2019 Speaker Biographies by Name

Scientist II, Biologics Development (Analytical Method Development)
Pegah is a scientist II in Analycial method development at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Currently she is SME for Capillary electrophoresis methods such as iCIEF, and CE-SDS. She has a PhD in Chemical engineering from Northeastern University, Boston and Bachelors in Materials Science and Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Iran. She has built a collaboration with protein simple on evaluating and advancing Maurice CE-SDS systems capabilities.

Associate Director, Head, Bioassay/Immunoassay Method Development
Marla Abodeely has been working in the Bioassay/Immunoassay field for over 12 years. During this time, she has worked with both small and large biotech companies in all stages of product development, from discovery to post-commercialization. Her primary focus has been protein therapeutics, including enzymes, GPCRs, fusion proteins and antibodies. She is currently the Head of Bioassay/ Immunoassay (Potency and Process Residuals) Analytical Method Development at Shire located in Lexington, MA. She received her B.S. in Biology at Columbia University in New York, NY with a focus in molecular genetics and earned her Ph.D. in the Biomedical Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) with a focus in biochemistry and cell biology.

Scientist
No bio available

CSO
Dr. Adams is Chief Scientific Officer of Sesen Bio, a clinical stage company developing antibody-toxin fusion proteins for the treatment of cancer. In this role he is responsible for guiding the development of the company’s pipeline assets. Before moving to biotech, Dr. Adams was the Director of Biological Research and Therapeutics and previously co-led the Developmental Therapeutics Program at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, an NCI designated comprehensive cancer center in Philadelphia. Dr. Adams is an immunologist with over 30 years of experience in developing antibody-based agents for the treatment and detection of cancer. He received a Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of California at Davis in 1991. He joined Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia where he led a laboratory focused on developing antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates for the treatment of breast, ovarian and renal cancer. Dr. Adams serves on the Editorial Boards of Cancer Immunology Research, MAbs and Cancer Biotherapy & Radiopharmaceuticals. He has served on the Scientific Advisory Boards of a number of biotechnology companies including Endo Pharmaceuticals, Symphogen, Avipep, Viventia Bio, AvidBiologics, Xerion, Fabrus, Integral Molecular and YM Biosciences.

Scientific Director, Janssen Biotherapeutics
No bio available

Deputy Chief and Associate Attending, Thoracic Surgery; Director, Mesothelioma Program; Head, Solid Tumors Cell Therapy, Cellular Therapeutics Center (CTC)
My resea4rch focuses on tumor immunology, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, and combination immunotherapy for thoracic cancers. Over the years, we have developed clinically relevant mouse models and modeled biological therapies in these models. This research has yielded mechanistic data that has been translated and is now in CAR T-cell and combination immunotherapy clinical trials for patients with lung cancer, pleural mesothelioma, and breast cancer. Our ongoing research focuses on investigating immunotherapy efficacy in human ex vivo translational models. Our laboratory research has been funded by federal agencies and foundations resulting in >60 grant awards to date totaling >$30MM to date. My research has progressed to clinical trials and >180 publications including in Cancer Discov, FASEB, J Clin Invest, J Clin Oncol, J Natl Cancer Inst, Nat Med, and Sci Transl Med. In addition to serving on medical journal editorial boards, I am the Deputy Editor for Molecular Therapy Oncolytics. I serve as a member of national peer-review committees including NCI, DoD, PCORI, National health institutions of Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. I am a member of the Fleischner Society and American Society of Clinical Investigation. I serve on international committees including the American Society of Cell and Gene Therapy, NCI thoracic cancers steering committee, International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, and the American Association for Thoracic Surgery. In my laboratory, I mentor MDs, MD/PhDs, and PhDs in thoracic oncology research, including visiting scholars from international institutions.

CSO
Mahiuddin Ahmed, PhD is the Chief Scientific Officer of Y-mAbs Therapeutics and specializes in bispecific antibody engineering. He received his PhD in Biochemistry and Structural Biology from Stony Brook University and completed postdoctoral training in cancer immunotherapy at the Sloan Kettering Institute. Prior to joining Y-mAbs, Dr. Ahmed was an Assistant Member in the Department of Pediatrics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Founder and Director
Dr. Juan C. Almagro is an internationally-recognized expert in engineering and development of antibody-based therapeutics. He has been active in the Antibody and Protein Engineering fields since the beginning of the 1990s, with ten years of experience in academic settings and over ten years of experience in the Pharma/Biotech industry. In part with a grant from National Science Foundation, Dr. Almagro founded GlobalBio, Inc. to provide collaborative services in the areas of discovery, optimization and development of biologics. Prior to founding GlobalBio, Dr. Almagro was a Senior Director at Pfizer and Research Fellow and Head of Antibody Design at Johnson and Johnson. There his work focused on development and application of technologies to engineer more stable and potent antibodies, with broader cross-reactivity and multi-specific binding capabilities. In academia, Dr. Almagro was Visiting Scientist at Florida International University, Affiliated Visiting Scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Visiting Professor at Simon Fraser University and Associate Professor and Group Leader at The National University of Mexico. Dr. Almagro has authored over 70 publications, encompassing more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles, 6 book chapters, and 20 international patents. His main contributions include the study of structure-function relationships of antibodies, development of computational tools and databases for analyses of antibody sequences and structures, and cloning and study of natural antibody repertoires from a variety of species. Dr. Almagro serves as reviewer in Immunology and Protein Engineering journals, as well as for grant agencies in several countries. He has participated in the Scientific Advisory Boards of several Biotech companies, has chaired and given talks and lectures at major domestic and international scientific meetings, and has been expert witness in several Intellectual Property litigations between large biopharma organizations.

