George received his PhD from the University of Warwick.

Aniket Badkar is Director, Biologics Product Development (BPD) at Allergan, PLC. In this role, Dr. Badkar leads a formulation development group within Allergan that is responsible for: Discovery support; Early and late stage Formulation development of biologics (Toxins, proteins, monoclonal antibodies, antibody fragments, bispecific antibodies, gene therapy etc.) for parenteral, ocular, oral and topical delivery; Process scale-up and Tech-transfer to clinical and commercial manufacturing sites and Regulatory interactions with various agencies related to drug product. Prior to joining Allergan, PLC., Dr. Badkar served multiple positions of increasing responsibilities at Zoetis, Inc. (formerly Pfizer-Animal Health) and Merck, Inc. and has more than 13 years of experience in the industry in product development activities. Dr. Badkar has a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Mercer University (Atlanta, GA), a BS in Pharmacy from University of Mumbai (India) and is co-author on 2 patents and has published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Christopher D. Bahl, studied the molecular mechanisms of bacterial host-pathogen interaction as a graduate student with Dean R. Madden, PhD at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. During his postdoctoral studies with David Baker, PhD at the University of Washington, Chris developed computational design methods and laboratory tools to create constrained peptides de novo. Currently, Chris is Head of Protein Design and the Institute for Protein Innovation in Boston, and he is affiliated faculty at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. His group develops and leverages new methods in high-throughput protein production to test and characterize their de novo designed proteins.

Professor Jeffrey E. Barrick received his BS in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2001 and his PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University in 2006. Professor Barrick performed his thesis research on the discovery and characterization of metabolite-sensing riboswitches in bacteria under the direction of Ronald Breaker. He was then a postdoctoral fellow from 2006 to 2010 with Richard Lenski at Michigan State University where he studied genome dynamics in a 30-year evolution experiment with Escherichia coli. His honors include NSF CAREER and NIH Pathway to Independence Awards. Dr. Barrick’s research is at the interface between synthetic biology and microbial evolution. His laboratory works to improve the reliability of biological engineering by developing methods to anticipate and prevent unwanted evolution of designed DNA sequences. They create and maintain open-source software, including the breseq pipeline for identifying mutations in microbial genomes from next-generation DNA sequencing data.

Professor Bathe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT, an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard, Co-Chair of the MIT New Engineering Education Transformation, and Chair of the MIT Committee on Student Life. Professor Bathe obtained his Doctoral Degree from MIT working in the Departments of Mechanical, Chemical, and Biological Engineering before moving to the University of Munich to carry out his postdoctoral research. He returned to MIT in 2009 to join the faculty in the Department of Biological Engineering, where he runs an interdisciplinary research group focused on the targeted delivery of therapeutic nucleic acids and vaccines, phenotypic profiling of neuronal circuits involved in psychiatric disease, and engineering nucleic acid materials for highly parallel molecular computing and massive data storage.

Phillip Berman is a biotech industry veteran with extensive experience in discovery research and manufacturing process development. He joined Genentech in 1982, and for the next 15 years worked on many projects, including developing basic technology for the expression and recovery of recombinant proteins, including vaccines, chimeric receptors and therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. Dr. Berman is best known for his 30-year effort to develop an HIV vaccine, which culminated in the RV144 vaccine trial that showed that an immunization regimen that included gp120 immunogens developed in Dr. Berman’s lab could prevent HIV infection in humans. In 2006 Dr. Berman joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Recently, Dr. Berman’s lab has focused on the use of gene editing and glyco-engineering to improve the antigenic structure of HIV-1 vaccine antigens, and to solve common problems in the large-scale production of monoclonal antibodies and vaccine immunogens in CHO cells.

Bakul Bhatnagar is a Principal Scientist in BioTherapeutics Pharmaceutical Sciences at Pfizer located in Andover, MA.  He obtained a PhD in Pharmaceutical Science from the University of Connecticut and performed post-doctoral work in the department of Pharmaceutics at the University of Minnesota.  He is experienced in formulation and process development of freeze-dried therapeutics and in frozen- and solid-state characterization of pharmaceuticals.

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Katharina Billian-Frey joined the Drug Discovery Unit of Apogenix as a Senior Scientist in January 2018. She is an expert in antibody-based immuno-oncology drugs and protein engineering. Prior to Apogenix, she worked as a post-doc at HI-STEM, a spin-off company of the German Cancer Research Center. She was responsible for the development and maintenance of a drug discovery pipeline for cancer stem cell derived targets. This included antigen expression and selection of drug candidate antibodies by phage display. Katharina Billian-Frey received her PhD from the ETH Zurich (Switzerland) working on antibody-based immunocytokines for tumor vascular targeting strategies, and studied Technical Biology at the University of Stuttgart (Germany) with a focus on antibody fusion proteins.

2015- Sanofi – Biologics Research_Protein Therapeutics  Section head HT-biologics 2008-2014 Bayer Healthcare – Global Biologics_Antibody Lead Discovery  Lab head Molecular Biology and Antibody Informatics; Scientific lead for antibody optimization; 2007-2008 Direvo Biotech AG  Senior scientist protein engineering; 2006-2007 University of Duesseldorf, Germany - Group Leader Biochemistry; 2002-2006 The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, US  Postdoc Immunology; Education: PhD Biochemistry, University of Frankfurt and Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany

Dr. Boado co-founded ArmaGen in 2004, following more than 25 years of academic experience in fields of molecular and cell biology of the BBB, and drug delivery to the brain. His leadership and expertise have been instrumental in the development of ArmaGen’s extensive product pipeline, including potential biotherapeutic treatments for mucopolysaccharidosis, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Boado is co-inventor of the intellectual property that supports ArmaGen’s pipeline. He is Professor Emeritus of Medicine at UCLA and has published over 200 scientific peer-reviewed publications and book chapters related to his field.

Kelly Bowen is a Sr. Associate Scientist in Analytical Development at bluebird bio, where she develops and qualifies potency assays. Part of Kelly’s work at bluebird has been to develop and implement characterization and control strategies for starting cell banks used in potency assays. Prior to bluebird bio, Kelly worked at MD Anderson, where she was first introduced to gene therapy. She earned her Master of Science in Cell Biology, Immunology, and Microbiology at the University of North Texas Health Science Center.

Andrew Bradbury was trained in medicine at the universities of Oxford and London, and subsequently practiced medicine for five years (one full-time, and four part-time) in the UK. He received his PhD (Cambridge University) in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology under the guidance of Dr. Cesar Milstein. After his PhD he spent 10 years in Italy: three years as a post doc in the CNR Institute of neurobiology, Rome, Italy; and seven years in Trieste, where he was first visiting professor, and subsequently tenured as assistant professor at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA, Trieste, Italy). He was a staff scientist and group leader at Los Alamos National Lab from July 1999 to June 2017, when he left to join Specifica, a startup he founded that specializes in antibody selections and selling unique antibody libraries. He has worked in the field of phage display and antibody engineering for 25 years and has helped organize over forty international congresses and practical courses in this field, both in Europe and the US. He has published over 130 peer-reviewed articles, including a number of reviews and commentaries on phage display and antibody engineering. He is one of the founding members of The Antibody Society and is on the editorial board of three journals.

Dr. Bramhill has over 20 years’ experience in biologics, both in large biopharma and startup biotech companies. He has experience in isolating and improving antibodies using phage display and is an inventor on library design techniques for small scaffolds. He also has experience in diverse expression systems for producing antibodies, antibody fragments and different scaffolds. He has taught numerous technical courses for over 15 years at international conferences.

Dr. Christoph Brandenbusch studied Chemical Engineering at the Department of Biochemical and Chemical Engineering at TU Dortmund, (Germany) 2003-2007. He finished his PhD thesis in the field of downstream processing in biocatalysis in 2011. Since 2012 he works as a group leader at the Laboratory of Thermodynamics, Department of Biochemical and Chemical Engineering, TU Dortmund (Germany). His main research fields include: Novel strategies for protein purifications in pharmaceutical bio-processes (e.g. precipitation, aqueous two-phase extraction) including hybrid-modeling approaches therefor. The development of physical-sound models for the identification of excipients and excipient mixtures in high-concentration biopharmaceutical formulations

Bryan did his graduate work at Vanderbilt University under the mentorship of James Crowe, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Dennis Burton’s lab at The Scripps Research Institute. In 2018, he joined the Department of Immunology and Microbiology as an Assistant Professor. His lab studies the genetics of antibody responses to immunization and infection.

Dr. Ulrich Brinkmann is a member of Roche’s Large Molecule Research organization within Pharma Research & Early Development at the Roche Innovation Center Munich (Penzberg, Germany). His work focuses on protein & antibody engineering, bispecifics, and on delivery platforms for targeted payload delivery. Prior to joining Roche, he served as CSO in functional genomics and pharmacogenetics companies Xantos and Epidauros. His previous work in Ira Pastan’s Molecular Biology Lab at the NIH/NCI in Bethesda, USA focused on antibody stabilization and engineering technologies, and on generating recombinant immunotoxins for cancer therapy. Dr. Brinkmann is author of numerous publications and inventor of many patents covering recombinant antibodies, pharmaco- & functional genomics, immunotoxins and protein engineering technologies and applications.

Dr. Christine Brown is the Heritage Provider Network Professor in Immunotherapy at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center. As Deputy Director of the T Cell Therapeutics Research Laboratories (TCTRL), Dr. Brown also provides scientific oversight for the translational research programs evaluating chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy for hematological and solid cancers. Over the past 17 years, Dr. Brown’s research has focused on advancing CAR T cell therapy for the treatment of cancer. Her efforts to develop glioblastoma-targeted CAR T cells, improve T cell manufacturing, and optimize routes of T cell delivery have led to the initiation of multiple first-in-human clinical trials, including recent trials evaluating IL13Rα2- and HER2-targeted CAR T cells for the treatment of recurrent glioblastoma. This clinical experience is revealing important insights into the optimization of CAR T cells for the treatment of solid tumors. Dr. Brown’s ongoing research efforts also aim to develop strategies to limit tumor antigen escape and to overcome the suppressive tumor microenvironment, critical challenges limiting the effectiveness of CAR T cell therapy. In this presentation, she will describe a new platform that utilizes a cyclic peptide, termed meditope, to specifically bind to and expand the functionality of CAR T cells.

Matt Brown completed his PhD at the University of London and followed this with Postdoctoral Fellowships at Harvard Medical School, in Boston, USA. Prior to joining Malvern Panalytical, Matt worked in the biopharmaceutical sector, employing a range of biophysical and biochemical methods to support bioprocess development and commercial manufacturing operations. Currently, Matt is the Bioscience Applications Manager for the US, specializing in the Biopharmaceutical sector.

David received his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. During his time as an undergraduate, he conducted research at the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST) as part of the protein expression team to create a device which can produce and purify biologically derived medicines at the point of care and on demand as part of the DARPA Bio-MOD program. After finishing his undergraduate degree, he continued his research as a PhD student at CAST under Dr. Govind Rao to investigate the use of human blood as a potential source of materials for cell-free protein expression.

Dr. Rob Burgess is currently CBO at Sino Biological and has over 25 years of scientific and business development experience. His previous positions include VP, Global Business Development at RayBiotech, VP, Business Development for the UK-based firm Stem Cell Sciences; VP, Research and Development at the nanotechnology company Zyvex Corporation.

Nicola Burgess-Brown is the Principal Investigator of the Biotechnology Group at the SGC, responsible for managing all biotech research for the Oxford site. Nicola’s team develops high-throughput screening processes from cloning to expression, purification and mass spectrometry analysis of human proteins for structural and functional studies. Nicola obtained a First Class degree in Applied Biochemical Sciences from the University of Ulster in 1997, then worked as a molecular biologist for SmithKline Beecham. She received her PhD in Molecular Microbiology at the University of Nottingham in 2001 and then moved back to industry to work on high-throughput cloning and validation of therapeutic cancer antigens for Oxford Glycosciences and subsequently Celltech R&D.

Johannes Buyel studied Molecular Biotechnology at the RWTH Aachen University (Aachen, Germany), obtaining his Bachelor’s in 2006 and his Master’s in 2009 focusing on protein expression and purification. He gained experience as lab manager at m2p-labs (Aachen, Germany) as well as the Lund University and the Fraunhofer Center for Molecular Biotechnology working with microbial, mammalian and plant-based expression systems, respectively. Johannes finished his PhD at the RWTH Aachen University in 2013, focusing on modelling protein expression in plants and the optimization of the corresponding downstream processing. He joined the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME (Aachen, Germany) in 2014 as a Post-Doc and became group leader in 2015 to develop a high-through screening platform for protein expression and purification. Later in 2015, Johannes was promoted to head the department of Integrated Production Platforms, supervising process development and scale-up.

I received a PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University 2010. My graduate education focused on bio-calorimetry with an emphasis on determining the energetics of macromolecular assembly of proteins and DNA. Following my formal education, I transitioned into a post doc appointment at BSRI Blood Systems Research institute / UCSF Dept of Immunology where I branched out into Immunology. At BSRI I analyzed a new pathogen reduction technique for blood and blood related products. Afterwards I started my career at Abbott developing a hematology analyzer (simple flow cytometer) for hospitals. I then decided to transition my career one more time with an emphasis on drug development at AbbVie. At AbbVie I built my foundational knowledge in drug development working with mAbs, ADCs and fusion protein formulations. This culminated into my AbbVie Preformulation team winning the AbbVie R&D Presidential Award for reconstructing the screening funnel. I am now happily utilizing all my experience developing vaccines and biologics at Merck in the SFS Sterile Formulation Sciences Department. I have wide experience and expertise in predicting and mitigating protein stability (i.e. viscosity and aggregate formation for high concentration mAb formulations).

Sean Carroll received his academic training with George Georgiou at the University of Texas. His academic and professional work have focused on antibody engineering, repertoire technologies and drug discovery. At Atreca, Sean leads a group focused on patient-repertoire generation and high-throughput screening of repertoires for target-agnostic drug discovery.

Dr. Richard Cavicchi earned his PhD in physics at Cornell University, was a post-doc at AT&T Bell Labs, and then joined the research staff at the National Institute of Standards & Technology in 1989. His work has covered a variety of measurements related to microfabricated sensors and nanomaterials. Present research focuses on relating orthogonal measurements of protein aggregates.

David Cetlin is the founder and C.E.O. of MockV Solutions, Inc. A company dedicated towards establishing and commercializing a novel series of BSL-1 compatible viral clearance prediction kits. These kits will be designed to benefit downstream purification process scientists as they develop, characterize, and validate their downstream purification processes. Prior to MockV, David helped develop, characterize, and validate several monoclonal antibody purification processes at Human Genome Sciences/Glaxo Smith Kline and has worked with various separation techniques including all modes of column chromatography, tangential flow filtration, nano-filtration. During his time at HGS/GSK, David routinely designed and executed process related studies including resin lifetime studies, viral clearance studies, design of experiment (DOE) studies, etc. He also participated in the technology transfer of several processes to manufacturing scale cGMP facilities, provided on-site support during cGMP campaigns and conducted investigational studies to support deviations that occurred during such campaigns. He also explored and introduced new technologies and ideas to his purification team including a single pass mode of operating tangential flow filtration, a salt tolerant ion exchange membrane, and a pre-protein A depth filter for improving protein A lifetime.

Julie Champion is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned her BSE. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and her PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara. She was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology. Professor Champion’s current research focuses on design and self-assembly of functional materials made from engineered proteins for applications in immunology, cancer, and biocatalysis. Dr. Champion has received a BRIGE award from the National Science Foundation, the Georgia Tech Women in Engineering Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Georgia Tech BioEngineering Program Outstanding Advisor Award.

Preet M. Chaudhary, MD, PhD, is chief of the Jane Anne Nohl Division of Hematology and Center for the study of Blood Diseases at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is also Professor of Medicine, Ronald H. Bloom Family Chair in Lymphoma Research, and Program Director of the USC/Norris Blood and Marrow Transplant Program. Dr. Chaudhary has research interests in several areas of cancer, including cancer drug resistance, biology of normal and leukemic hematopoietic stem cells, programmed cell death and cellular signaling. Current work in Dr. Chaudhary's laboratory is focused on developing novel strategies to improve the outcome of stem cell transplantation and the use of chimeric antigen receptor modified T cells for the treatment of cancer. His laboratory has developed several sensitive assays for detecting the expression and activity of CAR-T cells and used them to develop a next generation CAR-T platform.

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Pauline Che is a process development engineer at Genentech who is responsible for the design, implementation, and oversight of biologic drug product process development from early stage to commercial manufacturing production. In addition, Pauline evaluates novel technologies and approaches for freeze-drying and lyophilized drug product characterization analytics. Prior to her focus in drug product process development, Pauline has led projects with significant impact to the Roche manufacturing network, including clearance of product carryover through purification processes and development of product inactivation strategy to streamline Roche cleaning validation program during product changeover. Pauline was born and raised in Taiwan. She spent her teenage years in Vietnam and ventured to the US where she obtained her BS & MSE degrees in biomedical engineering from the Johns Hopkins University. Having lived in three different countries, Pauline finally settled down with her family in California where she enjoys the beautiful weather and outdoor activities in her spare time.

Bob is the Director of Engineering and a co-founder of xCella Biosciences. He leads technology development and B cell screening efforts. Bob completed his PhD in Bioengineering at Stanford University under the guidance of Jennifer Cochran.

Dr. Michelle Chen graduated from the Chemical Engineering Dept. at Yale University, where her doctoral work focused on the development of novel approaches for high speed and high efficiency HPLC of biopolymers. Since joining Wyatt Technology in 1996, she has incorporated multi-angle light scattering and dynamic light scattering detection into the characterization of various synthetic and biological polymers with HPLC and field-flow fractionation.

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Dr. Chiou has over 15 years of experience working on development of mammalian protein expression systems and transfection reagents. For the past nine years, he has worked as a principal scientist and now in product development and portfolio management for Life Technologies, now part of Thermo Fisher Scientific. He has led the development efforts on a number of products, including the FreeStyle™ transient expression systems, Lipofectamine™ LTX and Lipofectamine™ RNAiMAX. Prior to Life Technologies, he worked for several biotech companies on biotherapeutic gene delivery systems. Dr. Chiou received his doctorate from Harvard University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

Vijay Chiruvolu is Vice President at Kite Pharma, a Gilead Sciences company, and leads the Process Development organization. The Process Development group at Kite is responsible for process design of autologous, allogeneic, neoantigen and vector products, analytical development, tech transfer, validation, comparability, technology development, and Manufacturing Science & Technology (MSAT functions. Vijay joined Kite in Sept 2014, and since that time he has built a strong team dedicated to process and product understanding, clinical and commercial manufacturing support and led the way to YESCARTA process development, validation and ultimately BLA and MAA filings. Prior joining Kite, Vijay worked for 22 years in key leadership roles with increasing responsibilities in Quality, Risk Management, Process Development and Manufacturing at Scios, Avigen, Hoffmann-La Roche, Johnson & Johnson and Amgen. Vijay earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Engineering, before receiving his PhD in Biochemical Engineering from the University of Nebraska, and an MBA in Finance from Penn State’s Smeal College of Business. In addition, he is a certified black belt in six sigma and holds a professional certificate in Strategic Decision and Risk Management from Stanford University.

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Yongku Cho is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Connecticut. He obtained his degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (PhD) and Seoul National University (BS). His research group develops protein engineering approaches to identify high specificity antibodies that target biomarkers of neurodegenerative disorders. They also apply protein engineering to light-activated proteins to develop tools for identifying mechanisms behind complex biological system function and its disorders.

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Partha Chowdhury is Senior Director in Sanofi Biologics Research, US. He joined Sanofi in 2017 and leads antibody discovery and technology development activities in Biologics discovery, research and development. He has been involved with antibody discovery, engineering and technology development for the last 20 years. Partha did his PhD dissertation in biochemistry from the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology and his post-doctoral research in NIH. During this time and in his tenure at the Human Genome Sciences and MedImmune, he has discovered and developed several different platforms for antibody discovery and engineering, many of which have led to awarded patents. Partha is a recipient of Excellence in Technology Transfer, awarded by the US National Laboratory Consortium. He serves in the editorial board of mAbs and is an author of many peer reviewed publications and patents.

Dr. Dominic Clarke joins the company in Los Angeles after previous positions held at Charter Medical and BioLife Solutions. At Charter Medical, Dr. Clarke successfully launched their first FDA 510(K) approved product for cell & gene therapy manufacturing use and was instrumental in positioning the company as a leading supplier to the industry. While at BioLife, Dr. Clarke led the research and development to support the critical role of biopreservation in maintaining viable, functional cell-based materials.  With a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from Binghamton University in New York and a postdoctoral fellowship in cell and developmental biology from SUNY Upstate Medical University, Dr. Clarke will offer scientific insight, product development strategy, and advanced support to HemaCare’s growing customer base.

Jennifer Cochran is the Shriram Chair of the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. She is a Professor of Bioengineering and, by courtesy, Chemical Engineering and a member of the Cancer Biology, Biophysics, and Immunology graduate programs. Dr. Cochran serves as the Director of the Stanford/NIH Biotechnology pre-doctoral training program, and co-Director of the Stanford NIST pre-doctoral training program. Her research group uses interdisciplinary approaches in chemistry, engineering, and biophysics to study complex biological systems and to develop new tools for basic science and biomedical applications. Dr. Cochran translational interests span protein-based drug discovery and development for applications in oncology and regenerative medicine, and development of new technologies for high-throughput protein analysis and engineering. Dr. Cochran obtained her PhD in Biological Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Biological Engineering.

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I have run the UMMC AUC Facility for 23 years and my current collaborations include basic science (iMotifs with Randy Wadkins at Ole Miss; ELP with Nick Fitzkee at Miss State) and biotech (Cytokine receptor interactions with Janssen R&D; pre-clinical characterization of therapeutic antibodies with Boehringer-Ingelheim). My research has focused on two broad areas including biophysical studies of macromolecular interactions by analytical ultracentrifuge (AUC) techniques (trained with Dave Yphantis at UCONN) with an emphasis on the interaction of anti-mitotic drugs like vinca alkaloids with tubulin and microtubule proteins (Postdoc with Robley Williams at Vanderbilt; AUC Facility Director since 1994). Our vinca work (1994-2010) focused on the Biothermodynamics of tubulin spiral interactions that stressed implications for translational studies and predicted clinical potencies and mechanisms of drug resistance. We pursued numerous collaborations with drugs companies that provided vinca derivatives (Eli Lilly; Pierre Fabre; Eisai) and measured comparative energetics by AUC. Two of these drugs (Vinflunine in Europe; Eribulin in the US) have made it to the clinics. Our recent focus is on the characterization of a drug delivery system, Elastin-Like Peptide, and the hydrodynamic characterization of ELP in serum. This work started as a collaboration with a University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) lab focused on xenograft animal models and testing the effectiveness of thermo-responsive ELP for drug delivery and cancer treatment. My group and collaborations are focused on the polymer physics of ELP aggregation with implications for both basic science mechanisms and translational aspects of these biophysical studies. Our current ELP studies are measuring the impact of Doxorubicin labeling of ELP and the role of osmolytes. This work entails CD and laser raman to measure structural transitions, turbidity and DLS to measure transition temperatures and construct phase diagrams, DSC to measure enthalpy, AUC and DLS to look at Rh, nucleation and hydrodynamics, and SEM as a new method to look at size distributions and droplet structures. We are also working on hydrodynamic characterization of monoclonal antibodies (mAb) in serum. This involves the development of preclinical methods to study the hydrodynamics and thermodynamics of proteins in high concentration environments like cell extracts and serum. This requires the use of the Aviv FDS to measure hydrodynamic ks and thermodynamic BM1 nonideality of solutions composed of mAbs, human serum albumin and human IgG. All mAb’s seem to weakly associate so all analysis entails extracting ks, BM1 and K2 values to get the best fit. We performed Sedimentation Velocity and Equilibrium experiments but have found great utility in using both Synthetic Boundary and Band Sedimentation to extract concentration dependence of Diffusion coefficients.

Dr. Maria Jose Costa is Associate Director of Research at Immune-Onc Therapeutics. Prior to joining Immune-Onc Therapeutics, Dr. Costa was a Principal Scientist at Rinat Laboratories and Cancer Immunology Discovery, part of Pfizer’s Oncology R&D for over 4 years, where she led discovery of tumor-targeted antibody-drug conjugates for hematological malignancies of high unmet need and antibody-based therapeutics to counteract the immune suppressive microenvironment of solid tumors. Dr. Costa received her BS degree in Biochemistry from University of Coimbra, Portugal and a PhD in cell biology from a joint program between University of Porto, Portugal and Free University of Brussels, Belgium, under the supervision of Prof. Jacques Dumont. Dr. Costa moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, where she completed postdoctoral training in cancer biology at University of California San Francisco, and in stem cell biology at Stanford University.

Philippe Cronet, PhD, is Director of Global Bioprocess Development at Wacker Biotech. Philippe is trained as a protein engineering and production specialist. Within more than 20 years he developed significant experience in the CDMO and Service industry, overseeing the development of small and large scale production processes for various biopharmaceuticals.

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Tony D’Alessio is a Senior Research Investigator and Lab Head in the Oncology Biotherapeutics group at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research where he works on antibody drug conjugates and other novel biologics-based therapeutic approaches to targeting tumour and immune cells.  Prior to Novartis he held positions at Igenica, Inc. and the Janelia Farm Research campus of HHMI.

I am a scientist at the Cell Culture Department in Genentech. I have been in my current role since 2018. My research involves understanding the biology of CHO cells that express proteins and antibodies during the production process and improving the processes for higher titer and specific product quality attributes. Bachelor: Tsinghua University, Biological Sciences; PhD: University of Michigan, Molecular Biology; Post-doctoral fellow: Genentech, Cell Culture

Trevor has 39 years of experience in pharmaceutical development, manufacturing, quality control and quality assurance. He is registered as an eligible QP under EC Directive and has also practiced as a registered Pharmacist in the UK. He now resides in Maryland and has his own consulting business. He has a PhD in Peptide Chemistry and has extensive expertise in aseptic processing, and in a wide range of unique and unusual biotechnology processes, including live vaccines, tissue culture products, and cell-based products.

Steve leads a group at Lilly responsible for the design, engineering, and mechanistic characterization of proteins, antibodies, and antibody-like molecules. Prior to joining Lilly in 2011, Steve held positions at Biogen Idec, Diversa Corp, and Syngenta working as a Protein Chemist/Engineer on antibody and protein therapeutics design and biochemistry. Steve performed his graduate work at SUNY Stony Brook studying protein folding mechanisms. Steve was a NIH sponsored postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Research Institute studying the structure, folding, and binding of nuclear co-activator proteins.

Ryan Denomme is the CEO and co-founder of Nicoya. Nicoya’s mission is to improve human life by helping scientists succeed. Ryan is a nanotechnology engineer and alumni of the University of Waterloo. His relentless passion to solve the challenges faced by researchers is proven by his industry-disrupting products and numerous patents. Under Ryan’s leadership, Nicoya supports hundreds of researchers at the world’s leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical organizations to accelerate their next big discovery.

Iskandar Dib got his education at Graz University of Technology and the Research Center Applied Biocatalysis. After obtaining his PhD he joined the team of VALIDOGEN where he is now heading the DSP and Analytics department. His areas of expertise include process development for up- and downstream processes applying DoE tools for process understanding.

David DiLillo is a Senior Staff Scientist in the Immuno-Oncology department at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in New York, where he leads a team investigating novel T cell-retargeting technologies. His team is responsible for IND-enabling as well as mechanistic in vitro and in vivo studies using Regeneron’s unique bispecific antibody platform to treat both liquid and solid tumors. His team also actively investigates chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell biology in similar model systems. Dr. DiLillo holds a PhD in Immunology from Duke University, where he studied non-classical B cell effector functions, and he completed his postdoctoral studies in Fc-receptor biology at the Rockefeller University.

Rakesh Dixit, PhD, DABT, is currently the President & CEO of Bionavigen Consulting and Drug Development company based in Gaithersburg, MD, USA.  Dr. Rakesh also holds the position of Scientific Advisor of Amador Bioscience, a leading global partner for biotherapeutics development.  Dr. Dixit is currently a consultant/advisor for nearly 10 biopharmaceutical companies, engaged in the development of gene and cell therapy, ADCs, bispecific, immuno-oncology biologics, oncolytic viruses, small molecule drugs, diagnostics, translational biomarkers.

Albor Dobon-Alonso originally from Spain graduated from the UPV (Valencia, Spain) with an MSc Eng in Agronomy. He obtained a PhD in Plant Biotechnology in Dr Pablo Tornerois lab at the IBMCP (Valencia, Spain) studying plant pathogen interaction in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. After a short postdoc with Professor Pablo Vera he was awarded a Marie Curie IEF Fellowship to work in Professor Cristobal Uauy’s Lab at the John Innes Centre where he studied yellow rust disease in wheat, focused in effector discovery. After that, he has been involved in several projects, including exploring the plant production of VLPs in Professor George Lomonossoff’s Lab. Albor joined Leaf Expression Systems in July 2018 and is the Senior Microbiology Scientist of the company.

Yves Durocher obtained his PhD in Biochemistry at the Université de Montréal in 1993. He joined the NRC in 1995 and was in charge of industrial projects with bio/pharmaceutical companies for the production of membrane receptors and recombinant proteins for various drug discovery projects. Yves manages a section of 33 members involved in protein expression and CHO cell line development for internal projects and external clients. His research activities focus on improving large-scale transient gene expression (LSTGE) platforms using HEK293 and CHO cells for protein production and on developing and engineering stable CHO pool and clonal cell line platforms for recombinant protein manufacturing. Yves is also an adjunct professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at the University of Montreal.

Jess is a PhD student at the University of Leeds in collaboration with AstraZeneca. Supervised by Prof Sheena Radford and Dr David Brockwell she is developing new assays for evolving proteins as better biologics with enhanced bioprocessing properties.

Dr Aris N. Economides joined Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc in 1992 and he currently holds the position of Sr. Director, leading two groups: Genome Engineering Technologies, and Skeletal Diseases TFA. Dr. Economides is a co-inventor of the Cytokine Trap technology that led to the development of the IL-1 trap, a currently approved biologic drug (ARCALYST™). He is also a co-inventor of the VelociGene® technology, that has led to the development of VelocImmune®, a method for the generation of all-human antibodies in mice. More recently, he has been spearheading the development of new methods for the generation of transgenic mice using BAC as transgene vectors, and has also pioneered a new method for generating conditional alleles.

Sabine Eichling has been named Head of Advanced Formulation Development within NBE Formulation Sciences in Ludwigshafen effective March 1st, 2019. This group provides customized and flexible formulation support for different focus areas such as late-stage projects, discovery support and cross-functional initiatives. Sabine joined AbbVie in 2007 for her diploma thesis on standardized liquid formulation development for monoclonal antibodies. She then joined the NBE Drug Product Development function in 2008 until 2013 as a lab scientist. During this time, she supported the development of liquid and lyo formulations as well as spear-heading several initiatives. In 2013 Sabine started her PhD thesis at AbbVie in Collaboration with the University of Heidelberg and the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich on “Establishing in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo models to study the behavior of monoclonal antibody formulations upon subcutaneous injection”. In 2017 Sabine joined the High Throughput Formulation Screening Group as a Senior Scientist II and took over the responsibility for HTS data evaluation and report generation. Furthermore, Sabine continued to support multiple cross-functional initiatives with Preclinical Safety Lu & LC, Bioanalysis/DMPK & NBE Analytics on new models to quantify the pain during subcutaneous injection, uptake & metabolization of antibodies by using open-flow microperfusion & in-vivo imaging.

Susanna Elledge is a current fourth year graduate student at UCSF in the Chemistry and Chemical Biology program. She works in Prof. Jim Wells’ lab on antibody bioconjugation. She did her undergraduate BS in Chemical Biology at UC Berkeley and worked on bioconjugation in Prof. Matt Francis’ lab.

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Alan L. Epstein MD, PhD is a Professor at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and has over 30 years of experience in the laboratory developing monoclonal antibodies and other reagents for the treatment of cancer. He has published over 150 papers in the field and has filed 25 patents including those describing the use of TNT antibodies for the imaging and therapy of cancer. Along with TNT antibodies, Dr. Epstein has invented the Lym-1 antibody for the treatment of lymphoma, vasopermeability enhancing antibodies to increase the uptake of drugs and antibodies in tumors, the LN panel of diagnostic antibodies, and most recently several novel fusion proteins for the immunotherapy of cancer. He has been a consultant for numerous biotechnology companies and is an accomplished speaker and scientist in his field. Dr. Epstein holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT and obtained the MD and PhD degrees from the Medical Scientist Training Program at Stanford University School of Medicine. Before coming to the University of Southern California, Dr. Epstein started his academic career in the Department of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology at the Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago.

Amelie Eriksson Karlström is Professor of Molecular Biotechnology at the Department of Protein Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where her research group is working on protein engineering, affinity technologies and bioconjugation chemistry for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. She has a background in peptide synthesis from her PhD in Neurochemistry and Neurotoxicology at Stockholm University, and did a postdoc at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, where she was working on catalytic antibodies and display technologies.

Reza is an Associate Director/group leader at AstraZeneca, focusing on formulation and process development of biopharmaceutical drugs. During my eight and half year tenure at AstraZeneca, my responsibilities have spanned pre-clinical to late stage development. With a passion for enhancing patient’s experience and convenience in using our medicines, my scientific interest lies in advancing the science and strategy that enables routine development of high concentration liquid formulations for use with combination products. For my education, I received a BS in Chemical Engineering, and then MS & PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from University of Kansas.

Dr. Esposito is currently the Director of the Protein Expression Laboratory (PEL) at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research. The PEL is currently focused on providing production of Ras and Ras-related proteins for the National Cancer Institute’s RAS Initiative. These proteins are being used for a wide-ranging attack on Ras biology including structural biology, biophysics, and development of screens and assays for drug discovery. In addition, the PEL still assists in the generation of proteins of interest to investigators in the intramural program of the NCI, and invents and develops new technologies for protein expression and production. Dr. Esposito received his BA in Chemistry at La Salle University in Philadelphia, and his PhD in Biochemistry at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School. Dr. Esposito previously worked for Life Technologies, where he helped to develop the Gateway recombinational cloning system.

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Stefan Ewert, PhD joined Novartis in 2004 and holds the position of a Senior Investigator within the NIBR Biologics Center. He is responsible for library-based technologies for antibody drug discovery. Before joining Novartis he was instrumental in developing ESBATech’s scFv-based key technology. During his PhD thesis in the group of Andreas Plückthun at the University of Zürich, Switzerland he published several papers on antibody stability and engineering.