Scientist, Process and Analytical Development
Eric Alonzo PhD, currently leads the CAR T cell analytics team within the Pharmaceutical Sciences Division at bluebird bio. His research focuses on development of analytical and characterization assays for the CAR T/TCR cell program. Prior to bluebird bio, Dr. Alonzo lead efforts developing T cell-based therapies at Agenus (Lexington, MA), and previous to his work at Agenus, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School working on a mouse model of T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Dr. Alonzo received his PhD from the Cancer Biology Program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Professor, Chemistry
Dr. Zhiqiang An is Professor of Molecular Medicine, the Robert A. Welch Distinguished University Chair in Chemistry, and Director of the Texas Therapeutics Institute at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. His laboratory focuses on cancer antibody drug resistance mechanisms, biomarkers for cancer therapeutic antibodies, and antibody drug discovery targeting cancer and infectious diseases. Dr. An also directs the Therapeutic Monoclonal Antibody Lead Optimization and Development Core Facility funded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). Previously, he served as Chief Scientific Officer at Epitomics, Inc. and was Director of Biologics Research at Merck Research Laboratories. He started his biotech career at Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Dr. An received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Kentucky and his postdoctoral training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is an elected fellow of Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology. He is also an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

Associate Professor, Clinical Neuroscience, Clinical Neuroimmunology
Associate professor Fogdell-Hahn is a senior scientist and research group leader at Center for Molecular Medicine (CMM) at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. She did her PhD at the Karolinska Institutet and took part of the development of a genomic typing method for human leukocyte antigens (HLA) to be used on call at transplantation units. This method, PCR with sequence-specific primers (PCR-SSP), was commercialized by Olerup and is still widely used in transplantation units and scientific projects world-wide today. A deepening interest in MS and the etiology of autoimmune diseases has been the major focus of research since her post doc at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, USA. Since 2003 she has been chief of a routine and research laboratory at Kaolinska Institutet, providing tests for anti-drug antibodies (ADA) for patients treated with interferon beta, natalizumab or rituximab and from 2018 provides tests for detecting infliximab immune complexes with ADA. In 2009 she became associate professor in immunology. During 2012-2017 she was the cohort leader for MS in the ABIRISK EU-consortium financed by IMI and EFPIA. She is leading the initiative BIOPIA (Biopharmaceutical Pharmacokinetic and Immunogenicity Assessment) which is a non-profit collaborative effort of European laboratories with expertise in immunogenicity to be launched in 2018 as part of the legacy of ABIRISK. As previous president of the Scandinavian society for immunology (SSI) and board member of the steering committees for the European Congresses of Immunology, she has made immunogenicity a subject of basic immunology and will continue to drive research, education and implementation in health care routine in this field.

Expert Scientist, Pharma Research and Early Development
Antonio Iglesias studied Biology in the Freie Universität, Berlin (Germany) where he completed his PhD in the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. He then turned into Immunology and worked between 1983 and 1985 in the Basel Institute for Immunology and worked with Nobel Laureate Georges Köhler. Ever since he made immunological research in the Max-Planck-Institutes in Freiburg (Immunobiology) and Munich (Neuroimmunology), Germany, for 18 years. Since 2002 in Roche Basel, he worked in the Transgenic Unit and in the Stem Cell Platform before joining Non-Clinical Safety (now Pharmacological Sciences) in May 2012. His research activities encompassed regulation of Immunoglobulin expression and B lymphocyte differentiation; Autoimmunity of the central nervous system (Multiple Sclerosis); Homologous recombination in pro- and eukaryotes; embryonic stem cells and iPSC technology and humanized animal models for the study of autoimmunity, tolerance and preclinical Immunosafety.

Associate Director, Immunogenicity Assessment
Anu Cherukuri received her Ph.D. in Immunology from The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1998 and pursued her post-doctoral training at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 2000 – 2004 where she investigated the role of B cell receptor signaling and co-stimulation in normal and disease states. Dr. Anu Cherukuri continued her career as an immunologist at Chiron Corporation (now Novartis), Emeryville, CA from 2004 – 2006 where she worked on developing biomarker and translational strategy for the targeted treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and multiple myeloma. Dr. Cherukuri transitioned into the field of infectious disease during her career as a scientist at MedImmune, Mountain View, CA from 2007 – 2013 where she designed, developed and validated critical path immunological assays to support RSV and influenza vaccine development. Dr. Cherukuri joined BioMarin in 2013 as a Senior Scientist in Immunogenicity Assessment and now works on developing, evaluating and implementing immunogenicity monitoring strategies in support of early and late clinical stage biologics to treat rare diseases. Dr. Cherukuri has over 10 years of experience in immunology, infectious disease, translational strategy, immunogenicity assessment and drug development.

Senior Scientist, Downstream Processing
Michael Anyadiegwu is a Senior Scientist (Technical Lead Scientist) at the Centre for Process Innovation’s (CPI’s) National Biologics Manufacturing Centre (NBMC) based in Darlington, County Durham, United Kingdom. Michael holds a PhD in Food Biochemistry from the University of Leeds and has extensive experience in the biochemical separation and characterisation of proteins, process development and scale up for the production of novel therapeutic products under current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) guidelines. Roles in Industry have included Technical Project Lead with responsibility for Technology Transfer, Downstream Process Development and contract manufacturing of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs, including domain antibodies) expressed in microbial (E.coli) and yeast (Pichia pastoris) culture at 100L to 3000L scale for toxicology and early phase clinical trials. Michael currently manages an Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI) Biostreamline work package centered on the production and purification of 50 monoclonal antibody variants derived for mammalian (CHO) cells at 10L bioreactor scale. Michael is also involved in various collaborative and commercial development projects at the CPI NBMC.

Genomic Director
Dr. Arib leads microscopy characterization of Selexis Research Cell Banks and has developed a microscopy platform for transgene insertion site mapping using DNA-FISH. She is also responsible for evaluating new technologies in Selexis’ cell line development process. She earned her PhD with Ulrik Laemmli, where she discovered a new role for nuclear pore complexes in chromatin partitioning and she is published in a number of peer-reviewed journals.

Director, Oncology Research
Tara Arvedson is a researcher and team leader in the Oncology Research department at Amgen. She received her Ph.D. at Caltech and was later a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellow at UC San Diego. Since being at Amgen she has led multiple programs targeting benign and malignant hematology using both large and small molecules. These programs have progressed from discovery stage to the clinic.

VP, Scientific Affairs
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.

Assoc Professor, Chemistry
Dr James Baker is an Associate Professor (Reader) at UCL (2017-). He previously held posts at UCL as a Senior Lecturer (2014-2017), Lecturer (2012-2014), and prior to that as an RCUK Research Fellow. His research interests are in the development and application of novel methodologies in bioconjugation, targeted therapeutics, and organic synthesis resulting in >45 peer reviewed articles and 2 granted patents in these areas. He is also a co-founder of the spin-out company ThioLogics (www.thiologics.com), which commercialises site-specific conjugation methods for the assembly of next generation Biologics.