Justin Eyquem received his PhD from the University of Paris-Diderot in collaboration with the biotech company Cellectis. During his PhD, he participated to the development of gene editing tools such as Meganuclease or TALEN in primary human cells and notably identified genomic location for safe integration of therapeutic genes. In 2014, he joined Michel Sadelain’s lab at the MSKCC and used CRISPR/Cas9 to engineer CAR T cells. He showed how targeting CAR transgene into specific loci enhance T cell efficacy, advance CAR immuno-biology, and facilitate T cell manufacturing. In early 2019, he opened his lab in the department of Microbiology and Immunology at UCSF where he is developing a gene editing platform to enhance CAR T cell functions in solid tumors.

Rui Fang is a Senior Scientist in the Sterile Formulation Sciences group at Merck. Her role is to support formulation and lyophilization development of sterile products as well as innovative projects in alternative drying. She received her PhD degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences in the University of Connecticut under the mentorship of Prof. Bogner and Prof. Pikal, focusing on understanding the influence of freezing variables and the role of protein internal dynamics on stability of lyophilized protein formulations.

Dr. Feldwisch, Director Preclinical Development of Affibody AB, joined the company in 2002. He has more than 25 years of experience in life science research with particular expertise in protein engineering of alternative scaffolds, protein biochemistry and development of drug candidates for clinical trials. He received his MSc in Biology with main focus on biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Cologne and earned his PhD at the Max-Planck-Institute für Züchtungsforschung in Cologne in 1992. In the following years he worked at Pharmacia, Pharmacia&Upjohn and later Biovitrum both with biotherapeutics and small molecule pharmaceuticals. His current research interests include optimization of small scaffold proteins as well as preclinical and clinical development of Affibody molecules for therapeutic use.

Dr. Furebring joined Alligator Bioscience in 2001, as a SVP Research she is responsible for the preclinical programs consisting of mono and bispecific antibodies for tumor directed immunotherapy of cancer. Dr. Furebring has more than 20 years of experience with protein and antibody optimization as well as generation of antibodies using phage display. Dr. Furebring completed her PhD in Immunotechnology from Lund University, Sweden.

Upon finishing his studies in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Norbert pursued his interdisciplinary PhD thesis in Computational Life Sciences and Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Bonn focusing on computer-aided design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of protease inhibitors. After being a Principal Scientist for Analytical Development at Merck KGaA, he joined Sanofi as Lab Head for Bioinformatics working on the integration of computational methods and data workflows for high-throughput screening technologies within the Biologics Research department.

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Guangping Gao, PhD is the Co-Director, Li Weibo Institute for Rare Diseases Research, Director, Horae Gene Therapy Center, Penelope Booth Rockwell Professor in Biomedical Research at UMass Medical School, President, American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, elected fellows of the US National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and American Academy of Microbiology (AAM). Dr. Gao is an internationally recognized gene therapy researcher, instrumental in the discovery and characterization of a new family of adeno-associated virus (AAV) serotypes, which revitalized the field of gene therapy. Dr. Gao’s research primarily focuses on gene therapy platform technologies and product development. Dr. Gao has published 260 research papers, 6 book chapters, and 5 edited books. Dr. Gao holds 135 patents with 239 more patent applications pending. Dr. Gao was ranked as #4 of the World Top 20 Translational Researchers from 2013-to 2017 by Nature Biotechnology. Dr. Gao co-founded Voyager Therapeutics and Aspa Therapeutics.

In 2008, I received my BS in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics at Illinois Institute of Technology. I then pursued my PhD in biochemistry at the University of Arizona, where I studied copper and silver homeostasis by Gram negative bacteria under Megan McEvoy. In 2014, I began a postdoctoral appointment with Jun-yong Choe at Rosalind Franklin University, where I identified inhibitors of GLUT5, the human fructose transporter. In 2016, I joined Discovery Protein Mass Spectrometry at AbbVie’s North Chicago site. Since then, I have been supporting recombinant protein characterization by mass spectrometry.

Tyler Gibson got his PhD in the Biomedical Engineering department at Duke University, where he studied the application of molecular and synthetic biology tools to cellular differentiation and reprogramming. After a postdoc at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary studying the use of synthetic transcriptional regulators in inner ear-derived organoid culture, he joined Decibel Therapeutics where he works as a scientist on the design and use of gene therapy vectors in the inner ear.

Benson Gikanga joined Genentech in Early Stage Formulation Development (ESPD) department in 2006. He worked on formulation development of several biopharmaceutical modalities including Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs), high concentration monoclonal antibodies for immunology application, and Fabs for ophthalmic application. While in ESPD, he researched on Drug Release from ADCs as well as oxidation and Isomerization of protein and excipients. In 2012, he assumed a role in Pharmaceutical and Processing and Technology Development department (PPTD) where he develops, optimizes, and transfers processes critical to production of final large molecule Drug Product. He also researches on fill and finish processes including filling, mixing as well as protein drying technologies. He is a strong process improvement enthusiast and has supported and led several global initiatives within Roche. Benson is a Biochemist by training.

Elke Glasmacher works currently since 2017 at Roche pRED where she is heading a department in Large Molecule Research, responsible for the lead generation process and scientific developments. She worked at Grünenthal in Aachen, studied in Cologne Biology and moved for her main courses in Biochemistry to Boston and then the Max Planck of Biochemistry. She then switched to immunology for her PhD thesis and described a mechanism that prevents autoreactive T cells and lupus. She moved in 2010 to Genentech as a Postdoctoral Fellow and discovered a genomic regulatory element that drives differentiation programs of immune cells. In 2013 she established an independent investigator laboratory at the Helmholtz Center Munich where she continued to work on molecular factors driving immune cell fate and activation, which she continues to be associated.

Charles Glass, PhD is a scientist by training. After working at Johnson and Johnson in Target Gene Discovery, Dr. Glass became interested in glycans (polysaccharides) as drug targets. Despite playing critical roles in a number of physiological and pathophysiologic areas, pharmaceutical interest in glycans (and competition) lags due to the structural complexity of glycans and the lack of analytical tools. With colleagues at UCSD, Dr. Glass cofounded Zacharon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. which developed analytical techniques and novel screening technologies for glycan inhibitors. As President and CEO, Dr. Glass raised funding for Zacharon through angel investors, government grants, and Avalon Ventures. With VC funding, Zacharon developed its small molecule inhibitors, attracted pharmaceutical partners, and was sold to BioMarin in a merger-acquisition in 2013. Following the Zacharon sale, Dr. Glass cofounded TEGA Therapeutics, Inc. which is also based around glycan technologies. TEGA is producing and testing polysaccharides for sale and with pharmaceutical partners.

Dr. Glassy graduated from the University of San Francisco in 1974 with a BS in Biology and Chemistry. He then attended University of California, Riverside and received his PhD in biochemistry in 1978. He did his post-doctoral studies in molecular immunology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. Dr. Glassy joined the faculty of the Department of Medicine and Cancer Center at UCSD in 1980 and is currently in the Translational Neuro-Oncology Laboratory at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center. In addition to UCSD, Dr. Glassy has held several upper management positions in commercial biotechnology. Currently, he is the Founder and Chairman of Nascent Biotech, Inc. He has prepared and directed several FDA approved clinical trials involving human monoclonal antibodies to cancer. Dr. Glassy has over 175 publications in the scientific and medical literature, is the inventor of several issued patents in the human antibody field, is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, HUMAN ANTIBODIES, and the Program Chairman of the meeting series, "The International Conference on Human Antibodies and Hybridomas". Glassy is the inventor of pritumumab, the first human antibody used to treat a cancer patient and is the recipient of the 2003 Arthur Furst Award (citation: “Outstanding research advancing science for the betterment of humanity”). He is also the author of the books, "The Biology of Science Fiction Cinema", “Movie Monsters in Scale”, and "Biology Run Amok!".

Jonathan Goldman served as the CEO of Aptuit, an integrated small molecule discovery, development and manufacturing CRO from 2013 to 2017, that also operated a sterile fill finish facility. He has 29 years of experience in healthcare. He previously held senior positions at ICON Plc and Point Biomedical. Until 2018 he also held appointments in the division of Cardiology at the University of California following appointments at the John Radcliffe Hospital as a Consultant Cardiologist.

Steffen Goletz’s experience in innovation stems from more than 17 years as the scientific founder and CEO of four biotech companies. As Deputy Head of DTU Bioengineering, he has a special responsibility for science-based innovation and entrepreneurship, which involves developing research activities towards applications and entrepreneurship to facilitate startup activities. Steffen Goletz’ research and innovation expertise ranges from molecular protein- and glycoengineering, and humanization of biopharmaceuticals, antibody and protein engineering, as well as novel glycoengineered GMP manufacturing production, and clinical development.

Dr. Gollihar is the Army Biological Engineering Center--South and Synthetic Biology Lead at US Army Research Laboratory where he works on the development of automated, high-throughput organism engineering and rapid response medical countermeasures for biodefense.

Dr. Karl Griswold is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering at the Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth. His research has resulted in the development of new tools for protein deimmunization, enhanced microbial protein expression systems, innovative high throughput screens for recombinant protein libraries, and powerful antibacterial agents for drug-resistant infections. He studied as a DOW Chemical Foundation Scholar at Texas State University, graduating summa cum laude in 1995. He received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship under Professor George Georgiou. Dr. Griswold’s recent honors include a ‘Granite State Technology Innovation Award” from the NHIRC, a “Teacher of the Year” award from the Thayer School, and an “Award in Translational Biomedical Engineering” from the Coulter Foundation. He has coauthored more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and is an inventor on 3 issued US patents and 4 pending patent families. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Occulo Family of biotech startups, which employ proprietary protein engineering and deimmunization platforms and are advancing numerous programs with biopharma partners.

Flaviu leads the Drug Product Characterization team at Moderna Therapeutics. Prior to joining Moderna, Flaviu held positions of increasing responsibility with MedImmune and Wyeth Biopharma. His scientific interests include particle characterization, instrumentation innovation and nanotechnologies. Flaviu earned a Doctoral degree (Physics) from Northeastern University and completed a post-doctoral Research Fellowship with Wyeth.

Kapil Gupta is currently the Director of Protein Pharmaceutical Development at Biogen. He is responsible for end to end drug product development of biologics portfolio from FIH to commercialization. As a parenteral manufacturing network leader, he is also responsible for aligning development and technology approaches across difference modalities. He has more than twelve years of experience in drug product development across multiple biopharmaceutical companies (Amgen, Novartis and Biogen). He obtained his PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

As ATUM’s Co-Founder and CCO, Dr. Gustafsson oversees most of the company's external communications. Prior to co-founding ATUM, Dr. Gustafsson led, managed and collaborated with key strategic teams at Maxygen Inc. Before Maxygen, Dr. Gustafsson worked as a scientist at Kosan Biosciences, a number of research, teaching, and post-doctoral positions at UCs Santa Cruz and San Francisco, and at University of Umeå. He received his PhD in Molecular Biology/Biochemistry from the University of Umeå, Sweden.

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Peter received a PhD in Chemical Engineering from University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has been at Genentech for 11 years, working on cell culture automation, commercial cell culture process development, and has been the lead of the Research Materials Group for the last two years.

Debra Harris, Director of BioProcess Technology Group, is an experienced biopharmaceutical industry professional with over 27 years of experience in management of all aspects drug development and characterization including antibodies, radio-labeled proteins and other biologics. Experience includes process development, project transfer (within the US and internationally), project management and manufacturing of biologics and generic oncological parenterals, manufacturing site and CMO management, U.S. and international cGMP and manufacturing leadership as well as quality oversight. Before joining BPTG, Deb served as Vice President and Site Head of Abzena’s San Diego, CA, operations engaged in developing production processes, scale up, and GMP production, as well as release of biologics products for use in phase I and II clinical trials. Prior to Abzena, Deb managed quality and product development of generic parenteral oncology products for Sandoz, a Novartis company. She holds a Master’s degree in Biology from the University of California, Irvine.

Dr. Hastie uses high-resolution structural analysis to design better therapeutics and vaccines against hemorrhagic fever viruses that threaten global health. Our collaborative team works in Sierra Leone and Nigeria to understand the successful immune responses of survivors of Lassa virus, which infects hundreds of thousands in West Africa every year. By finding survivors, characterizing their antibodies, and using this information to engineer and finally solve the first ever structure of the relevant form of the essential antigens, we have revealed a stabilized vaccine template. Additionally, Dr. Hastie serves on international task forces to steer thought about how to better elicit and detect the right responses to Lassa virus and to deliver a much-needed vaccine to endemic areas.

For a two paragraph biography of 56 years of life to convey any meaningful information, it requires a literary device. The only summary I can come up with is that my life has been the story of a non-conformist lab goblin and teacher. A friend once pointed out to me, logically and correctly, that different is not always better. But given that Einstein observed that “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former,” I think that the odds favor different being better than the norm. Through various circumstances I have always been a computer geek, programmer, scientific empiricist, and wasted time talking to people. I attended Gorham Christian School for High School and received a Bible based education in the fundamentalist Baptist tradition. I then attended Magdalen College and received a general education in liberal studies in the Great Books tradition formed primarily by brilliant physicist of Romanian Gypsy descent and anarchist political leanings. I received a Master’s and PhD in biophysics at the University of New Hampshire in the tradition of the ultimate nonconformist, David Yphantis, from Tom Laue who cannot be described in less than three paragraphs. I taught at Magdalen College for 17 years with the traditional Great Books title of “tutor” and for the last two years I was “tutor and academic dean.” I then changed how I was remunerated by specializing in analytical ultracentrifugation: invading Walter Stafford’s lab as a visiting scientist and then post doc. Later I worked in early development at MedImmune, then in biotherapeutic discovery at Boehringer Ingelheim. I am currently a biophysics consultant and my own boss as the single member LLC owner/operator of International Solidarity of Scientists.

Karmella Haynes is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University. She earned her PhD studying chromatin epigenetics at Washington University in St. Louis. She received postdoctoral training in synthetic biology at Davidson College and Harvard Medical School. Today, she aims to use the intrinsic properties of chromatin to engineer proteins that control cell behavior. As an assistant professor at ASU (2011 – 2018) she received a K01 NIH Young Faculty Award and an Arizona Biomedical Early Stage Investigator Award. Dr. Haynes joined the faculty at Emory in 2018. She is a founding instructor of the Cold Spring Harbor Synthetic Biology summer course, a Councilor of the national Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC), and Advisor and Judge Emeritus for the International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition. She is also a two-time featured guest on PRI’s Science Friday.

Michael Hedvat, PhD, is Group Leader of cell biology at Xencor, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing engineered monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of cancer, autoimmune diseases, asthma and allergic diseases. Currently, 14 candidates engineered with Xencor's XmAb® technology are in clinical development internally and with partners. Xencor's XmAb antibody engineering technology enables small changes to the structure of monoclonal antibodies resulting in new mechanisms of therapeutic action. Prior to joining Xencor in 2015, Dr. Hedvat was a research scientist in the translational oncology group at Kyowa Hakko Kirin. He received his BS at University of California, Santa Barbara and his PhD in molecular and cell biology from City of Hope and completed postdoctoral training at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute.

Dr. Heidaran joined PAREXEL International as Vice President of Technical in December of 2018. Mo has worked previously as a Branch Chief (Acting) in Division of Cellular and Gene Therapy (DCGT) in the Office of Tissues and Advanced Therapies (OTAT) and as a CBER wide subject matter expert providing advice to ADRM in the Office of CBER Director on special subject matters related to CMC policies and regulatory review management processes. He also has close to 8 years prior experience as a Biologist and as a Master Reviewer in OTAT, and as a facility reviewer and inspector in the Division of Manufacturing and Product Quality (DMPQ).  During his tenure at OTAT, in addition to his review responsibilities, he has served as a DCGT representative to several FDA and CBER wide working groups and outside organizations such as USP.  He has also been involved in various standard development activities, cell based product manufacturing initiatives and various compliance actions.

Katie currently leads the Cell Therapy Process Development Lab at Amgen, Thousand Oaks where she focuses on establishing T-cell bioprocessing capabilities and lentiviral vector production. She received her PhD in Biological Sciences from Columbia University in the City of New York.

Olivier Henry is currently an Associate Professor in chemical engineering at Polytechnique Montréal. His research focuses on the development of mammalian cell culture processes for the production of recombinant proteins and vaccines. Professor Henry’s areas of expertise include metabolic engineering, on-line monitoring, bioprocess optimization and control, and high cell density fed-batch/perfusion cultures.

Mitchell Ho is a Senior Investigator and the Chief of the Antibody Therapy Section at NCI’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the NIH. He is also the Director of the newly established NCI Antibody Engineering Program. He received a BS from East China Normal University, a MA from San Francisco State University. After working at DNAX Research Institute and Protein Design Labs as a research associate, he moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he received a PhD as a NIH/NIDA NRSA predoctoral fellow. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Ira Pastan at the NCI. Dr. Ho has received many honors including the APAO Scientific Achievement Award, NIH DDIR Innovation Award, NCI Director's Intramural Innovation Award. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Antibody Therapeutics.

Dr. Hobson earned his PhD from the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom under the supervision of Charles Marson and worked for Boots Pharmaceuticals in the UK before transferring to BASF pharma in the US. He has contributed to multiple small molecule programs including upadacitinib, ABBV-155, ABT-459, Rho kinase inhibitors (ROCK), JAK3 and selective S1P5 agonists as a treatment for Alzheimer’s’ disease. At AbbVie his iADC strategies have enabled the identification of new linkers and novel glucocorticoid receptor modulator payloads, leading to the development of ABBV-3373, under investigation for rheumatoid arthritis. He has set the stage for further discoveries, creating chemo-informatics and ADC registration systems in addition to advancing AbbVie’s conjugation and DAR purification capabilities.

Jin Sung Hong is an ORISE research Fellow in CDER/OBP/DBRRII in FDA focusing on regulatory research and optimization of upstream biomanufacturing processes. Prior, he was an upstream bioprocess scientist at VRC/NIAID/NIH working on bioprocess optimization of HIV antibody and flu nanoparticles. He received his PhD in Bioengineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and did his postdoctoral training at NHLBI/NIH. He has published in number of peer-reviewed journals including Nature Immunology, Journal of Cell Biology, Journal of Immunology, and Biotechnology Progress.

Mark Howarth has been a group leader in Oxford University Department of Biochemistry since 2007. In 2017 he spun-out the company SpyBiotech, applying peptide superglue to enhance vaccine development, and was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Norman Heatley prize. He did postdoctoral studies at MIT with Alice Ting, where he developed monovalent streptavidin and single molecule probes for tracking neurotransmitter receptors. His doctoral work was with Tim Elliott at Southampton University on MHC class I-peptide quality control. His current work is on innovating ultra-stable protein interactions through engineering of bacterial peptide superglues. These tools are being applied to immuno-engineering, enzyme stabilization, and multimerization of antibody-like molecules for cancer targeting.

Dr. Ying Huang is currently the Lab Head in Vaccine Design and Characterization Department at US R&D Center, GSK Vaccines, managing a group responsible for antigen expression and screening to identify and characterize vaccine candidates. Prior to joining GSK, she served as Director of Cell Line Development in Process Development & Manufacturing Department at KBI Biopharma, a CDMO in North Carolina. Previously, she has worked at NIH, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Eli Lilly & Company. She has > 12 years working experience in drug/vaccine development and biological production and is an expert in cell line development and cell culture process development field. She was the key scientist in the development of FreedomTM CHO-S and CHO DG44 Protein Expression Kits at Gibco. Dr. Huang received her medical degree from Tongji Medical University, China and her PhD degree in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of Tokyo, Japan.

Saeed Izadi is a scientist in Pharmaceutical Development at Genentech. His research focuses broadly the development of theoretical models and practical physics-based simulation techniques to study physical and chemical instabilities in therapeutic antibodies. He completed his PhD in Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech in 2016. In his PhD research, he worked on the development of novel force field models of the solvent environment for Molecular Dynamics simulations as well as multi-scale methods to speed up atomistic simulations of large-scale biological systems. He also holds a BSc degree in Mechanical Engineering, and a MSc degree in Aerospace Engineering.

Noor Jailkhani is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the laboratory of Prof. Richard Hynes at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, where she is working on exploiting the extracellular matrix as a therapeutic and imaging target. She was a Mazumdar-Shaw International Oncology Fellow at MIT, and has been studying the role of ECM in cancer progression and metastasis. Prior to joining MIT, Noor worked at the Center for Cancer Systems Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Noor received her PhD in Life Sciences/Immunology from the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB).

Dr. Vibha Jawa is currently a Director, Predictive and Clinical Immunogenicity group within Preclinical Development at Merck. She is responsible for developing a strategy and provides oversight and management of scientific programs for discovery, development and optimization of biologics and vaccines. In this role, she is partnering with discovery and development groups to design better molecules. Dr Jawa received her bachelors in Biochemistry (1991) from Delhi University and her doctorate in Biochemistry/Immunology (1998) from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India with a thesis work studying the immune mechanisms behind autoimmune diseases followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at University of Pennsylvania on monitoring the immune response to viral vectors. She continued to work in the field of gene therapy company evaluating viral vectors for hemophilia therapy in the Bay area followed by City of Hope Cancer Centre Stem Cell and Gene Therapy group and at Amgen from 2003-2016. Her current research interests include evaluating immune response biomarkers for early drug development and efficacy, immunogenicity prediction using in silico, in vitro and in vivo technologies, modeling impact of immunogenicity on PK and PD and their application to a systems based approach, antigen processing and presentation and the role of T cells in immune response to drug products. Vibha is a member of multiple professional organizations like American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS), American Association of Immunology (AAI) , European Immunogenicity Platform and Federation of Clinical Immunology Society (FOCIS). Within AAPS, Vibha has been actively involved as a Steering Committee member of the Therapeutic Protein Immunogenicity Focus Group (TPIFG) and is currently leading the Immunogenicity Risk Assessment and Mitigation Working Group (IRAM). She is also a co-lead of the Industry Innovation and Quality consortium for Cell/viral/gene therapies. Dr. Jawa also serves as a manuscript reviewer for The AAPS Journal , Clinical Experimental Immunology and J.Pharm Sci Journal. Dr. Jawa has published over 50 papers and her articles in the Nature Genetics, Annals of Hematology and Clinical Immunology journals have been cited over 2500 times. She is the recipient of the 2015 Ebert Prize from the American Pharmacists Association for her work on assessing risk of critical quality attributes in a humanized mouse model system.

Jan Jezek is the Chief Scientific Officer at Arecor Ltd. He has been trained as a biophysical chemist. He was the principal scientist at Insense Ltd, leading the development of a range of novel medical devices from the proof-of-concept all the way to market. During his time at Insense, he and his team developed a novel formulation platform to achieve superior stability of proteins and other biological molecules. His inventions related to protein stabilization led to inception of Arecor Ltd as a separate company focusing on commercialization and further development of the stabilization platform.

Dr. Douglas Jolly is the Co-Founder of Tocagen and serves as the Executive Vice President, Research and Pharmaceutical Development. He is an internationally recognized expert in the field of gene therapy and its pharmaceutical application. He has been a senior biotechnology executive involved in translating gene-based products from research through clinical development at the following companies: Viagene Inc., Chiron Corporation, Oxford BioMedica plc, BioMedica Inc., and Advantagene, Inc. He has published more than one hundred scientific articles and is an inventor on more than forty-five issued patents. Dr. Jolly pursued his academic career in biophysics and molecular biology at the Weizmann Institute; Harvard Medical School; Scripps Clinic; University California, San Diego; and The French National Institute for Health and Medical Research. Dr. Jolly holds a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Glasgow.

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Professor Alois Jungbauer received his PhD in Food Technology and Biotechnology from BOKU. He is Professor in the Department of Biotechnology of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria. Since 2010, he is head of bioprocess engineering at the Austrian Center of Industrial Biotechnology. He is also Vice President of the European Society of Biochemical Engineering Science (ESBES). His main research interest is in the field of recombinant protein, plasmid, virus and virus‐like particle production, characterization of proteins and engineering principles of bioprocessing. He has more than 310 international publications, 15 patents, 12 contributions, and one monograph in the field of biochemical engineering science.

Dr. Tomoshi Kameda, a senior research scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), is a theoretical biophysicist. When he was student, he studied the protein folding problem in Professor Nobuhiro Go Lab, Kyoto university and Professor Shoji Takada Lab, Kobe university, and received PhD from Kobe university in 2004. He started to work in AIST as a postdoctoral fellow, and he was appointed as a research scientist in 2007 and a senior research scientist in 2013. Since 2011, he is also a guest professor of Graduate School of life science, Hokkaido university. Now, he studies various problems using molecular dynamics simulation and bioinformatics.

Dr. Jichao Kang holds a PhD in Pharmaceutics and has over 20 years of experience in Biologics development. He is an accomplished researcher with over 20 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, several patents and numerous conference presentations. He has extensive hands-on development experience in antibodies, enzymes, protein conjugates and gene therapy products. He is a key contributor in over 50 IND/IMPD projects and over a dozen of late phase and BLA/MAA projects. He is currently the Director of Analytical Development at Amicus Therapeutics. Prior to Amicus, he was the Director of Analytical and Formulation Development at Patheon Biologics, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific. He also worked with increased responsibilities in Protein Design Labs, Neose Technologies, MedImmune, and Auxilium.

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Hitoshi Katada is working as a research scientist in Chugai. He received his PhD in engineering from the University of Tokyo. After he joined Chugai in 2011, he has been working on the development of antibody technology, optimization of lead antibodies, and pharmacology for cancer immunotherapy.

Dr. Katagiri is currently a research-regulator at the Division of Plasma Protein Therapeutics, Office of Tissue and Advanced Therapies, CBER, FDA. Her research work at Kimchi-Sarfaty’s lab focuses on the effects of sequence variation, especially those of synonymous mutation, on protein characteristics and their mechanisms using both in silico and in vitro methods. In parallel, Dr. Katagiri reviews chemistry, manufacturing, and control (CMC) of therapeutic proteins, mostly coagulation therapeutics in INDs, BLAs and supplements. Dr. Katagiri acquired her PhD from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan and she did her postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health and University of Maryland.

PhD, University of Illinois; Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Chicago; Pharma history: UpJohn (MI), Cephalon (PA), Sanofi (NJ), AMGEN, Inc., Thousand Oaks, (CA); Interests: Antibody harvesting. High-throughput antibody purification, scale up and analytics, bispecific antibody engineering, antibody drug conjugation

Kelly Kemp, PhD is the Director of Process Development at ViaCyte, working to characterize and optimize the manufacturing process of an innovative stem cell derived product aiming to treating diabetes. With a passion for biology and technology, as well as an understanding of GMP and regulatory requirements, Kelly has had a strong career focus on scaling-up and implementing process improvements. Kelly earned her PhD in Developmental Biology from the Free University of Brussels, Belgium and continued her training as a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA, focusing on the transcriptional regulation of human pluripotent stem cells. Kelly has led process development teams for cell-based products at Shire, Stemedica Cell Technologies, and Vital Therapies.

Hubert Kettenberger holds a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Munich. After a PostDoc at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry he joined the Large Molecule Research unit of Roche in Penzberg/Germany in the year 2006 and is now a Senior Principal Scientist in the field of protein engineering. His areas of expertise include the biochemical and biophysical characterization of therapeutic proteins. Moreover, HK developed strategies, in-vitro and in-silico methods for the assessment of new drug candidates (antibodies, bispecifics, next-generation biotherapeutics).

Chava Kimchi-Sarfaty, PhD is the Deputy Associate Director for Research at the Office of Tissues and Advanced Therapies, who joined the FDA in 2005. She currently is leading a program at CBER that takes a multidisciplinary approach to understand the potential impact of DNA sequence variation integrated into therapeutic recombinant clotting factors. Her regulatory responsibilities include reviewing BLAs, INDs, prior approval supplements, on-site inspections, and consulting for other FDA regulatory centers.

Jon has over 10 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry in analytical and drug product development. He currently leads the Developability & Preformulation Sciences group within Biologics Development, supporting Sanofi’s exciting pipeline of biologics at the transition of research to development. Jon received his PhD from Boston University School of Medicine and MS and BS degrees from the University of New Hampshire.

Andrzej Kloczkowski, computational biologist, obtained MSc in Chemistry from the University of Warsaw, Poland in 1974, and PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw in 1980. He obtained postdoctoral training at Stanford University, and worked in the past at the University of Cincinnati, National Cancer Institute, NIH in Bethesda, MD, and Iowa State University. Since 2010 he is Principal Investigator in the Battelle Center for Mathematical Medicine in the Research Institute of the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and tenured Professor of Pediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics of The Ohio State University College of Medicine. He published over 190 peer reviewed papers, and a co-edited a book Prediction of Protein Secondary Structure (Humana Press, New York, 2017). His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. He has been invited to lecture at multiple institutions and conferences in the U.S. and abroad, and served as a reviewer for numerous journals, and several funding agencies, including NSF, NIH, and Foundation for Polish Science. He is on the editorial board of several journals and organized numerous scientific conferences and meetings.

Edward Kraft is currently a Senior Scientific Manager and team leader at Genentech with an extensive background in high-throughput protein purification systems and protein design. He has over 10 years of experience creating and contributing to workflows that rely on the collaboration of biology, automation, informatics and vendors for effective solutions for protein production efforts. His experience covers all major protein expressions systems and focuses on small-scale production and analysis of protein classes other than antibodies.

Dr. Antje Krüger is currently a research fellow working with Dr. Michael Jewett at Northwestern University. She works at the intersection of biology and chemistry developing powerful, enabling technologies to efficiently harness biological systems for applications in medicine, materials and energy. Antje did her PhD work at the Max Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin where she investigated the influence of metabolism on gene expression in yeast and mouse, receiving her PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin in 2014. As a postdoctoral research associate at the University College London, she moved into the field of synthetic biology developing in vitro and in vivo selection methods for aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase & tRNA engineering.

Joshua LaBaer is one of the nation’s foremost investigators in the rapidly expanding field of personalized diagnostics. His efforts focus on the discovery and validation of biomarkers — unique molecular fingerprints of disease — which provide early warning for major illnesses, including cancer, infections and diabetes. Dr. LaBaer leads a highly multidisciplinary staff of molecular biologists, cell biologists, biochemists, software engineers, database specialists, bioinformaticists, biostatisticians, and automation engineers. They employ open reading frame clones to the high throughput (HT) study of protein function. Their library of clones, DNASU, expects to achieve a complete set of full-length human genes this year. Dr. LaBaer invented a novel protein microarray technology, Nucleic Acid Programmable Protein Array, which uses printed cDNAs as template to produce full-length folded proteins in situ. This technology has been used widely for biomedical research, including the discovery of a panel of 28 autoantibody biomarkers that led to Videssa™, the first CLIA-certified diagnostic test for the detection of breast cancer. Recent advances in the lab include the development of high-density arrays and multiplexed arrays. The use of human ribosomes and chaperone proteins has improved both the yield and natural folding of the proteins on the arrays, enabling the production of enzymatically active receptor tyrosine kinases on the arrays that could be screened with selective tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

Wan-Ching has more than 15 years of experience in protein purification. In current position, she introduces new technologies and applies cost saving approaches for manufacturing Biologics. Between 2004 and 2008, she worked for Tanox, Inc. where she developed chromatography procedures of four antibodies for phase I/II of clinical production, and she conducted virus clearance studies within cGLP compliance for Investigatory New Drug filing. After graduation from UIUC, she was a postdoctoral fellow at National Institute of Health at Bethesda, Maryland where she studied signal transduction pathway of human primary monocyte.

I’m currently serving as a Research Scientist and Group Leader (Systems Biology) at Bioprocessing Technology Institute (BTI), A*STAR, Singapore. I have earlier graduated with PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from NUS in 2014 and has been working in BTI since then. I have extensive experience in developing computational methods to analyze cellular metabolisms of mammalian and microbial systems by integrating diverse multi-omics data and genome-scale models with a particular focus to enhance bioprocessing aspects. My other major research interests include systems biological analysis of cellular metabolism, integrative multi-omics data analysis, comparative genomics and microbiome analysis in health-care context. I have published more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and delivered more than 5 invited speeches. I also serve as peer reviewer for more than 10 journals including Bioinformatics and Cell Systems.

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Tom Laue is the emeritus Carpenter Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Biomedical Sciences, and emeritus professor of Material Sciences at the University of New Hampshire. He is the founder of the Biomolecular Interaction Technologies Center. He received his bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences from the Johns Hopkins University in 1971and his PhD in Biophysics and Biochemistry from the University of Connecticut in 1981. His post-doctoral studies were conducted at the University of Oklahoma. Between 1969 and 1975, he worked as a technician in the deep space program of NASA. His work has focused on developments for the analytical ultracentrifuge and analytical electrophoresis. Data from these instruments have contributed to over 3800 publications since 1980.

James Legg PhD is SVP Research at Crescendo Biologics where he is responsible for managing Crescendo’s Immuno Oncology Portfolio from research through to preclinical development as well as the biology/pharmacology functions. James has 15 years’ experience in biologics drug discovery, mostly in the oncology area and has been responsible for the successful progression of multiple oncology biologics programmes through the research phases of drug discovery. Prior to joining Crescendo, James was a member of the oncology leadership team at MedImmune, the Biologics arm of AstraZeneca and held key scientific positions at Cambridge Antibody Technology. James has a BSc in Applied Biology from Bath University, a PhD in Molecular Cell Biology from Imperial College, London and undertook PostDoctoral research at Imperial Cancer Research Fund (Now CRUK) in London.

Abraham Lenhoff is the Allan P. Colburn Professor of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware, where he has been on the faculty since 1984 and was Chair from 2012-7. He earned a Bachelor's degree from the University of Cape Town and Master's and PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin, all in chemical engineering. His research is primarily on application of principles of thermodynamics, transport phenomena, biophysics and colloid science to protein separations and phase behavior, especially chromatography and crystallization.

Dr. Elissa Leonard attended Harvery Mudd College, where she received her BS in Biomolecular Systems and Design, and developed novel bioreactor designs for corneal tissue engineering with Dr. Elizabeth Orwin. She earned her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, where her research focus shifted to engineering therapeutically relevant autoimmune T cell receptors under the supervision of Dr. Jennifer Maynard. Currently, Dr. Leonard is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, where she has continued research in protein and immune engineering with Dr. Jamie Spangler. Currently, her work focuses on engineering antibody-cytokine fusion proteins that can shift the immune balance, and promote anti-tumor or pathogen-clearing immune activity. She is also revisiting her regenerative engineering roots by engineering of growth hormones for applications in osteogenesis.

Matt earned his Bachelor’s degree and PhD in Chemistry from Elizabethtown College and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, respectively. Following graduate studies, Matt joined the Chemistry and Biochemistry departments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a postdoctoral fellow where he studied molecular mechanisms of polysaccharide biosynthesis. Matt then joined Seattle Genetics in 2011 where he is now a member of the Protein Sciences department, focusing on the development of novel technologies for empowered antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates.