Scientist
Gurusamy Balakrishnan (Bala) has joined the BMS Molecular and Analytical Development (MAD) organization as Scientist II in the Biophysics Center of Excellence group in Hopewell. His work involves biophysical and protein particulate analyses in support of extended characterization, forced degradation, comparability, and other related development studies for biologics portfolio candidates as well as commercial products. He is also involved in developing novel methods utilizing various spectroscopic techniques including CD, fluorescence and Raman/FTIR imaging and other complementary techniques for protein structure and particulate characterization. Bala received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, specializing in Raman spectroscopy. He advanced his expertise on Raman spectroscopy on biologicals and other biophysical methods at Princeton University and University of Washington (Seattle) working with Professor Tom Spiro, a renowned expert on vibrational spectroscopy of proteins.

Asst Professor, Medicine
Dr. Aditya Bardia, a board-certified medical oncologist, is an Attending Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston. As the Director of Precision Medicine at the MGH Center for Breast Cancer, Dr. Bardia is interested in integrating precision diagnostics and therapeutics, including clinical application of circulating tumor cells and DNA as “liquid biopsy”, to significantly improve the outcomes of patients afflicted with breast cancer. Dr. Bardia has led the clinical development of antibody drug conjugate (ADC), sacituzumab govitecan, and selective estrogen receptor degrader (SERD), elacestrant, in metastatic breast cancer. Dr. Bardia has received several research awards including outstanding award for research excellence at Mayo Clinic, Young Investigator Award from ASCO, and Douglas Family Foundation prize for excellence in oncology research at MGH. Dr. Bardia is the editor of precision medicine clinic section of The Oncologist, co-leader of the Molecular and Precision (MAP) tumor board at MGH, and editorial board member of ASCO molecular oncology tumor board.

Director of Molecular Biology, Research and Development,
Dr. Bayle is Senior Director of Plaform Technologies at Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, a firm that develops immunotherapies governed by small molecule-regulated protein switches. He has over 17 years cummulative experience developing molecular tools based on chemically regulating protein dimerization at Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, previously in his academic laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine and as a fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine. He received his PhD in Molecular Biology with Arnie Levine at Princeton University.

Senior Vice President, Global Clinical Development & CMO
Roy Baynes, MD, PhD, is Senior Vice President Global Clinical Development at Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway, New Jersey. He was previously Senior Vice President of Oncology, Inflammation and Respiratory Therapeutics at Gilead Sciences and prior to that was Vice President Global Clinical Development, and Therapeutic Area (TA) Head for Hematology / Oncology, at Amgen Inc.

Head, Process Research
Nicola Beaucamp was appointed Head of Process Research in Pharma Research & Early Development in 2015, based in Roche Innovation Center Munich, Germany. With this senior management position, she is responsible for pre-clinical and clinical supply up to phase I for the Roche Research unit in Europe. With more than 15 years of experience in biotechnology and the pharmaceutical industry, Nicola has extensive expertise in all phases of the R&D value chain. She is a biologist by training and did her academic studies at the University of Regensburg, Germany where she obtained her PhD at the Institute of Biophysics and biophysical Chemistry. After two years at the Molecular Neurobiology Group at the University of Bristol, UK, she returned to Germany to start her career as a group leader in a Biotech Company before joining Roche beginning in 2005. Since then, she has successfully led a group and a department in Process Research before she was appointed to her current position. An important part of her activities fostered development of accelerated processes and technology innovation. She is a member of the Roche Global Technology Steering Committee. In addition to her technology focus, Nicola is a committed senior leader, and is a member of several global strategic and decision-making committees in Roche.

Senior Director, Biologics CMC and Developability
Alain Beck is Senior Director, Biologics CMC and developability, Pierre Fabre Laboratories (FR). He is associated editor of mAbs (USA) and mAbDesign advisor board chairman (www.mabdesign.fr). He has contributed to the R&D of immuno-oncology mAbs, clinical stages mAbs and ADCs in oncology (dalotuzumab/IGF-1R licensed to Merck; telisotuzumab and telisotuzumab vedotin/cMet, licensed to AbbVie; h515H7/CXCR4 and W0101/IGF-1R), peptides and vaccines (RSV, ELA/P40). He has published +200 papers and reports on mAbs, biosimilars, biobetters, ADCs, bsAbs, Fc-fusions, protein scaffolds, structure/function relationships, stability, comparability and developability (h-index: 45; +7300 citations). He was involved in more than 260 scientific meetings (AIS, ASMS, BAS, CASSS, EAC, HPLC, IBC, IMSC, ISC, PEGS, SEP, WADC, WBC) as chairperson, invited plenary/ keynote speaker, panelist, moderator, advisor, and organizer as well as to meetings and workshops with regulatory agencies (ANSM, EMA, EDQM/PhEur, FDA, PEI, WHO). He was ranked 6/50 global antibody industry influencers (www.antibodysociety.org).

Professor, Medicine & Biochemistry, Microbiology & Immunology
Dr. John Bell and his team have been investigating cancer-fighting (oncolytic) viruses at Ottawa Hospital Research Institute for more than 10 years.Through his work with BioCanRx, Dr Bell and his team are focused on translating promising cancer immune therapy approaches using novel viral vaccines against specific tumour antigens, and by the use of engineered immune cells modified to recognize a patient's own tumour. In addition, researchers from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI), the University of Ottawa (uOttawa), Jennerex Inc. and several other institutions reported promising results of a world-first cancer therapy trial in renowned journal Nature. The trial is the first to show that an intravenously-delivered viral therapy can consistently infect and spread within tumours without harming normal tissues in humans.