I am a systems biologist, with extensive work in omics data analysis, network modeling, and synthetic biology. My research group (http://lewislab.ucsd.edu/) utilizes these tools to deepen our understanding into the cellular processes that influence cell growth, protein secretion, and metabolic regulation, to engineer cells for drug development and to discover the biochemical basis of disease.

Dr. Qing Li is a scientist of AstraZeneca. Her research focuses on antibody discovery and protein engineering, antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), half-life extension, drug delivery and gene therapy. She leads multiple projects of ADC discovery and tissue specific drug delivery including novel platform development, antibody discovery, in vitro and in vivo validation. She establishes cross-functional collaborations between antibody engineering, oncology and translational science. Dr. Li received her PhD in chemistry from University of Minnesota, where she developed a novel method of engineering and preparation of Chemically Self-assembled Antibody Nanorings (CSANs) that can be used for drug delivery, imaging and cell surface engineering. Dr. Li completed post-doctoral training in Dr. Brent Iverson and Dr. George Georgiou’s lab at the University of Texas, Austin, where she co-developed a yeast-surface-display based high-throughput screening method of protease evolution for altered specificity and activity.

Ruojia Li is the lead of the statistics group supporting the bioanalytical, cell line and biological process development functions at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). She has been with BMS for 13 years providing CMC statistical support from early phase development to post-marketing applications. Prior to joining BMS, Ruojia worked at Eli Lilly supporting product development. Ruojia holds a bachelor’s in Mathematics from Peking University, and a PhD in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I’m a PhD Scientist with 12+ years of experience in the genome editing field using conventional homologous recombination or TALENs, CRISPR/Cas9 technology to create straight knockout, conditional knockout or knockin cell lines, or knockout mouse models. I did pioneer work in the reprogramming field as the first report generating human iPSC lines in China and the first report of establishing the rat iPSC lines in the world. Currently, I’m Associate Director of Drug Discovery at LogicBio Therapeutics which is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. I focus on using the novel gene editing technologies for gene therapy. Our goal is to find the cure for the pediatric disease.

Dr Lim is Associate Professor at University of Southampton. Her laboratory studies the innate and adaptive interaction that results from combining direct-targeting and immunostimulatory antibodies in cancer. In particular, she is interested in developing and translating rational antibody combinations for cancer therapy. Dr Lim is also an attending physician with University Hospital Southampton’s lymphoma service and clinical trialist. She undertook her medical training in the UK, a PhD in immunology at Southampton and subsequently a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University with Dr Ron Levy.

Yuan Lin is the Biologics Business Solution Lead in Pfizer Digital. He manages, develops, and supports Pfizer Biologics R&D informatics platforms. He is an experience software architect/developer, business analyst, and bioinformatician. Before joining Pfizer in 2017, Yuan was a Senior Principle Business Analyst and Lead Software Engineer at Novartis, focusing on the in-house E2E biologics screening platform and leading the support of a global biologics registration platform. He led the implementation of an NGS data workflow system at GeneDX and built a comparative Genome Browser and Sequence Analysis platform that enabled the sequencing and analyzing of the first individual human genome at J Craig Venter Institute.

Shaun is Director of Protein Engineering at Atreca, Inc, where his responsibilities include antibody lead optimization and the development of multispecific therapeutics. He has been engineering antibodies, bispecifics, fusion-protein therapeutics, and enzymes for 17 years, combining structure-based modeling with high-throughput display methods as needed. Prior to Atreca, his experience includes leading a protein technologies group at Bayer HealthCare in San Francisco, heading research at Silver Creek Pharmaceuticals, and helping spin out startups from leading academic labs.

Chang Liu is currently an Associate Scientist in the department of BioAnalytical Sciences at Genentech. Chang received her PhD in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University where her research concentrated on pathways and molecular mechanism of pain. She joined Genentech as a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology where she characterized structure-function relationship of a number of drug targets. Currently she conducts research and works on functional cell-based assays to support biotherapeutics development.

Dr. Yue Liu has more than 20 years of experience in therapeutic antibody research and development. She has led and participated in 14 therapeutic antibody studies on various diseases. Dr. Liu is holding PhD in microbiology and infectious diseases; M.Sc. in internal medicine and B.Sc. in zoology.

Roy Lobb is a Biotech Industry entrepreneur, co-founder of several companies, including Avila Therapeutics, bought by Celgene in 2012, and most recently, Aleta Biotherapeutics, focusing on novel approaches to adoptive cell therapy. Roy is also a venture partner at Advent Life Sciences. He joined Biogen in 1987, and led the Research team which discovered the VCAM/VLA-4 leukocyte adhesion pathway, the basis for the development of Tysabri, a treatment for multiple sclerosis, with annual sales of >$1B. Roy left Biogen in 2001 as Senior Director of Discovery Research. Prior to joining Biogen, Roy was an Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. He holds a DPhil in Chemistry from the University of Oxford.

Dr. Xiaofeng Lu has been working over 18 years in pharmaceutical research and development. She is a principal research scientist in the Pharmaceutical Development at AbbVie Biotherapeutics Inc. in Redwood City, CA. Her primary work involves drug developability assessments of biologics candidates in discovery phase, formulation development, freeze-drying process development and tech transfer for drug product manufacturing. In the recent years, her main research activities include formulation and lyophilization process optimization for labile bispecific proteins and clinical in-use evaluations for enabling drug product administration.

Dr. Xiuling Lu is an Associate Professor of Pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Lu received her PhD in Biochemical Engineering from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. During her postdoctoral training at the University of Kentucky in USA, she received a prestigious Benedict Cassen Post-Doctoral Fellowship Award from the Education and Research Foundation for the Society of Nuclear Medicine in 2008. She was appointed as a Research Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill prior to joining the School of Pharmacy at the University of Connecticut in 2011. Dr. Lu’s research interests include formulation and process development & characterization, especially nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems and image-guided therapy. Her research has been supported by FDA, NIH, American Cancer Society, NSF etc. Dr. Lu has published more than 60 peer-reviewed publications in high impact journals such as ACS Nano, Small, Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine, Journal of Nuclear Medicine Society, Biomacromolecules. The innovative research has resulted in two issued US patents and 5 patent applications. Dr. Lu also received American Association of University Professors-UConn Excellence in Research and Creativity Award in 2016 and Robert L. McCarthy Faculty Service Award in 2019.

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I have a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Pusan National University, South Korea with expertise in rational protein engineering/design methods. My PhD work focused on understanding the sequence/structural properties of residues in beta-turn regions of proteins and their impact on protein folding kinetics. I am currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kansas, USA. Here, I employ various library design methods for antibody improvement using yeast surface display and next-gen sequencing.

Dr. Krishna Mallela is currently an Associate Professor in the Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He obtained his PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, India, did his postdoctoral research in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and worked as a research faculty at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the University of Colorado in 2007. Dr. Mallela is an expert in characterizing the biophysics and structure of proteins, using various spectroscopies that include multi-dimensional NMR, circular dichroism, fluorescence, IR/Raman, differential scanning calorimetry, and isothermal titration calorimetry. He frequently collaborates with pharmaceutical companies and serves as a consultant in developing protein formulations and biosimilars. His lab also performs fee-for-service work for pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Mallela has published more than 55 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and is a frequent invited seminar speaker at various conferences, Universities, and pharmaceutical companies. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nature Scientific Reports, and PLoS One.

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Dr. James D. Marks co-founded Hermes Biosciences, Inc. and serves as its Vice President of Antibody Discovery. Dr. Marks serves as the Chief of Anesthesia at San Francisco General Hospital, and also serves as Professor of Anesthesia and Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Marks serves as Vice-Chairman of the Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care at UCSF. Director of the Medical-Surgical Intensive Care Unit, San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Marks served as Chairman of Medical Advisory Board at Symphogen A/S. Dr. Marks has been a Member of Scientific Advisory Board at Adimab, LLC since 2007. Dr. Marks serves as a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board at Quinnova Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Dr. Marks is a Program Member of UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Mark' s research interests include the development of phage display technology for production of human antibodies and the development of techniques for increasing antibody affinity. He serves as Director of HERMES Biosciences, Inc. He serves as Member of Scientific Advisory Board of ImaginAb, Inc. He serves as Director of Silver Creek Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He has published more than 75 scientific papers and acts as a referee for top-ranking international journals including Nature Biotechnology, Nature Medicine, Journal of Molecular Biology, Gene, Blood, and Human Antibodies and Hybridomas. Dr. Marks is the co-inventor on 4 major phage display patents. He holds a PhD from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK on the making of human antibody fragments in bacteria and bacteriophage. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Anesthesia, and Critical Care Medicine. He was an undergraduate at the University of California Berkeley majoring in biochemistry and received his medical degree from UCSF. He completed residencies in Internal Medicine and Anesthesia as well as a fellowship in Critical Care Medicine, all at UCSF.

Andrew Massetti is a senior associate scientist in the protein pharmaceutical development group at Biogen. He has experience developing drug product formulations and processes for a variety of biologics and small molecules. He received a BS in chemistry from Providence College and is currently pursuing his MS in biotechnology at Northeastern University.

Dr. Matosevic’s research program focuses on developing new immunotherapies for solid tumors using translational tools to reprogram the therapeutic behavior of natural killer cells and their interaction with the tumor microenvironment by combining approaches in cell therapy, gene engineering, immunology and immunoengineering to (1) Overcome immunometabolic suppression of natural killer cell function in the tumor microenvironment via molecular modulation of their function; (2) Enhance natural killer cell anti-tumor immunity by engineering synthetic genetic constructs that can effectively target solid tumors; (3) Engineer novel cryopreservation platforms devoid of DMSO to improve patient safety upon administration of adoptive natural killer cell therapies

Dr. Mattison completed his doctorate in biological chemistry at Purdue University, where he studied the effects of polyelectrolyte additives on the stability and activity of transport proteins and enzymes. From there he joined Protein Solutions as the Applications Development and Technical Support Manager and was instrumental in helping to drive the adoption of sub-micron light scattering techniques from esoteric technologies into mainstream laboratory tools. In 2002 Dr. Mattison joined Malvern Instruments, where he served as Applications Manager, Product Manager, and Director of Customer Support, prior to assuming his current position as Principal Scientist – Bioanalytics in the Strategic Technology Development Group.

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T. Page McAndrew is Director of Scientific Communications at West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. in Exton, PA. He received a BS in Chemistry from King’s College (PA) and a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to West he held research positions at IBM Corp., Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., and Arkema Inc. At West, he is responsible for external publications (including the West Knowledge Center) and managing select development projects, in particular those regarding low-temperature performance of polymer-based drug product containment systems. He is the author of 61 publications and 9 patents.

Kevin McCowen received his MSc in Biomedical Sciences from University of Utah, where he studied the interaction of antigens with MHC class II proteins using fluorescence shift chromatography and fluorescence polarization. He has spent over 15 years in Protein Research and Bioanalytical Development laboratories, gaining experience in various analytical techniques including dynamic and static light scattering, separations by HPLC and Field Flow Fractionation, and Mass Spectrometry before joining Wyatt Technology as a Field Application Scientist.

Guangnan Meng is a product leader of microfluidics technologies in Perkin Elmer. He holds a PhD in Physics, and has years of experience in the materials science, applied physics, analytical instruments, and nano-engineering industries

Andrew Mercer is a Principal Scientist at REGENXBIO in the Gene Transfer Technologies group. He leads of team of scientists focused on vector engineering and gene therapy drug development. He has over 15 years of protein engineering experience in a diverse array of projects including natural product biosynthesis, antibody engineering, and targeted genome modification. He received a PhD from the University of California, San Diego and did post-doctoral studies at The Scripps Research Institute before moving into industry.

I started my classical training in structural biology in Mario Amzel’s lab at Johns Hopkins working on dioxygenases and nucleotide housekeeping enzymes. Then continued my work in the laboratory of Fred Dyda at NIH in transposases and DNA modbility. I am now a part of Frederick National Laboratory/Protein Expression Laboratory working on high value reagents for the RAS initiative.

Sebastian is Chief Operating Officer of Numab Therapeutics, a Swiss biotech company with partnered as well as proprietary pipeline assets in the field of immuno-oncology and inflammatory diseases. Prior to joining Numab, Sebastian held positions in bioprocess development at ESBATech and Cytos Biotechnology. Sebastian received a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Hamburg and a PhD from the University of Zurich.

Shalini Minocha is a staff scientist in Formulation Development group at Regeneron, she has worked on early and late stage monoclonal antibody programs. She is interested in co-formulation, co-administration of multiple therapeutics and photostability of biologic products.

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Liviu Movileanu has received his PhD degree in biophysics from the University of Bucharest (1997). He has acquired postdoctoral positions at the University of Missouri (Kansas City, Missouri, USA, 1997-1998) and the Texas A&M University Health Science Center (College Station, Texas, USA, 1999-2004). He is now a Professor at Syracuse University, Departments of Physics, and Biomedical and Chemical Engineering. Liviu Movileanu is also affiliated to Syracuse Biomaterials Institute (SBI), SUNY Upstate Cancer Research Institute, and Institute of Complex Adaptive Matter (ICAM-I2CAM). Currently, his research group is funded by National Institutes of Health. His expertise areas include single-molecule and membrane biophysics, chemical and synthetic biology, bionanotechnology and nanomedicine, biosensors and functional biomaterials, biological statistics, and numerical analysis of stochastic biological processes.

Sheila comes from MacroGenics Inc, a clinical-stage biopharma company working on discovery and development of antibody-based therapies where her leading role is to support last stage characterization using LC and MS technologies. Prior to Macrogenics, she was employed at Novavax Inc and Medimmune/AZ. For the last 10 years she worked in the biopharma industry identifying post-translational modifications, glycan profiling, degradation pathways and determining structure-function relationships of therapeutic proteins. Sheila is a graduate of Master of Science in Analytical Chemistry from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.

Dr. Munn received his PhD in Bioengineering from Rice University and is currently Associate Professor, Director of the Bioengineering, Microscopy and Computing Core, and Deputy Director of the Steele Lab for Tumor Biology at MGH. He has been studying vascular biology in the context of tumor physiology for the past 25 years, with a focus on vessel microanatomy and biomechanics. His group uses a combination of in vivo techniques, mathematical modeling and microfabrication to determine how cells cooperate to form and maintain tissues. Using these approaches Dr. Munn’s group has identified and characterized how mechanobiology plays a central role in tumor invasion, lymphatic function and neovascularization.

Dr. Vel Murugan is a trained molecular cell biologist with extensive experience in studying cell cycle regulation, cancer biology, vaccine discovery and development. Dr. Murugan brings with him a wealth of experience from his time in both industry as well as academic institutions.  Dr. Murugan earned his PhD from the Tata Institute of Fundamental research and completed his post-doctoral work at The University of Texas at Austin and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Prior to joining ASU, he worked on the development of attenuated vaccine against Malaria at Sanaria, Inc. He has contributed more than 30 original research publications, reviews and book chapters. At the Center for Personalized Diagnostics, he led a team that developed a high throughput diagnostic test to detect and quantify radiation exposure in humans. His laboratory studies epigenetic changes in response to environmental exposures and develops epigenetic-biomarker based diagnostic tests to detect exposures to toxic chemicals, pathogens, explosives and radiological agents.

Dr. Rajiv Nayar, President and Founder received his PhD in Biochemistry from University of British Columbia, B.C. After a Medical Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at MD Anderson Tumor Institute, Houston, TX, he joined the Canadian Liposome Company in Vancouver, B.C. He was head of the Formulation and Drug Delivery Unit at Bayer Corp. Biotechnology Division in Berkeley, CA from 1991 until 2000. At Bayer, he was the recipient of 3 consecutive awards in process continuous improvements at Bayer Corporation. He has published over 60 scientific articles in various disciplines including liposomes, cancer biology, drug delivery systems, protein formulation and biochemical characterization of pharmaceuticals. He is an inventor on 8 U.S patents. His research interests include protein formulation, drug delivery systems, and pharmaceutical drug characterization. He is an expert in multivariate statistical methodology in pharmaceutical product development and a course instructor in experimental design.

Dr. Juergen Nett received his PhD in Biochemistry from the Technische Universitaet Kaiserslautern in Germany in 1992. He then undertook postdoctoral work at Dartmouth Medical School from 1994 – 2001 before joining GlycoFi Inc as a scientist and later a group leader from 2001 to 2014. In 2014 he joined the team at Adimab LLC, where he is leading the High Throughput Expression group.

Wendy Ochoa is a Scientific Solution Consultant at Benchling, the leader in could-based informatics for life sciences R&D. Wendy received a PhD in Biochemistry from The University of Barcelona, and completed her postdoctoral studies at The Scripps Research Institute and UCSD in the fields of Protein Crystallography and Cryo-Electron Microscopy.

Dr. Shannon Oda received a PhD in Immunology from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She has received several awards, including the Keystone Symposia Future of Science and the LLS Career Development Program Special Fellow Awards, and has been invited to give talks internationally. Dr. Oda joined the Fred Hutch in 2013, where she is a research associate of the Program of Immunology in the Clinical Research Division. Her research focuses on improving adoptive cell therapy (ACT), which uses T cells to target and destroy cancer cells. She has identified several obstacles that inhibit immune cells from effectively eradicating tumor and she is inventing new ways to engineer T cells to overcome these obstacles and improve ACT of hematological and solid tumors.

Professor, Osaka University (2015-). 1992 PhD, Osaka University; 1992 Assistant Professor, Osaka University (1992-2005); Associate Professor, Osaka University (2005-2010); Professor, Tokushima University (2010-2015); Chair of Biochemical Engineering Division in SCEJ (2018-); Deputy Secretary Generals, AFOB (Asian Federation of Biotechnology) (2018-); President of Japanese Association of Animal Cell Technology (2019-).

Dr. Javin P. Oza received a BS in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology and a PhD in Biomolecular Science & Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He then completed his postdoctoral training in Bioengineering at Northwestern University. He is currently an assistant Professor at California Polytechnic State University in SLO, CA. Dr. Oza’s research group applies enabling biotechnologies toward the development of protein production platforms, novel biomaterials, and innovations in biochemical education. Biotechnologies of interest include the expanded genetic code, and cell-free protein synthesis.

Chemical Engineer with a 10+ years of Bioprocess Development experience and a strong record of peer reviewed publications. People manager (direct and matrix), cross-functional Development Team Leader, and author of regulatory filings (INDs, BLAs). Highly skilled in Protein Chemistry, Protein Purification, Process Modeling, Scale up, and GMP. Still working on my golf game.

Samantha Pace obtained her BS in biochemistry and molecule biology at Michigan State University. She obtained her masters degree and PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Kansas. In 2018, Samantha started working at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Discovery Pharmaceutic candidate optimization.

Jainik Panchal is an Associate Principal Scientist in the Sterile Formulation Sciences group in Merck Research Labs. He received his Bachelors in Pharmacy from India, MS from Butler University and PhD from Industrial and Physical Pharmacy department at Purdue University. In his current role, he is responsible for early and late biologics product development, spanning from preclinical to commercialization space. Some of his scientific interests include understanding protein-protein and protein-excipient interactions, and development and evaluation of high resolution tools for product development.

Dr. Panwar holds MS and PhD degrees in interdisciplinary pharmaceutical sciences from Northeastern University, Boston, where his work was focused on use of antibodies and antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) for molecular imaging and cancer therapy. After graduation, he spent his career at Akrivis Technologies, Eleven Biotherapeutics and more recently Magenta Therapeutics where he has been holding roles of increasing responsibility in analytical, formulation and bioassay development. At Magenta, Dr. Panwar’s team develops and transfers analytical methods and formulations to CDMOs in support of preclinical and clinical development of linker payloads, antibodies and ADCs.

Shabnum Patel, PhD, is a Process Development and Manufacturing Scientist in the Center for Cancer Cell Therapy at Stanford University. Her interests are in the scale-up and translation of immuno-oncology research into Phase I/II clinical trials, with a focus on novel manufacturing platforms, product characterization technologies, and gene editing. She has worked extensively in the GMP field for cell therapy, focusing on the development and characterization of virus-specific T cell therapies and gene-modified cell therapies, and has published in each of these fields with an emphasis on HIV and cancer. She has experience building GMP CAR T operations within academia, working with CMOs and academic GMP facilities to tech transfer, conduct engineering and process qualification runs, and execute comparability studies. Finally, she has worked with clinical and regulatory teams to contribute to CMC sections for INDs, develop appropriate documentation and SOPs to support clinical manufacturing needs, and train employees on critical procedures.

No bio available

Lake obtained his PhD in Structural Biology and Biophysics from Purdue University under Cynthia Stauffacher. After his PhD, he joined a Mass Spectrometric-focused lab at NIEHS for his post-doctoral studies. After his post-doctoral studies, he created the Biophysical Analysis Lab at the Bindley Bioscience Center where he introduced a comprehensive and successful biophysics analytical program that included AUC, CD, ITC, DLS, DSC, SPR, BLI and MALLS techniques. He was also the Director of the Purdue Proteomic Facility, where he implemented new analytical methods for looking at large proteomic data, PTMs, de novo sequencing and quantitation (MRM/SRM, LFQ and isotopic labeling). Lake went into industrial sector where he led programs that focused on discovery, process development, cGMP method development and validation, cGMP manufacturing and Quality Control for a variety of systems: Small Molecules, Proteins, mAbs, ADCs to Gene Therapy. Lake started his own CRO/Consulting company: BioAnalysis, LLC, focusing on high level biophysical and analytical chemistry collaborations. His deep expertise: >25 peer reviewed publications, business acumen, CMC strategy, BLA submissions, QA/C and analytical method development/validation has proven to be an invaluable resource to his clients.

Brad Pearse joined Magenta Therapeutics in 2016 as the Head of Antibody Discovery and Engineering. He previously worked at Biogen in the Biologics Drug Discovery Department focused on antibody discovery and optimization. Brad received his PhD from UMass-Amherst and did his postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School.

Shirley Peters is a molecular biologist with more than 10 years’ experience in DNA, cell and protein manipulation/engineering. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa followed by earning an MSc in Biomedical Science from the University of Leiden. She started her career at UCB in the Mammalian Expression group where she worked on CHO cell modifications and ultimately engineered the CHO host that is currently used in the transient expression system. This has been transformative within the company in the delivery of proteins required within research. After she earned her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Kent in 2012, she continued at UCB and although she remains interested in cell engineering and limiting factors in antibody production from CHO cells, her main research focus is alternative therapeutic formats and Fc engineering.

Dennis is an Investigator at the NBC (NIBR Biologics Center) Unit of Novartis with a main focus on project-related cell line development activities and respective innovation projects. Dennis holds a PhD from the University of Freiburg (Germany) in the field of Molecular Cell Biology. After his postdoc in the field Molecular Cancer Research at the University Hospital in Basel (Switzerland), Dennis joined Novartis in 2015 as a Principal Scientist working at first in the Cell Substrate Analytics (CSA) team for cell bank release. In 2016 Dennis joined the Cell Line Development (CLD) team as a Principal Scientist and since 2019 as Investigator.

Samantha Phan has broad experience in the characterization of protein biologics with over 20 years of experience ranging from QC to R & D. Her focus at Eli Lilly has been to characterize proteins using various analytical techniques, with emphasis on screening antibodies in the early discovery phase to flag potentially problematic molecules. She is the key contributor to the development of various analytical methods, such AC-SINS & HPLC-based assays. Prior to joining Lilly, Samantha worked in R & D at Biogen Idec where she employed various analytical methodologies, including mass spectrometry, to characterize proteins in different formulation buffer conditions.

Harun has 19 years of biotech R&D experience in cutting-edge molecular biology with expertise in recombinant protein expression and engineering, synthetic biology, genome engineering, and strain development. Currently, Harun is leading the Molecular Technology Department at Ambrx, Inc. to optimize their NNAA incorporation technology for the production of protein therapeutics in bacterial (ReCODE) system. Prior to that, he had engineered protein therapeutics, and optimized expression systems for development candidates at Genencor International and at Catalyst Biosciences that had moved to clinical stages.

Primary responsibilities include the support of pre-clinical drug development programs in oncology, and autoimmunity/allergy through the planning, conduct, and interpretation of antibody purification and characterization protocols. I also design, troubleshoot, and execute various analytical techniques in chromatography and electrophoresis with the goal of monitoring the quality of bispecific and recombinant antibodies. Through the use of LabChip, analytical ion exchange, and size exclusion chromatography (SEC), I routinely monitor the stability of bispecific antibodies. Further, I am responsible for introducing innovative, robust antibody purification platforms to identify cancer therapeutics through the use of mammalian cell cultures – on both a small and large scale.

Dr. Richardson is in the standards pipeline development group within global biologics at USP, leading efforts to develop standards for emerging technologies such as cell and gene therapy.  In previous roles at Advanced BioScience Laboratories and Foundation Fighting Blindness, he led translational science activities for the development of vaccines and biologics to prevent and treat infectious diseases and retinal disease.  Trained as a virologist, Jim has also held positions responsible for performing viral clearance testing at Viromed Biosafety and AAV vector development and characterization at Genovo/Targeted Genetics.

Anne Richelle did her PhD in the Engineering Department of Université Libre de Bruxelles on the modeling, optimization and control of yeast fermentation processes under the supervision of Professor Ph. Bogaerts. After a first postdoc at the same university focused on the metabolic modeling of mammalian cells, she joined the lab of Professor N.E. Lewis at University of California, San Diego to work on the integrated modeling of genotype-phenotype relationship in CHO cells, research for which she received the Elly Lilly Innovation Fellowship Award. She is currently working at GlaxoSmithKline on the integration of systems biology tools from a process engineering perspective.

I obtained my PhD from 1999-2002 from the Technical University of Munich in the field of protein chemistry before joining the lab of Prof. Morimoto at Northwestern University, Evanston in 2005 to investigate the heat shock response of C.elegans. In 2007 I started as group leader at the Technical University of Munich investigating the function and regulation of chaperone proteins by employing biophysical characterization and AUC. In 2019 I joined Coriolis Pharma Research, heading a group that applies AUC and biophysical methods to characterize therapeutically relevant products from peptides to viral particles.

Senior Scientist at Abbvie focused on design of targeted and locally activated biologics to deliver efficacy without compromising safety.

Mark Rixon has over 30 years of industrial experience focusing on recombinant protein expression, antibody generation, and protein engineering resulting in contributions to the development of therapeutic protein candidates currently in Phase II and Phase III clinical trials and pre-clinical development, including recombinant monoclonal antibodies, receptor-Fc fusion proteins, and bispecific antibodies. Presently, Mark is Senior Director of Protein Therapeutics at Alpine Immune Sciences, a biotechnology company developing IgSF receptor-Fc fusion proteins as biotherapeutics in autoimmune/inflammation and immuno-oncology applications.

Sarah Rue received her PhD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Biochemistry, Cell & Molecular Biology. She then moved to San Diego to do her postdoctoral work in protein transport at UC San Diego. Sarah worked for 11 years in protein drug discovery and optimization in the Antibody Therapeutics department of GNF. She now leads the Advanced Automation Technologies group at GNF and is responsible for the automated high-throughput screening and cell handling platforms across the institute.

Ramkrishna (Ramu) Sadhukhan is a Principal Research Scientist at AbbVie. He received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Calcutta where he trained in Molecular and Cell Biology; specializing in design and expression of recombinant proteins. He currently leads the Protein Engineering and Expression Group at AbbVie Bioresearch Center, Worcester with the primary responsibility of working with the different therapeutic areas on targets for their biologic drug discovery programs. Areas of expertise on his team include genetic analysis, design and expression screening of recombinant and fusion proteins and generating stable cell lines for discovery research. His group has developed an in-house cynomolgus monkey sequence database for in-depth genetic analysis of the target for antibody screening and toxicology studies.

Yana Safonova holds MS in Computer Science (2012) from Nizhny Novgorod State University and PhD in Bioinformatics (2017) from Saint Petersburg State University. She is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UCSD. Yana is also affiliated with the University of Louisville as an AAI Postdoctoral Fellow. Yana’s main research interests cover bioinformatics approaches to analysis of adaptive immune system.

Dr. Shahram Salek-Ardakani is a Senior Director in Cancer Immunology Discovery Unit at Pfizer. His Research focuses predominantly on mechanisms of T cell memory, dendritic cell activation, and immune regulation by members of the TNF/TNFR superfamily. His group uses a variety of molecular, cellular, and biochemical techniques, as well as live cell imaging approaches to further understand biological pathways related to cancer immunotherapy. His current roles include liaisons across Early Discovery Research, Clinical and Translational Oncology and Business Development. Dr. Salek-Ardakani completed his PhD at the Patterson Institute for Cancer Research, University of Manchester, U.K, and his postdoctoral training at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology in San Diego, CA. Dr. Salek-Ardakani has served on a number of grant review study sections and special emphasis panels for the National Institute of Health and has served on the advisory boards of professional conferences and a faculty of many seminars.

Justin M. Scheer, PhD, is currently Director of the Protein and Antibody Engineering group at Boehringer-Ingelheim. Prior to this, Dr. Scheer was Principal Scientist in the Protein Sciences Department at Genentech. During his tenure at Boehringer-Ingelheim and Genentech he has held various leadership roles in technology development, large molecule discovery, and therapeutic projects across oncology, immunology, ocular, cardiometabolic and neurobiology areas. Most recently, Dr. Scheer has been deeply involved in cancer immunotherapy and cell engager modalities and advanced several novel clinical candidates in solid tumor indications.

Matt received his PhD from the University of California, Davis, researching molecular interactions and carbohydrate structure using mass spectrometry. He later completed a postdoc at Amgen pioneering new methods for host cell protein profiling and critical quality attribute analysis. Following a brief tenure as a preclinical safety scientist at Allergan, Matt moved to Genentech in South San Francisco where he served as analytical characterization scientist for a number of antibody and antibody-drug conjugate programs. Currently residing as a Senior Research Scientist II at Gilead, Matt leads the biologics analytical operations mass spectrometry group, the biotherapeutic extended characterization team, the development molecule assessment team, and is the analytical lead for an early stage monoclonal antibody product.

Matt Schinn is a post-doctoral researcher in N. E. Lewis Lab at UCSD. He is interested in applying computational methods to improve bioprocess and cell-line engineering. Matt has recently spearheaded a collaboration with an pharmaceutical company to produce a tailored model of CHO metabolism. He did his PhD at Brigham Young University in Chemical Engineering.

Siew Schleyer is currently Director of Oncology Research at CytomX Therapeutics. Prior to joining CytomX, she led biotherapeutics research programs in Oncology at Novartis, where she oversaw large molecule programs from early stage research through entry into the clinic. In addition, she worked at Chiron, identifying and validating novel oncology targets, and has authored publications and patents in the field of oncology. Siew obtained her PhD in Immunology at Harvard.

Dr. Stefan R. Schmidt MBA, currently serves as Head of Operations/COO at BioAtrium AG, a joint venture of Lonza and Sanofi in Visp, Switzerland. Previously he held the position as CSO and other senior executive roles at Rentschler Biopharma with overall responsibilities for development and production for more than 5 years. Before that, he was CSO at ERA Biotech in Barcelona, directing the company’s R&D efforts. Prior to that, he worked for 7 years at AstraZeneca in Sweden where he led the unit of Protein Sciences as Associate Director. He started his leadership career at Biotech companies in Munich where he built up protein biochemistry teams for Connex and GPC-Biotech. In 2013 he published the first comprehensive book on therapeutic fusion proteins.

Peter Schurtenberger is a Professor in Physical Chemistry. His research interests focus on soft matter, biophysics, nanotechnology, materials sciences, on the characterization of soft and biological matter with light, X-ray and neutron scattering, and on the development of new instruments for this task. He received his PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) in Zurich in 1984. After working as a postdoc at Lund University, Sweden, MIT and Harvard University Medical School, he spent 12 years as a senior researcher at the Department of Materials of ETHZ. In 1999 he was appointed as the chair in experimental soft matter physics at the University of Fribourg. In 2006 he founded the Fribourg Center for Nanomaterials and became the first director of the newly founded Adolphe Merkle Institute for Pure and Applied Nanoscience in 2008. He moved to Lund University at the end of 2010 as a full professor in Physical Chemistry and became the founding director of the Lund Institute of advanced Neutron and X-ray Science in 2016. He has been elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and an honorary member of the European Colloid and Interface Society. He is co-founder and board member of the company LS Instruments. He has published more than 240 scientific articles and book chapters.

No bio available

Dr. Aude Segaliny is a founding scientist of Amberstone Biosciences. She currently serves as the Head of Assay Biology and Scientific Liaison at Amberstone, where she spearheaded the efforts in developing cutting-edge microfluidic-based approaches to enable the discovery of transformative immunotherapeutics. Prior to her position at Amberstone, she was a highly productive research fellow at UC Irvine, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, with the main focus on developing microfluidic-based immunotherapeutic screening technologies as well as stem-cell based therapeutic approaches for cancer treatment. She obtained her PhD from France in the field of basic cancer research and immunology, with extensive trainings in cancer biology, including the research of tumor microenvironment, more specifically the biology of IL-34 and its role in tumorigenesis.

Evgenyi Shalaev, PhD, AAPS Fellow, is an executive director in Biological Products Development, Allergan, California, USA, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics, University of Minnesota. He held the Royal Society Fellowship in Pafra Biopreservation and the University of Cambridge, UK, post-doctoral research appointments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cornell University, and worked at the Institute of Carbon (Russia), Institute of Molecular Biology (Russia), and Pfizer Inc. (USA). Dr Shalaev’s research interests include: amorphous solids; phase transitions in aqueous systems; stability of pharmaceuticals; freeze-drying. He has published over a hundred peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and patent applications

Govinda completed his BSc in 2010 from Simon Fraser University in Molecular Biology & Biochemistry and, after spending some time in the environmental services industry, returned for further training at the University of British Columbia. He completed his PhD in 2018 in Genome Science and Technology, specializing in adaptive immune repertoire profiling. He currently works as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, a division of BC Cancer, in Vancouver, Canada.

Ilya Shestopalov, PhD currently leads the cell analytics group within analytical development at bluebird bio. His research focuses on development of cell-based assays for hematopoietic stem/progenitor and CAR-T products. Prior to bluebird bio, Dr. Shestopalov was a postdoctoral fellow in stem cell biology at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University working with zebrafish hematopoietic stem cells. Dr. Shestopalov received his PhD in 2010 from the Chemical Biology program at Stanford University and a BSc in Biological Chemistry from University of Chicago in 2004.