Professor, Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology
Itai Benhar—Full Professor, Vice Dean for research at the George S. wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, and former chairman of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology at Tel-Aviv University Israel. Prof. Benhar received in 1992 a PhD in Molecular Biology from the Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical School Jerusalem, Israel. Between 1992-1995, Prof. Benhar did his post-doctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, working with Dr. Ira Pastan on recombinant immunotoxins. In 1995, Prof. Benhar joined the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology of the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences as a tenure-track assistant professor. Prof. Benhar received tenure at 2002, became an associate professor in 2005 and a full professor in 2008. Between 2007 to 2011 Prof. Benhar served as the Department Chairman. From 2012-2015 Prof. Benhar served as the Director, of the Laura Schwarz-Kipp Institute for Biotechnology at Tel-Aviv University. Prof. Benhar’s is an expert in the field of antibody engineering, drug discovery and drug delivery with over the 22 years of being active in these fields. Research in Prof. Benhar’s group if currently focused on three major topics: 1) evaluation of novel formats of bispecific antibodies and of antibody-toxin fusion proteins as potential anti-cancer agents. 2) Antibody discovery for treating cancer, allergy and inflammation. 3) Targeted nanomedicines.

Robert E. Fischell Distinguished Chair
William E. Bentley is the Robert E. Fischell Distinguished Chair of Engineering and the Inaugural Director of the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices. He is also appointed to the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park and the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research. At Maryland since 1989, Dr. Bentley has focused his research on the development of molecular tools that facilitate the expression of biologically active proteins, having authored over 300 related archival publications. He is a fellow of AAAS, ACS, AIMBE, and the American Academy of Microbiology. He has served on advisory committees for the NIH, NSF, DOD, DOE, FDA, USDA, and several state agencies and has mentored over 40 PhDs and 25 postdocs, many now in leadership roles within industry (24), federal agencies (5) and academia (26). He co-founded a protein manufacturing company, Chesapeake PERL, based on insect larvae as mini bioreactors.

Assistant Professor, Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology - Research, Division of Cancer Medicine
No bio available

Director, Oncology Biotherapeutics
Within the Oncology Biotherapeutics group at Novartis, Cambridge our mission is to develop next-generation tumor-targeting biologics that employ optimal effector modalities (i.e. ADC, bispecific) to drive definitive anti-tumor activity in cancer patients. Prior to joining Novartis, I conducted my post-doctoral research with a focus on cancer genetics and mouse models at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the group of Prof. Scott W. Lowe. I completed my PhD in Cell Biology at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology in London, UK and received a BSc Hons in Molecular Genetics from the University of Sussex, UK.

Professor, Biotechnology; Associate Dean, Research
Roslyn Bill is a biotechnologist who develops yeast to make recombinant membrane proteins for further study. As target proteins, she is particularly interested in aquaporin water channels, G protein-coupled receptors and hepatitis C virus receptor complex proteins. From the perspective of the yeast host cell, she is interested in how the regulation of translational processes impacts on recombinant protein yield. Roslyn obtained her DPhil from Oxford University and after postdoctoral work in Cambridge, UK; Michigan, USA and Gothenburg, Sweden, moved to Aston University where she is currently Professor of Biotechnology and Associate Dean (Research) in the School of Life and Health Sciences.

Professor, Biochemistry
Philippe Billiald (PharmD, PhD) is currently full Professor of biochemistry at the University of Paris-Sud (France) and co-founder of Acticor Biotech, a spin off dedicated to the development of innovative treatments of arterial thrombosis. His research is focused on the design of novel therapeutic antibody-based agents. Recently, he focused on the design and pharmaceutical development of ACT017, a First-in-Class humanized Fab dedicated to the treatment of acute ischemic stroke. ACT017 is now entering phase 2 clinical trials after successful first-in-man studies conducted late 2017.

Director Of External Alliances
Dr. Yelena Bisharyan leads business development activities and establishes strategic partnerships within the pharmaceutical industry. She has more than 16 years of experience in membrane protein research and drug discovery and pioneered the development of the TetraExpress™ platform a premium expression technology for the production of recombinant membrane proteins.

Director, External Alliances
Dr. Yelena Bisharyan leads business development activities and establishes strategic partnerships within the pharmaceutical industry. She has more than 16 years of experience in membrane protein research and drug discovery and pioneered the development of the TetraExpress™ platform a premium expression technology for the production of recombinant membrane proteins.

Head, Particle Lab and Higher Order Structure Protein Analytics
Dr. Boll studied in Göttingen and received his PhD from the University of Tübingen in Germany focusing on purification and characterization of proteins of antibiotic biosynthesis. He afterwards performed studies of the biological consequences of sub-visible particles at the Analytical Development Department at Roche in Basel, Switzerland. After joining Merrimack Pharmaceuticals in the Boston area and driving the physical-chemical characterization of early phase projects, Dr. Boll is now heading the particle lab and higher order structure analytics at Novartis in Basel, Switzerland.

Vice President, R&D and Co-Founder
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 was the principal investigator in a number of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programs granted by the National Institutes of Health to ArmaGen. Dr. Boado is also a co-inventor of the intellectual property that supports ArmaGen’s pipeline. He Professor Emeritus of Medicine at UCLA and has published over 200 scientific peer-reviewed publications and book chapters related to his field.

Senior Scientist, Protein Mass Spectrometry
Kristin is a Senior Scientist in the Mass Spectrometry and Biophysical Characterization Group at Pfizer, Inc. in Andover, MA. For the last three years, Kristin has developed and implemented MS-based methods for early- and late-stage product characterization. Kristin completed her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at Brandeis University, developing mass spectrometric methods to answer biological questions, under the guidance of Dr. Jeffrey Agar. Kristin completed her Post-Doctoral research in Biochemistry and Neuroscience at UMass Medical School, using quantitative proteomics to investigate ALS, under the guidance of Dr. Daryl Bosco.

Head, Particle Lab and Higher Order Structure Protein Analytics
Dr. Boll studied in Göttingen and received his PhD from the University of Tübingen in Germany focusing on purification and characterization of proteins of antibiotic biosynthesis. He afterwards performed studies of the biological consequences of sub-visible particles at the Analytical Development Department at Roche in Basel, Switzerland. After joining Merrimack Pharmaceuticals in the Boston area and driving the physical-chemical characterization of early phase projects, Dr. Boll is now heading the particle lab and higher order structure analytics at Novartis in Basel, Switzerland.

Senior Research Scientist, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Bettina Bommarius received her Ph.D. at the University of Duesseldorf, Germany, in 1997. Since then she has worked with several institutions, both academic as well as industrial, initially in Germany and since 2000 in the United States, to develop new protein functions and characterize proteins for either industrial purposes or within a disease background. Her expertise is within biocatalysis, protein development, bacterial pathogenicity and protein purification. She has joined Georgia Tech in 2012 as a research scientist and since 2016 manages the newly founded Biopolymer Characterization Core while still pursuing her research interests within the NSF funded Center for Pharmaceutical Development.

Senior Director, Biologics Discovery
Dr. Bornstein has over fifteen years of experience in Oncology R&D with an emphasis in preclinical antibody discovery and development. Dr. Bornstein currently leads biologics discovery efforts at TESARO. He received his B.S. in biochemistry at the University of California, Davis and his doctoral degree in biochemistry at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Bornstein completed his postdoctoral training at Stanford University in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology. Following his postdoctoral training, Dr. Bornstein joined Amgen Fremont, Inc. (formerly Abgenix, Inc.) as a Staff Scientist in the Preclinical Oncology department. Dr. Bornstein has held roles of increasing responsibility at AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Novartis, where he was a project team leader, lead biologist, and key contributor to scientific strategies for multiple oncology programs.

Scientist II
Jack Borrok joined MedImmune in 2010 and currently leads a group studying on a variety of antibody technologies focusing on the IgG Fc including antibody half-life extension, modulating effector function, ADCs, IgA antibodies, and improving antibody developability. Jack received his PhD in biochemistry in 2007 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and received post-doctoral training at The University of Texas at Austin, where he studied antibody & protease engineering, as well as the biology of the IgG Fc region.

Vice President of Translational Sciences

Adrian Bot, M.D., Ph.D. is the Vice President of Translational Sciences at Kite, a Gilead Company. Kite is a biotechnology company developing genetically engineered T cell therapies, based in Los Angeles, CA. He has more than 20 years of experience in biomedical research and development.

Dr. Bot obtained his M.D. at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Timisoara – Romania and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Subsequently, he was a Guest Scientist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and Scientist, Principal Scientist and Director of Immunology Research at Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp. in San Diego. In Nov 2002, Dr. Bot joined Allecure Pharmaceuticals which became MannKind Corp, where he was a Director of Research and Development. He had several other appointments at MannKind: Sr. Director of Translational Medicine, Vice President of Scientific Management and Vice President of Research, prior to the appointment first as Chief Scientific Officer and then Vice President of Translational Sciences at Kite.

Associate Director, Bioanalytical and Biomarker Development
No bio available

CSO
Andrew Bradbury is one of the founders of Specifica, a member of the Board of Directors, and serves as the Chief Scientific Officer. Andrew has almost 30 years of experience in the field of recombinant antibodies and display technologies. Throughout his career, he has developed and employed novel technologies, including the use of lox recombination to dramatically increase antibody library diversity. Andrew is a vocal proponent for the use of sequenced recombinant antibodies in research to improve reproducibility. He has frequently served as an expert witness in antibody patent cases involving some of the world’s bestselling antibody drugs. Andrew has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers and is the inventor on numerous patents and patent applications. Andrew holds a PhD from Cambridge University, where he studied under Nobel Laureate Cesar Milstein, the inventor of monoclonal antibodies, and holds an MB BS (medical degree) from the University of London as well as a BA and MA from Oxford University.

Founder
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 other display systems 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 10 years at international conferences and served as a Key Opinion Leader for major BioPharma.

Vice President, R&D Programs and Strategy
Caroline J Breitbach is Vice President, R&D Programs and Strategy at Turnstone Biologics, focusing on the development of an oncolytic viral immunotherapies for the treatment of patients with advanced cancers. Caroline was previously Vice President, Clinical & Translational Research at SillaJen Biotherapeutics (formerly Jennerex Biotherapeutics), where she oversaw Phase 1 and 2 clinical studies an oncolytic vaccinia virus. Caroline received her undergraduate degree at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She subsequently joined Dr John Bell’s group at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Canada where she evaluated acute effects of oncolytic viruses on the tumor immune microenvironment.

Vice President, Platform Sciences,
Jo Brewer is VP of Platform Sciences, and is one of Adaptimmune’s founding scientists. She has 15+ years’ research experience in immunology and the biotech industry, specializing in TCRs and adoptive T cell therapy for oncology. Jo currently leads several research teams to bring on new generations of T cell products for patients. Before moving into immunology, she earned a MA and PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Scientist, Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering
Dr. Zachary Britton joined MedImmune in 2012; he has led membrane protein-related efforts in Protein Science and now Antibody Discovery in the Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering Department, where he currently co-leads a pipeline biotherapeutic program. Zack received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware in 2012, where he developed protein engineering approaches to aid in the expression and purification of GPCRs under Prof. Anne Skaja Robinson.

Postdoctoral Associate, Weitz Lab
Julie Brouchon received her Ph.D in biophysics from the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI) in Paris, France. During her PhD, she studied the physics of cell-specific adhesion in the context of large-scale cell sorting. She is now conducting work as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Pr. Weitz at Harvard University. She is developing a high-throughput microfluidic assay to identify and isolate activated antigen-specific T cells.

Director, Protein Design and Informatics
Kristin Brown received her PhD from University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana in Physical Chemistry and post-doctorate at SmithKline Beecham in bioinformatics. Her expertise is in drug discovery and development as well as computational sciences, including computational chemistry, compuational biology and protein modeling. She is currently Director and head of Protein Design and Informatics at GSK, which combines the computational design of small and large molecules with modeling to design biopharmaceticals and manufacture ready biocatalysts.

Senior Associate Scientist, BiTE® Technology
Having graduated in molecular biology at the University of Heidelberg, I started my industrial PhD at Micromet in 2010 exploring the applicability of anti-HIV BiTE® antibody constructs in cooperation with the Technical University of Munich and University Hospital of Zürich. With the acquisition by Amgen and graduation, my focus shifted to proof of concept work regarding innovations around the BiTE® platform technology in oncology. Representative is the establishment of a standard half-life extension format, applied to several BiTE® antibody constructs currently in research, preclinical and clinical development or new target antigens like peptide/HLA complexes in collaboration with Immatics.