Principal Scientist, Abbott Laboratories, July 2018-Present; Senior Scientist, Abbott Laboratories, 01/ 2015-07/2018; Senior Scientist Eppendorf AG, Enfield, Connecticut, 08/2012- 12/ 2014; Staff Scientist, Sanford -Burnham Medical Research Institute, Orlando, FL, 02/2008 – 10/2012; Postdoctoral Associate, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, 11/2005 - 02/2008. Dr. Siddiquee received his PhD in Metabolic Engineering from Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan in 2005; his MSc in Microbiology from Dhaka University, Bangladesh in 2001; and his BSc in Microbiology from Dhaka University, Bangladesh in 1999. AWARDS: 2004-2005. Fukuoka International Exchange Foundation Scholarship. 2004. Meisenkai award for attending the Metabolic Engineering conference at Lake Tahoe, CA. 2002-2005. NEDO project fellowship for PhD from Japan Ministry of Science and Technology. 2003. Meisenkai award for attending the Society for Biotechnology conference in Osaka, Japan. 2000. Research fellowship from Bangladesh Ministry of Science and Technology. PUBLICATIONS: 18 publications in peer reviewed journals.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-adriano-s-b139b963/

Anupam Singhal earned his PhD from the University of British Columbia and has over 15 years of experience in nanotechnology and microfluidics at UBC, the University of Toronto and Stanford University. His work has been cited over 600 times and resulted in several patents for molecular disease diagnosis, antibody discovery, and development of production cell-lines for biologics . At Berkeley Lights, Anupam leads the development of next-generation platforms for the discovery and development of antibody therapeutics.

Christopher Smith, PhD is Head of Biologics, US at Genedata Inc. Dr. Smith develops data management solutions for biopharma and biotech companies to support their biologics drug discovery and development programs. This includes bioprocess analysis and consultation as well as end-to-end workflow support solutions for antibody and protein screening, engineering, expression, and purification. He earned his PhD at the University of California, San Francisco in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Dr. Corey Smith is a Senior Scientist in Global Protein Sciences/Global Biologics at the AbbVie Bioresearch Center (ABC) in Worcester, MA. He is responsible for protein purification and has specialized in the design, expression and purification of enzymes and protein complexes to advance the Biologics pipeline. Prior to joining AbbVie he completed his post-doctoral work at UMASS Medical School in Dr. Paul Kaufman’s lab, working on involvement of histone chaperones in replication coupled chromatin assembly and chromatin association with the nucleolus. His graduate thesis was completed under the guidance of Dr. Craig Peterson, where he worked on structural and enzymatic analysis of SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complexes.

Dr. Balaji Somasundaram is a bioprocess scientist with demonstrated success in managing academic-industry research projects. His research background in the areas of baculovirus-insect cell technology, protein recovery and protein characterization, have equipped him with knowledge and skills to work on both the upstream and downstream of protein production. He is proficient in implementing Quality by Design principles and used Design of Experiment concepts in developing robust downstream processes for biosimilars manufacturing. His current research interest is in biopharmaceutical downstream process intensification by developing continuous chromatography and membrane-based separation processes.

I am a research scientist at Amgen. Over the last 15 years, my work has been focused on molecule assessment, and determining the potential for developability and manufacturability of candidate bio-molecules in the early stages of drug development. I have experience with multiple drug modalities including mAbs, bispecifics, and coformulations. While each modality brings new challenges which can sometimes be confoundingly cumbersome, it is also that which I am excited and most passionate about characterizing and/or resolving. Prior to working Amgen, I received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Microbiology and a Minor in Biotechnology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I was also a farmer – “Try it, it builds loads of character- Probably enough to make you want to do more science in a nice air-conditioned lab!”

Dr. Jamie Spangler earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and her PhD in Biological Engineering at MIT. She went on to complete postdoctoral training in Professor K. Christopher Garcia’s lab at Stanford University School of Medicine, and launched her independent research group at Johns Hopkins University in July 2017, jointly between the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. Dr. Spangler’s lab, located in the Translational Tissue Engineering Center at the School of Medicine, applies structural and mechanistic insights to re-engineer existing proteins and design new proteins that therapeutically modulate the immune response. In particular, her group is interested in engineering immune molecules such as antibodies and cytokines for targeted treatment of diseases such as cancer and autoimmune disorders.

Dr. Kuldip Sra has over 25 years been work experience in biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Currently, Dr. Sra is working as a Senior Director, Late Stage Analytical Development at Crisper Therapeutics. Previously Dr. Sra has worked at Kite Pharma/Gilead where was Director of QC. Dr. Sra was involved in developing , validating analytical assays for lot release of Kite pharma’s autologous cell therapy clinical products and also in release of clinical lots. In the past, Dr. Kuldip Sra has worked at MedImmune/AstraZeneca Company for 15 yrs. Dr. Sra led Vaccine Analytical Development and Characterization group at MedImmune at Mountain View site.

Anthony is the head of Business Development at Rapid Novor and is a Biomedical Engineering graduate with over 8 years of experience leading business initiatives. His current efforts are focused on the international adoption of the REmAb™ protein sequencing platform within the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

Tatiana STARCIUC, PhD in material sciences, actually working as assistant professor at University of Lille, France. My research project is based on protein characterization at the solid (freeze-dried) or liquid state, using mainly µ-Raman spectroscopy, dielectric relaxation spectroscopy and other complementary technics as DSC, TGA, DLS, DRX, etc.

Samuel H. Sternberg, PhD, runs a research laboratory at Columbia University, where he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. He received his BA in Biochemistry from Columbia University in 2007, graduating summa cum laude, and his PhD in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014. He earned graduate student fellowships from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense, and received the Scaringe Award and the Harold Weintraub Graduate Student Award. Sam's research focuses on the mechanism of DNA targeting by RNA-guided bacterial immune systems (CRISPR-Cas) and on the development of these systems for genome engineering. In addition to publishing his work in leading scientific journals, he recently co-authored a popular science trade book together with Jennifer Doudna, entitled A Crack in Creation: The Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution, about the discovery, development, and applications of CRISPR gene-editing technology.

Lars Stöckl is a leading scientist at Glycotope GmbH since 2005. As cell and protein biochemist he was responsible for the establishment of the GlycoExpress plattform and for setting up the glyco-analytical lab.Before the appointment at Glycotope he gained experience in cell line engineering and protein chemistry during his PhD and Postdoc at the Robert Koch-Institute /Berlin, the Charite / Berlin and the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research / London.

Dr. Traian Sulea is a Principal Research Officer who joined the National Research Council Canada as a post-doctoral fellow in 1995. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Parasitology of McGill University since 2012. Dr. Sulea has broad expertise in applying computational approaches to the discovery and optimization of bioactive small-molecules and biologics. He has contributed to the development of computational methods for biomolecular applications, focusing on continuum solvation models and binding-affinity scoring functions. He has applied structural modeling for bioengineering of growth-factor traps and selective tumor targeting, as well as antibody humanization, conjugation, affinity maturation, de novo design, and developability. Dr. Sulea has authored 94 scientific articles and book chapters, and is an inventor on 29 patents issued or pending.

Dr. Sumbria is currently an Associate Professor at the Keck Graduate Institute, School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and Assistant Project Scientist at UC, Irvine. Dr. Sumbria's research focus is a blend of pharmacokinetic and pharmacological studies for CNS drug development. In particular, her research interest lies in studying the role of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in CNS pathology from both disease development/progression and drug delivery point of view. Research in her lab includes development of a brain penetrating biologics for Alzheimer’s disease and studying the non-hemorrhagic mechanisms of cerebral microbleeds development. Her work has been funded by the Alzheimer’s Association, Joseph H. Stahlberg Foundation and the National Institute of Aging.

Dr. Szabat received BEng and BSc degrees from Western University and a PhD in Genetics from the University of British Columbia, Canada. During her post-doctoral studies, she developed high-content, high-throughput screening methods to modulate pancreatic beta cell gene expression and function. Marta joined AbCellera in 2015 as a senior scientist developing single cell screening assays for AbCellera’s antibody discovery platform and leads several partner projects focusing on mutlipass membrane and infectious disease targets.

The Szoka group applies chemical, biophysical and molecular biology approaches to devise vaccine, drug and nucleic acid delivery systems to treat cancer or infectious diseases. These systems can incorporate lipids, peptides, polymers and proteins. These drug carriers are composed of lipids, polymers, peptides or proteins. His group has extensively investigated the role of lipids in membrane fusion and his designed, synthesized and studied the mechanism of fusogenic peptides. With group members, he has published over 195 manuscripts and has received 26 U.S. patents. One FDA approved drug product Amphotec™ and one biotechnology product Superfect™ have been commercialized from the patents. In addition to his University commitments, Dr. Szoka is a founder of Sequus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. owned by Johnson & Johnson and GeneMedicine, inc. now known as Valentis, Inc. Sequus introduced sterically stabilized liposomes for anti-cancer drug delivery (Doxil™).

David Szymkowski leads the immunology group as vice president of cell biology at Xencor, Inc. Xencor is a clinical-stage company developing Fc-engineered and bispecific antibodies and cytokine mimetics for the treatment of autoimmune diseases, allergic diseases, and cancer. Currently, 14 candidates engineered with Xencor's XmAb technology are in clinical development internally and with its partners. Prior to joining Xencor in 2002, Dr. Szymkowski was a principal scientist in the inflammation group at Roche in Palo Alto, CA. Previously, he was a virology program leader at Roche in the U.K. Dr. Szymkowski is also on the board of INmune Bio, Inc., a clinical-stage biotech that is developing new immunotherapies to fight cancer and Alzheimer’s. He received his BA at Johns Hopkins University and his PhD in molecular and cell biology from Penn State, and completed a postdoc at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (U.K.).

Tanvir joined Takeda about three years ago and is presently the Head of Formulation Development and Characterization; Tanvir is currently based in Vienna, Austria. His responsibilities include developing stable formulations for various Gene Therapy and protein-based modalities. Prior to joining Takeda, Tanvir worked as an Associate Director, for Beaufour Ipsen, and managed a trans-national Early and Pre-Formulation Development group with members based in Paris and Boston. The remit of this group was to develop formulations to help with the candidate selection process for small molecules and Biopharmaceuticals. Tanvir has extensive experience of working in the Biopharmaceutical industry having also worked, for 15 years, in the Biopharmaceutical Product Development Division of GlaxoSmithKline. Tanvir has a strong track record of developing formulations for a range of Biopharmaceutical molecules

Mohammad Tabrizi (Tabrizifard), PhD is a leader in translational sciences and integrative pharmacology with a key focus on development of targeted modalities, novel biologics constructs and antibody-based therapeutics. He has extensive experience (20+) in research and development with product development experience spanning many therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology, immune-oncology, and inflammatory diseases; his technical expertise includes preclinical pharmacology and safety, preclinical and clinical pharmacokinetics (PK), pharmacodynamics (PD), GLP-compliant bioanalytics, and clinical pharmacology. Mohammad’s work has facilitated transition of numerous compounds into the preclinical and clinical development from early stages with critical input on construct design, lead selection and preclinical development of novel drug molecules such as multi-specific constructs, targeted drug conjugates, proteins and peptides, and various novel modalities. He has been an author and co-inventor on more than 50 original papers, reviews, scientific books and patents and has been an invited speaker to numerous national and international conferences. Additionally, he has served in numerous scientific capacities including: as the guest editor for AAPS Journal, a member of the Canadian Grant review committees, and a reviewer for AAPS Journal, Drug Discovery Today, and the Clinical Therapeutics. He received his bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy from University of Houston (Summa Cum Laude) with honor and his PhD from University at Buffalo, State University of New York (SUNY) with focus on Quantitative and Pharmaceutical Sciences (QPS). He completed a postdoctoral training at University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY) with a focus on therapeutics.

ADCs are complex therapeutic modalities with the possibility of forming multiple analytes in vivo. A wide variety of assays on multiple analytical platforms had been utilized for their characterization. How one chooses what is appropriate for decision making at the various project stages and balances speed, quality and reagent availability? A few case studies with bioanalytical decision tree will illustrate the issues and solutions.

Peter Tessier is the Albert M. Mattocks (Endowed) Professor in the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, and a member of the Biointerfaces Institute at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware (2003, NASA Graduate Fellow) and performed his postdoctoral studies at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT (2003-2007, American Cancer Society Fellow). Tessier started his independent career as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2007, and he was an endowed full professor at Rensselaer prior to moving to the University of Michigan in 2017. Tessier’s research focuses on designing, optimizing, characterizing and formulating a class of large therapeutic proteins (antibodies) that hold great potential for detecting and treating human disorders ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease. He has received a number of awards and fellowships in recognition of his pioneering work: Pew Scholar Award in Biomedical Sciences (2010-2014), Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (2014-2015), Young Scientist Award from the World Economic Forum (2014), Young Investigator Award from the American Chemical Society (2015) and NSF CAREER Award (2010-2015).

Marcel is currently Associate Director in BioT DPDS DPD Large Molecule Process Development within the global biopharmaceutical division of Johnson&Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals at Cilag AG, Schaffhausen, Switzerland. DPD Schaffhausen covers all aspects of providing process development support to parenteral manufacturing activities, such as mixing, filtration and filling. Marcel is leading a Team of Scientists and Process Engineers that provides lab operational, computational modeling and Technology Transfer support for a broad range of early-to-late stage products. Before joining JnJ Marcel was responsible for R&D strategy and technical development as Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of the ETH spin-off company BioVersys AG, Basel, Switzerland from 2008 to 2015. Marcel studied Molecular Biology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany and performed his Master Thesis at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psychiatry, Munich, where he also worked as research associate from 2000-2004 in the Group of Dr. Beat Lutz. He received his doctorate from the ETH Zürich working on engineering of mammalian cell lines in the field of synthetic biology.

I received my BA from Swarthmore College, and then went to University of Washington to get an MS in agrobacterium with Gene Nester. My work on factors transported with agrobacteriums’s tumorigenic T-DNA lead to a life-long interest in cross-kingdom genetic exchange. I studied retroviruses for many years, first at Tufts University, where I got my PhD with John Coffin, and then at Harvard in the lab of Joe Sodroski. My study of early entry and innate viral restriction dovetailed with the pioneering HSC work at bluebird bio, where I started my industry career. From bluebird I worked in Upstream Development and as Head of Vector Engineering at Dimension Therapeutics before I dove back into fundamental yet translational virology at the Grousbeck Center for Gene Therapy with Luk Vandenberghe. At the Grousbeck I led the capsid discovery effort.

After earning her Masters in Cell and Molecular Biology, Renee worked several years in drug discovery research at companies like Tularik (Amgen), Bayer, and Schering-Plough. She eventually left the bench to pursue more customer-facing roles in applications and product management for life science analytical tools. She is passionate about promoting new, innovative solutions to accelerate biopharmaceutical development, and her current role as Director of Marketing at Halo Labs enables her to do just that.

Biophysicist with 7+ years of experience leveraging my background in physics, math, biology, and engineering to design and develop innovative strategies to study biological systems. Passionate about working in multidisciplinary teams and harnessing the talents of scientific, technical, and administrative professionals to find creative solutions to challenging problems. Proactive contributor to cross-function collaborations and effective at adapting my role to serve the team effort. Enthusiastic about developing new therapies to improve the well-being of patients.

No bio available

Dr. Vishal Toprani is a Scientist in the Pharmaceutical Development department at Alexion Pharmaceuticals, New Haven, CT. Dr. Toprani received his PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from Macromolecule and Vaccine Stabilization Center at University of Kansas in which his doctoral studies was focused on better understanding of vaccine stability as applied to pharmaceutical development of various recombinant protein vaccine candidates. After his PhD, he subsequently started as a scientist at Alexion Pharmaceuticals. He is currently focused on stabilizing and formulating high concentration antibody drug products using state-of-the-art biophysical technologies and modern high throughput approaches.

No bio available

Dr. Trinklein is the Chief Technology Officer at Teneobio. Teneobio employs a sequence-based approach for antibody discovery that leverages next-generation sequencing and high-throughput functionally assays to develop fully-human multi-specific antibodies. Prior to Teneobio, Dr. Trinklein was co-founder and CEO of SwitchGear Genomics, a venture-backed company that was acquired in 2013. Dr. Trinklein served as the Technical Director of the Stanford ENCODE project and received his PhD from Stanford University. Dr. Trinklein has published over 20 peer-reviewed papers and is an inventor on over 15 patents.

Dr. Truong is a founder of Aridis and elected to the CEO position in 2014 after having served as the company's Chief Scientific Officer for the past 9 years. He has over 20 years of experience in biopharmaceutical drug development, and a life-long interest and research experience in infectious diseases, focusing on the development of innovative human monoclonal antibodies and vaccines designed to address life threatening infections. His product development experience includes FluMist™, Synagis™ mAb, and a number of other monoclonal antibody based therapeutics. Dr. Truong is the principal architect of the Aridis technologies, which includes a range of anti-infective products, MabIgX® human mAb discovery platform technology, and pharmaceutical processing technologies. He received his PhD in Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. Undey heads up Digital Integration and Predictive Technologies function in Amgen Process Development. Current research interests include in silico modeling (digital twins) of devices and various biologics and synthetics development operations, machine learning applications for intelligent manufacturing, AI and advanced control. Dr. Undey and his team’s work were externally recognized receiving CIO100 Award in Life Sciences in 2013 for Amgen implementing advanced data analytical solutions. He received his BSc, MSc and PhD degrees all in Chemical Engineering from Istanbul University, Turkey. He also holds an Executive MBA degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, Anderson School of Management. Dr. Undey is based in Amgen’s headquarters in Thousand Oaks, CA, USA.

Jonathan van Dyck is a Scientist in the Analytical Sciences department at Seattle Genetics. His role focuses on analytical characterization and technology development in support of ADC and empowered antibody development, and he currently is the analytical lead for a late-phase ADC program. He received his BS in Biological Oceanography from the University of Washington and has over 15 years of experience in the biotechnology industry.