Professor, Antibodies in Therapy & Pathology
Pierre Bruhns is the Principal Investigator of the laboratory of Antibodies in Therapy and Pathology in the Department of Immunology of Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. His lab studies the role of antibodies and the cells that produce them (plasmablasts, plasma cells), the role of antibody receptors (FcR) and the cells that express them in models of disease (allergy, autoimmunity) and in therapy (vaccination and cancer immunotherapy). Pr Bruhns is an European Research Counsel grantee, and is internationally recognized for his expertise in Fc receptor biology, in vivo models and, more recently, on biological applications of droplet microfluidic technologies to antibody responses. He has published >70 articles and reviews (H-index 28).

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Systems Biology Research Group
Dr Brunk completed her Bachelors of Science at University of Michigan, and graduate training at EPFL in Lausanne Switzerland. During this period, she gained significant experience in modeling a wide range of biological and chemical processes that span the space of entire biochemical networks to the atomistic resolution of protein structures. During her postdoctoral career, she worked with Bernhard Palsson and Jay Keasling, focusing on integrating genomics, structural bioinformatics and software development to find meaning in large-scale multi-omics data. She is currently an NCI training fellow in cancer biology, where she hopes to apply her approaches to tap into patient-specific cancer genomics data.

Investigator III, Exploratory Immuno-Oncology
Dexiu Bu received her MD degree from China Medical University in China and PhD degree from Karolinska Institute in Sweden in 2006, followed by a first postdoctoral research fellowship in Ann Maria Schmidt’s lab at the Columbia University and a second postdoctoral research fellowship in Andrew Lichtman’ lab at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS). Her research has been focusing on immune/inflammatory aspects of cardiovascular disease, especially the role of T cell subsets and immune checkpoint molecules in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and myocarditis. She has been conducting basic biomedical laboratory research for over 10 years and authored over 20 primary research and review journal articles. After completing her postdoc, she has worked in the field of immunogenicity of Biotherapeutics as a senior scientist at Pfizer before she jointed Novartis. At Novartis, she currently serves as a lab head and a project leader for CART therapy.

Assistant Professor, Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation
Elizabeth Budde, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation at City of Hope. Dr. Budde's academic and clinical interests include investigating and designing novel means of immunotherapy for patients with lymphoma and leukemia, and she is part of the research team investigating the use of CAR T cells to treat blood cancers and other diseases. Board certified in medical oncology and internal medicine, Dr. Budde has received many honors and awards for her work. She was chosen as a Special Fellow in Clinical Research awardee by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, a recipient of the Edson Immunotherapy Pilot Award from the J. Orin Edson Foundation, and an awardee of the Stop Cancer Foundation seed grant in 2016. She is also a current recipient of the prestigious Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Clinical Investigator Award (2014-2017). She has served as the principal investigator on several innovative translational research protocols and has published her work in many peer-reviewed journals and given presentations at national and international meetings.

CTO
Richard obtained his Immunology PhD from Queen's University Belfast. He joined Fusion Antibodies in 2002, where he was responsible for the Company’s Contract Research Services and for the development of the Fusion Antibodies CDRx humanization platform. He continues to lead the scientific direction of the company as CTO.

Principal Investigator, Biotechnology, Structural Genomics Consortium
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 and purification 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 Ph.D. 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.

Associate Principal Scientist and Lead, Expression Group, Target Protein Design
Noel obtained his undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Penn State University and his master’s degree from The University of Pennsylvania. His 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry has been focused on molecular biology, protein expression biology and protein biochemistry. Noel has been with Merck for the last 15 years and currently leads the protein expression group as part of the Target Protein Design department helping to support crystallography, cryo-EM, biologics and pharmacology.

Principal Scientist, Discovery Attribute Sciences
Iain Campuzano works in and manages a core analytical research group within Amgen Research Discovery. He has invented/co-invented five mass spectrometry related patents and published over 45 peer reviewed articles and book chapters. He has also presented and organised/chaired sessions at multiple international conferences such as ASMS, ASMS Sanibel Discovery on Target and PITTCON.

Associate Director, Research
Tim Carlton is an Associate Director of Research at VHSquared. For the past seven years, Tim has worked on all aspects of the VHsquared pipeline and been a key part of the research team developing the Vorabody technology. Prior to VHsquared, Tim had a brief stint in patent law, which he started after finishing postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge, where he studied bacterial quorum sensing.

Senior Scientist, Large Molecule Research
Dr. Alejandro Carpy is a Senior Scientist and Group Leader at Large Molecule Research in pharma Research and Early Development (pRED) at the Roche Innovation Center Munich. Among his responsibilities are the molecular assessment, analytical method development and method handover to the technical development function and the in-depth biophysical characterization of therapeutic antibodies and next generation biologics. He is involved in defining the analytical characterization strategy for several next generation biologics projects. He holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Tübingen (Germany). Before joining Roche, he started his career at Novartis and worked at diverse sites gaining cross-functional experience in Quality, Production and Development.

Scientist
Dr. Maria Monica Castellanos is a scientist in the US Drug Product Development team at GSK Vaccines. She is supporting various technical programs as they progress from early development into Phase I/II and late stage development. Her interests include high-throughput techniques, formulation screening, biophysical characterization, modeling and process development. Before joining GSK, she was a researcher at the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, working on the application of X-ray/neutron scattering techniques in biologics. She completed her PhD in 2014 at the Pennsylvania State University.

Principal Research Scientist, Protein BioSciences
Qing Chai has over 10 years of experience on antibody and protein biotherapeutics. Her specialties are, but not limited to, biophysical and analytical characterization of protein therapeutics, and structural & computational aided biologic drug design for improved developability. At Lilly, Qing has developed and implemented various analytical tools and predictive screening assays for multi-dimensional characterizations of antibodies to facilitate efficient early developability assessments. Qing is also enthusiastic and active on developing in silico computational tools for predicting protein physio-chemical properties and their applications.

Senior Applications Scientist\Northeast Regional Manager
John Champagne is a Senior Applications Scientist and Regional Manager for Wyatt Technology, responsible for customer support across the Northeast and the Wyatt Applications Lab outside of Boston. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the Biochemistry Department at the University of New Hampshire under the advisory of Professor Thomas Laue where his work focused on the gelation properties of β-Lactoglobulin and the origins of opalescence in self-associating IgG antibodies solutions. Since joining Wyatt in 2002, John has provided a range of analytical support with expertise in the use of multi-angle static and dynamic light scattering, field-flow fractionation, analytical ultracentrifugation, circular dichroism spectroscopy, UV-Vis spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy and calorimetry.

CSO
Dr Brian Champion is Chief Scientific Officer and member of the Executive Management Team at PsiOxus Therapeutics Ltd, Oxford, UK where he is leading the scientific team in the development of novel oncolytic virus-based, Tumor-Specific Immunogene (T-SIGn) therapies for the treatment of cancer. He was previously Executive Director and Head of Immunology for Pfizer's Vaccine Immunotherapeutics Research Unit in La Jolla, California, leading the immunology team providing expertise and immunoassays for Pfizer vaccine projects, program leader for an anti-IgE therapeutic vaccine for allergy/asthma, and a member of the leadership team. Prior to this he was Site Head for Pfizer Vaccine Research in the UK. Before joining Pfizer, Dr Champion was Chief Scientific Officer for Lorantis and Celldex in Cambridge (UK) developing protein and DNA-based, antigen-specific immunotherapeutic approaches to a variety of immunological diseases, including therapeutic vaccines and immunotherapeutic biomolecule approaches for cancer, infectious diseases, allergies and autoimmune disorders. Prior to Lorantis, he was with Glaxo and GlaxoWellcome (UK and USA) for 13 years, focusing primarily on target discovery and validation research for autoimmune, allergic and bone disorders.

Principal Scientist, Global Manufacturing Science & Technology
Dr. Christine Chan is a protein biochemist with broad experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, including prior experience at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals and Merck & Co., Inc. She specializes in the analysis of recombinant products produced from mammalian cells for vaccines and biologics development. Her application experience includes expression cell line selection, drug substance & drug product process development, manufacturing tech transfers and lifecycle management of commercialized products. Dr. Chan received her Ph.D. from the University of California-Davis and conducted post-doctoral work at the University of Washington. She has authored over 30 publications with two recent reviews on forced degradation studies on protein-based therapeutics and stability testing considerations.

Associate Principal Scientist, BioProcess Development
A Biochemical Engineer with more than 14 years of experience in Cell Culture Process and Medium development from Early through late stage process characterization and commercialization.

CMO
Daniel S. Chen, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer for IGM Biosciences, and former Vice President, Global Head of Cancer Immunotherapy Development at Genentech/Roche. He received a BS degree in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1990), a PhD in Microbiology & Immunology (1996) and MD (1998) from the University of Southern California. Daniel completed an Internal Medicine Residency and Medical Oncology Fellowship at Stanford University (2003). He went on to complete a Post-doctoral fellowship with Mark Davis in Immunology, where he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate. He also ran the metastatic melanoma clinic at the Stanford Cancer Center from 2003-2006. In that time, he studied human anti-cancer immune responses pre- and post- cancer vaccination and cytokine administration to determine why anti-tumor immune responses were not more clinically effective. He received a U19 grant to develop better immunologic tools to interrogate human immune responses and ultimately patented the MHC cellular microarray to detect and functionally characterize antigen-specific T cell states. He continued as Adjunct Clinical Faculty at Stanford from 2006-2016, where he cared for melanoma patients. At Genentech from 2006-2018, Daniel focused on the clinical development of anti-angiogenic and immune modulatory targeted therapies in both early and late Development, as well as the diagnostic tools to aid their development. This included leading the clinical development for atezolizumab, a PD-L1 inhibitor, from the time the program was in research through IND, Phase I, Phase II, Phase III, to filing and approvals in multiple indications worldwide. At IGM, Daniel focuses on the development of novel engineered multivalent and multispecific therapeutics. He is a reviewer for Nature, Immunity and Clinical Cancer Research, serves on the Board of Directors for SITC, co-chair of the CRI cancer Immunotherapy consortium, gave the keynote presentation at the AACR NCI EORTC Annual Meeting 2014 and presented at the US Congressional Briefing on Immuno Oncology in 2017. He has continued to publish with academic and industry collaborators in the field of cancer immunotherapy, including the often-referenced Chen and Mellman manuscripts, “Elements of cancer immunity and the cancer-immune set point” and “Oncology meets Immunology: The Cancer-Immunity Cycle.”

Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
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 (Ph.D.) and Seoul National University (B.S.). 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.

John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C. Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Patricia L. Clark is the O’Hara Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame, where she is also a Concurrent Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Her laboratory uses a broad range of biophysical, genetic and other tools to investigate the effects of protein folding from one end to the other (such as during translation), versus all-at-once (as in the test tube). As the leader of an NIH-funded research network comprised of eight laboratories, she coordinates a multi-disciplinary investigation into the effects of translation rate on protein biogenesis. She has received multiple awards throughout her career, including an NSF CAREER Award, the Michael & Kate Bárány Award from the Biophysical Society, and the Joyce Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from Notre Dame.

Shriram Chair of Bioengineering; Professor of Bioengineering, and (by courtesy) Chemical Engineering
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.

Professor, Medicine and Immunology,
I have been committed to translational investigations in cancer immunotherapy since medical school, and was fortunate to have the opportunity for training by Drs. Steve Rosenberg and Jim Mule in the NCI Surgery Branch during my NCI Clinical Oncology fellowship. It was the perfect opportunity to witness promising therapies in their infancy. After the NCI I spent 19 years at Cleveland Clinic working closely with Dr. Suyu Shu, another Surgery Branch Alum. For the last ten years I have worked closely with Dr. Sandra Gendler, a mucin immunologist within the Mayo Cancer Center, while maintaining close collaborative ties with Dr. Nora Disis (Fred Hutch), Dr. James Finke (Cleveland Clinic), Dr. Brian Czerniecki (Moffat), Dr. Gary Koski (Kent State) and Dr. Walter Storkus (U Pittsburgh).

Senior Scientist
No bio available

Research Officer, Human Health Therapeutics
Christopher received his Ph.D. from McGill University under the supervision of Prof. Nicolas Moitessier. After his Ph.D., he joined the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) as a Research Associate under the supervision of Dr. Enrico Purisima investigating solvation and protein loop searching. Following his time at the NRC he joined Chemical Computing Group as a Research Scientist developing tools for biologics design. After 4 years, he decided to leave private industry and rejoin NRC as a Research Officer focusing on investigating tools for computer-aided biologics design.