Corporate Vice President of Recombinant Technologies, Global Research Technologies, Novo Nordisk A/S, Denmark. Since 2017 Dr. Vandahl has been responsible for mammalian and microbial expression systems including up- and downstream processes for therapeutic lead candidate identification and optimization in Research at Novo Nordisk. Current function areas include Antibody Technologies, Expression Technologies, Recombinant Diversity Generation, Upstream Technologies, and Downstream Technologies. From 2008 to 2017 Dr. Vandahl served as head of various departments within the protein technology field in Research at Novo Nordisk, spanning from protein purification and characterization to structure determination, interaction studies, and formulation development. From 2006 to 2008 he was Senior Scientist in Protein Characterization at Novo Nordisk. From 2004 to 2006 Dr. Vandahl was Project Manager at Statens Serum Insitut, Denmark. Dr. Vandahl received his MSc and PhD from University of Aarhus, Denmark.

Navin Varadarajan is the MD Anderson Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Houston. Navin’s research is focused on human immunology and immunotherapy to enable the development of therapeutics for a number of diseases including rheumatoid arthritis and cancer. Navin has received numerous awards, including the first engineer to receive the Melanoma Research Alliance Young Investigator Award and more recently the CDMRP Cancer Career Award. He is also the founder and CSO of CellChorus.

Dr. Vásquez is currently head of computational biology at Adimab. Prior to Adimab, he was an independent consultant working for companies in the antibody therapeutic field including Xencor, Five Prime Therapeutics, and Galaxy Biotech, among others. He had spent part of his career at PDL Biopharma, where he was most recently Senior Director of Research, helping further to develop and deploy the Queen technology for antibody humanization, and participating in engineering of multiple antibodies, including a number in clinical development. He holds a PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from Cornell University.

PhD in Biochemistry (thesis: folding/stability of DARPins) from University of Zurich, Switzerland; Postdoc in Molecular Chaperones folding/stability from Stanford University, California; Previously Employed at Boehringer-Ingelheim (2012-2017), led a team in Biophysics and was the project lead in therapeutic areas (CVM specializing in Ophthalmology, Immunology and Oncology) responsible for discovery and development of mAb leads for Diabetic Retinopathy, Geography Atrophy, Ischemic Retinopathy, Severe Asthma; Currently leading Biophysics Team in Janssen Biotherapeutics (Johnson and Johnson): Responsible for discovery research molecule characterization. Developed and Implemented assays for solubility, self-association, thermal/chemical stability, formulation screening, high concentration potential, aggregation propensity, viscosity, nonspecific binding etc for mAbs, multi-specifics, scFvs, VHHs etc. Project Lead for Several Oncology targets.

Renaud Vincentelli, PhD, is Head of the high-throughput protein production facility of AFMB, CNRS – Aix-Marseille University, France. Renaud Vincentelli joined the lab in 2001 to set-up one of the first high throughput protein production facilities in Europe. Prior to joining the AFMB, Renaud spent eight years producing proteins for structural analysis at EMBL (Germany). His team was involved in several European-wide collaborative projects and developed automated protocols for protein expression screening, protein production, protein-DNA and protein-protein interaction studies.

Bjørn Voldborg has more than 20 years of experience working with recombinant protein expression from both academic and industrial settings. Bjørn was Team Leader in the biotech company Pharmexa A/S, responsible for molecular cloning and expression of protein-based drug candidates. From this he went to the NNF Center for Protein Research at the University of Copenhagen as Head of the Protein Production Unit, and since 2012 Bjørn has been heading the CHO Cell Line Engineering project at the NNF Center for Biosustainability at the Technical University of Denmark, a project dedicated to the engineering of improved protein production cell factories.

Dr. Jiwu Wang is the founder and CEO of Allele Biotech. He led the company to become an early developer of RNAi and the first market provider of shRNA reagents. His team developed the field-leading fluorescent proteins mNeonGreen, mMaple, etc., giving rise to superior imaging tools and calcium and voltage sensors. He co-invented Allele’s mRNA reprogramming method and established commercial GMP operations for generating/banking iPSCs. Allele has formed partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotech companies to use its GMP iPSCs as well as its technologies to generate pancreatic beta cells, oligodendrocytes, neural progenitors, lung epithelial cells, MSCs, etc. Allele is the second company to develop VHH nanoantibodies from camelids and now has dozens of drug candidates against cancer and inflammation targets. He also founded the Scintillon Institute, which combines genetic engineering, neurosciences, and human longevity research.

Lu is the Associate Director from the CMC process development group of Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. She joined Teva in 2015. Her major responsibility is overseeing CMC process development primarily downstream for Teva early phase and late phase molecules. Before joined Teva, Lu worked 4 years in Bristol Myers Squibb Co. She held PhD in Biochemical Engineering from McMaster University of Canada. Lu's specialty expertise includes process development, tech transfer and manufacture processing.

Dr. Peng George Wang is currently an endowed Professor in Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology at Baylor College of Medicine. His lab is in Glycoscience on glycobiology, glycochemistry, glycoanalysis, glycomics, medicinal chemistry and chemical biology, with emphasis on investigating protein-carbohydrate interaction through a variety novel analytical methods. The Wang lab has published 430 peer-reviewed research papers/reviews. Professor Wang has edited seven books and has 6 issued US patents. Wang received the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. and was the Horace S. Isbell Awardee from the Division of Carbohydrate Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. In 2012 he was elected as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellow.

Dr. Wang obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Mechanics and Fluid Mechanics from Peking University, Beijing, P.R. China, in 1992 and 1996, respectively. He received his PhD degree in Bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering in 2002 and continued his postdoctoral work at UC San Diego working under Bioengineering Professor Shu Chien and Professor Roger Y. Tsien in the Department of Pharmacology. He is current a professor at the department of Bioengineering at UCSD and a fellow of American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

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Spin Wang is the Co-founder and CEO of TetraScience, a Boston-based cloud technology company that provides a Data Integration Platform for Life Sciences R&D Labs. He earned a MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, where he was awarded the Lockheed Martin Energy Fellowship. He also holds a BS in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. In 2017, Spin was selected to Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 in Science. He is currently on the board of Pistoia Alliance, a global life science pre-competitive collaboration organization.

Ernst Weber, PhD, is Senior Scientist at Bayer AG in the department of Antibody Lead Discovery and Optimization. After receiving his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Halle (Germany), he conducted his Postdoc work as EMBO fellow at the MRC-LMB in Cambridge focusing on protein engineering. In 2008 he joined Bayer Innovation where he developed new HTS compatible molecular biology technologies with applications in the optimization of function and expression of single proteins or even complete enzymatic pathways. 2012 he moved to Bayer AG and is here responsible for antibody optimization and as project leader in Ophthalmology, Inflammation and Lung disease.  Since 2015 he coordinates the set up of the bispecific antibody platform at Bayer.

Gregory Weiss is a Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He earned a BS from UC Berkeley and a PhD from Harvard. His undergraduate and graduate research focused on the development of heterocyclic mimics of peptides.  Awarded a Ruth Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the NIH, he returned the funding to pursue post-doctoral studies with Dr. Jim Wells, then at Genentech.  In 2000, he joined the faculty at UCI where his laboratory focuses on the interface between chemistry and biology, including studies of enzymes, molecular recognition, and bioelectronics.  His awards include Outstanding Professor in the School of Physical Sciences at UCI (elected by the graduating students), Beckman Foundation Young Investigator, and election to Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He has published around 100 peer-reviewed articles in chemical biology, biophysics, biochemistry, molecular biology, and organic chemistry. He co-founded, and was twice elected Co-Chair of the Global Young Academy, which includes 200 top young scientists from >55 countries. With Dr. David Van Vranken, he co-authored Introduction to Bioorganic Chemistry and Chemical Biology. In 2015, he was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry for leading the team that partially unboiled the egg. He has started two biotech companies, and was UCI’s Entrepreneurial Leader of the Year in 2018. He and his wife, Kim, live in Irvine, California with their three cats.

Alon Wellner is a postdoctoral research at UC Irvine, developing a fully continuous system for antibody discovery and evolution in yeast. Alon earned his PhD from the Weizmann institute where he studied basic principles of molecular evolution with Dan S. Tawfik. Prior to joining Chang Liu’s group at UCI, Alon lead several R&D teams in Israeli biotech companies. His research was focused on implementing the RNAi technology to agricultural products and later for synthetic phage engineering as therapeutics for chronic diseases.

Ian’s background is firmly in the engineering and development of therapeutic antibodies. Having solved the first NMR structure of a human antibody fragment (UCB-Celltech, University of Leicester) Ian oversaw therapeutic research projects covering technology validation, drug discovery and optimization (MedImmune, AstraZeneca) before joining Absolute Antibody at its founding in 2012.

Jessica Williamson, PhD is the Protein Production Lead at UCB Biosciences and has been with the organization for four years, starting as a Research Scientist in Protein Purification in 2015. Her background is in protein biophysics and biochemistry. She completed her PhD at Yale University in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, studying the structure and assembly of an amyloid protein using NMR spectroscopy. As a postdoc at Harvard University, Jess studied membrane protein structure and behavior using NMR as well. This background in challenging proteins has been useful in managing a protein production group. In addition to her role overseeing the Protein Expression and Purification team, Jess is also engaged in UCB’s initiatives for Women in Leadership and environmental sustainability practices.

Dr. Wine graduated from Tel Aviv University in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology at the Faculty of Life Sciences under the supervision of Prof. Amihay Freeman and Prof Felix Frolow, where using structural biology, protein chemistry, computerized modeling and molecular biology tools, he studied various aspects of protein-protein interactions for the design of novel composite materials within the nano-biotechnology field. During his postdoctoral training at the laboratory of Prof. George Georgiou (UT, Austin), Dr. Wine focused on developing a novel approach for the in-depth analysis of the humoral response following vaccine or disease. Following his postdoc training he established his research group at Tel Aviv University. As a group leader, Dr. Wine utilizes his recently developed approach combined with earlier acquired tools to study: i) maternal-infant immunity by profiling the molecular composition, dynamics and attributes of maternal, trans-placental and breastmilk vaccine-specific antibodies; ii) Anti-drug antibodies following treatment with Biologics and; iii) anti-bacterial antibodies to be used as next generation antibiotics. Collectively, Dr. Wine’s research group aims to address basic immunological questions as well as application-focused research for vaccine evaluation, development and design, immunodiagnostic discovery, and monoclonal antibody engineering.

Gerhard Winter was born in 1959, studied Pharmacy at the University of Heidelberg from 1977 until 1982 with a scholarship from the Studienstiftung . In 1983 he received the German Approbation as a pharmacist and started a Ph. D. thesis under the supervision of Prof. Stricker in the area of transdermal absorption simulations. He finished the PhD in 1987 with summa cum laude and accepted a position at Merck in Darmstadt leading a laboratory for solid dosage form development. In 1988 he joined Boehringer Mannheim, later Roche where he stayed until 1999. In 1999 G.Winter was appointed as a full professor for Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmaceutics at the University of Munich , Center for Drug Research, where he is currently working on protein stabilisation, parenteral dosage form technology, novel drying technologies, drug delivery systems and colloidal drug formulations. Prof. Winter has issued more than 50 patent applications and more than 190 publications in his research field, more than 65 PhD theses have been finished under his supervision. He is member of many scientific societies, editorial advisory boards of several scientific journals and scientific advisory boards of pharma and biotec companies. In 2008 he co-founded Coriolis Pharma GmbH, Martinsried, together with former PhD students to provide the biotec industry with formulation and analytical services. The company has grown into a leading provider of such services world wide and G. Winter is supporting the company and its customers with scientific advise.

David Wood is a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The Ohio State University. He received his undergraduate degree from Caltech in 1990 with a double major in Chemical Engineering and Molecular Biology, and has worked on Neupogen® manufacturing at Amgen and downstream process development at Bristol Myers Squibb. He completed his PhD in 2001 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and held a previous faculty position at Princeton, where he received the NSF Career Award. He has significant expertise in protein purification using self-cleaving tag methods, and their potential applications in the biopharmaceutical industry.

Dr Yan is currently a Sr. Director at Acceleron Pharma, and he has been working in protein/ mAb therapeutics space for over 17 years. Prior to Acceleron, Dr Yan had worked for TESARO, Celgene, Gilead, Genentech and Amgen. Dr. Yan has deep knowledge in mAb /ADC/protein therapeutics development and characterization, as evidenced by successful project leadership experience (mAbs, ADCs, Bi-specifics and Fc fushion proteins), multiple publications in premier journals, and an invited speaker for several influential conferences.

Dr. Yan is a Research Associate Professor of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Iowa. He received his postdoctoral training with Dr. John F. Engelhardt from 1998 to 2000. Since 2000, Dr. Yan’s research at the University of Iowa focuses on the transduction biology of rAAV-based vectors in airways and gene therapy for cystic fibrosis (CF) lung disease. He also played a critical role in the generation of CF ferret models using rAAV mediated mutagenesis and CRISPR gene editing. Dr. Yan began his independent research in 2011. In collaboration with Dr. Jianming Qiu of Kansas University, he is studying the virology of HBoV1, which led to the development of the rAAV2/HBoV1 vector. Dr. Yan’s current research efforts, supported by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the NIH, are to develop effective rAAV-based gene addition and gene correction approaches in CF ferret models.

Dr. Yan-ping Yang received her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA, and has over 24 years of experiences in vaccine research and development with Sanofi Pasteur. She joined the Research department of Sanofi Pasteur in 1989, involved in various bacterial and viral vaccine development projects with numerous patents and publications. She became the Director of Downstream Processing in 2001, leading a group that is responsible for new vaccine purification process development,  scale up, and technology transfer.

Alexei Yeliseev is a Staff Scientist, head of the protein biochemistry group at the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, National Institute of Health. His research focuses on developing technologies for expression, purification, and functional and structural characterization of G protein-coupled receptors. In addition to his research work he serves as a member of editorial board of Protein Expression and Purification.

Alex Yermanos is a PhD student working under the joint-supervision of Professors Sai Reddy and Annette Oxenius at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. His research incorporates high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics to profile the immune response in the context of cancer and various infection models. Alex holds a BA (2014) in biochemistry from Columbia University and a MS (2016) from ETH Zurich in computational biology and bioinformatics.

Daniel Yoo is a Scientist at Amgen in the Biologics group of Therapeutic Discovery where he is responsible for protein drug discovery and development for a variety of therapeutic programs. His areas of expertise include protein purification and analytics, high throughput processes, protein folding, chemical modifications, lab automation and informatics. Daniel Yoo received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology at the University of Rochester in 2003. Prior to joining Amgen, he worked as a research associate in the laboratory of Dr. Reid Johnson at the UCLA School of Biological Chemistry studying the role of the E. coli nucleoid protein Fis in chromosome compaction and gene regulation.

Xiaoda obtained her bachelor’s degree in biological engineering from Purdue University and her PhD from University of Kentucky, department of pharmaceutical sciences. She currently works at Allergan in Irvine, California where she is primarily focused on pre-formulation, physical and biophysical characterization. Outside of work, Xiaoda is on the steering committee of AAPS-affiliated, Southern California Pharmaceutical Discussion Group and can be seen snowboarding at Mammoth on weekends.

Thomas Zahel is head of innovation at Exputec, with outstanding experience in statistics, algorithm development and turning complex challenges into easy concepts for our clients. His background is in bioprocess engineering and he holds a PhD in applied statistics for process development and validation. He is most passionate about developing new statistical methods that turn data into knowledge. He has successfully helped top-ranked biopharmaceutical companies to develop, improve and validate their processes according to regulatory compliance.

Kevin Zen has 25 years of experience in developing biologics drugs for clinical and commercial. He is currently an executive director responsible for analytical characterization, formulation development and drug product manufacturing at AnaptysBio in San Diego, USA.

John Zhao is currently part of the Process Technologies group within the Cell Process Development and Gene Editing department at bluebird bio. His research focuses on exploring new technologies and methods to implement into a manufacturable CAR-T product. Prior to bluebird, John worked in a variety of cell therapy labs including research in cardiac cell therapy and manufacturing a HSC product for clinical trials. John received his MS in 2017 in Biochemistry at the University of Louisville and his BS in 2012 in Bioengineering from Cornell University.

Dr. Xiaotian Zhong is currently Senior Principal Scientist and Lab Head at BioMedicine Design of Pfizer Worldwide R&D. Prior to joining Pfizer in October 2009, he was Principal Research Scientist and Lab Head at Wyeth Research from June 2002 to September 2009. With 17 years pharmaceutical industry experience in Drug Discovery and Development, Dr. Zhong has a strong scientific and technical background in mammalian cell biology, therapeutic protein production & engineering, and antibody-drug conjugation. His current and past therapeutic research focuses include Oncology, Autoimmune diseases, and Cardio-Renal diseases. Dr. Zhong received a PhD degree in Molecular Genetics from Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA), an MPH degree in Management from Harvard University, and a post-doctoral fellowship in Molecular Cell Biology at Harvard University. Dr. Zhong is an author or co-author of 33 peer-reviewed publications, and an inventor of 4 issued patents and 10 patent applications.

Yizhou Zhou is a Scientist in the Upstream Process Development Team of Biogen. She leads vector design, genetic characterization, and multi-omics analysis to support cell line and cell culture process development. She obtained a PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Michigan and worked at Genentech before joining Biogen.

Qin “Chinn” Zou is currently the group leader and associate research fellow at Pfizer Inc., responsible for product and process characterization using various biophysical and biochemical techniques. Before joining Pfizer, he was with Eli Lilly and Co. and worked on formulation development, analytical research and biophysical analysis for biotherapeutics. Qin Zou has a PhD in physical biochemistry from University of Iowa College of Medicine, specifically on thermodynamics of protein stability, protein unfolding and protein interaction. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University School of Medicine studying enzymology and protein crystallography