Professor and Chief, Division of Hem/Onc/BMT
Dr. Timothy Cripe is chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology/Blood and Marrow Transplant at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Professor of Pediatrics at the Ohio State University. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his M.D./Ph.D. from the University of Iowa where he stayed for his pediatric residency training. He completed subspecialty training in pediatric hematology/oncology at Children’s Hospital, Boston and Denver Children’s Hospital. He was previously on faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. His clinical expertise is in taking care of patients with sarcoma, and his laboratory research is focused on the development and testing of oncolytic virotherapy. He has over 120 publications. His current work focuses on how the solid tumor immune microenvironment influences antitumor efficacy of viroimmunotherapy.

Director, Translational Research Laboratories, Center for Emerging Technologies in Immune Cell Therapy
No bio available

Associate Professor, Department of Immunology,
Dr. Curran is an associate professor of immunology at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He earned his PhD in immunology from Stanford University and then completed postdoctoral training at University of California, Berkeley, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. As a fellow in the lab of Dr. Jim Allison, a pioneer in cancer immunotherapy, Dr. Curran was the first to describe the potential therapeutic benefits of blocking two ways that cancer cells hide from the immune system. Dr. Curran’s lab at MD Anderson focuses on studying how tumors evade and suppress the patient’s immune system. The lab looks at multiple ways to address these obstacles in immunotherapyresistant cancers, such as pancreatic and prostate cancers and glioblastoma.

Robert W. Franz Chair for Clinical Research, Earle A. Chiles Research Institute,
My work in the clinical translation of immunotherapy research began at the NCI’s Biological Response Modifiers Program (BRMP) in 1990 and continued as Associate Professor at the Penn State University College of Medicine before joining the Earle A. Chiles Research Institute (EACRI) at Providence Cancer Institute in 2002. Areas of interest include the clinical development of OX40 agonists, adoptive cellular therapy, novel combinations of T-cell checkpoint antibodies with galectin inhibitors (GR-MD-02 + ipilimumab or pembrolizumab) and oncolytic viruses (Coxsackievirus CVA21 + ipilimumab).

Senior Staff Scientist, Genome Engineering Technologies
Kate is currently a Senior Staff Scientist in the Genome Engineering Technologies group at Regeneron in Tarrytown, NY. She is currently focusing on new technology development to enable the creation of new medicines for lysosomal diseases and other genetic diseases. She also works on novel applications of bispecific antibody technologies in several therapeutic areas. Before joining Regeneron, she completed her undergraduate training at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and her PhD and postdoctoral training at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, focusing on genetics and neuroscience.

Senior Research Investigator, Oncology Biotherapeutics
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.

Executive Director, Head of Biology
Marc Damelin is Executive Director, Head of Biology at Mersana Therapeutics, where he is focused on ADC discovery and development for oncology. Prior, he spent 10 years at Pfizer, where he led ADC discovery teams, oversaw the ADC portfolio and mentored two postdoctoral fellows. He is the Editor of the book “Innovations for Next-Generation Antibody-Drug Conjugates” published by Springer in 2018. Marc received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation at Columbia University.

Senior Scientist, BioTherapeutics Development, Discovery, Product Development, & Supply
Tongyun (Tony) Dang is a Senior Scientist working at Janssen Research & Development located in Malvern, PA. He received a Ph.D. in protein biochemistry and postdoctoral training in cancer biology. In the past 12 while working at Johnson & Johnson, he has been responsible for assay development, qualification, and validation of both binding assay and cell-based assays. That includes assay transfer, troubleshooting, and optimization. Through collaborating with internal and external partners, he has worked on analytical development to support multiple biopharmaceutical products.

Global Scientific Advisor Clinical Immunogenicity
No bio available

Chief, Immunology Lab, Therapeutic Proteins, CDER
Dr. Verthelyi received her MD from the University of Buenos Aires and a PhD from the Virginia Tech in USA, and then completed a fellowship training in Immunology at the Section in Retroviral Immunology of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research of the FDA before joining the Laboratory of Immunology of Division of Therapeutic Proteins and eventually becoming its Chief. She has authored over 60 peer reviewed articles and several patents, serves on the NIH Human Immunology advisory board, The NIH Immunology Interest Group and NIH-FDA Cytokine Interest Group, and has received of the FDA's ‘Excellence in Laboratory Sciences Award, among other honors

Principal Scientist, Molecular Discovery Technologies
Daron Forman is currently a Principle Scientist within the Molecular Discovery Technologies Department of Bristol Myers Squibb. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in both Biology and Psychology at the University of Rochester and then joined the lab of Dr. Aldo Rossini at the University of Massachusetts Medical School for his PhD work investigating the effects of viral infection on stem cell transplantation tolerance. After completing his PhD, Daron joined the lab of John Iacomini at Harvard for his post-doctoral work examining the mechanisms by which T cells are rendered tolerant in mice reconstituted with retrovirally transduced bone marrow. Daron then left academics for a position at Tolerx to understand the mechanisms of action of humanized anti-CD3 and anti-GITR monoclonal antibodies, as well as work on identifying biomarkers for both programs. After 5 years, Daron joined BMS where for the last 9 years he has helped to setup an immunogenicity prediction core group responsible for utilizing in silico, in vitro and in vivo tools to help select drug candidates for further development.

Associate Director & Global Lead Biologics, Pfizer Inc
No bio available

Director, Antibody Discovery & Engineering
Dr. Datta is currently Director of Antibody Discovery & Engineering at Scholar Rock. His group is responsible for the discovery and engineering of potential therapeutic antibody molecules using a variety of antibody display and/or immunization strategies. Prior to joining Scholar Rock Dr. Datta was a Scientist in the Antibody Display group at Biogen where he led a number of therapeutic antibody discovery and engineering campaigns using yeast display and B-cell cloning technologies. Dr. Datta has a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago and received his post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School/Children’s Hospital Boston.

Associate Professor, Department of Leukemia
Dr. Naval Daver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Leukemia at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He completed his medical school from Grant Medical College and Sir J J group of Hospitals, Mumbai followed by a residency and fellowship in hematology-oncology from Baylor College of Medicine. He is a clinical investigator with a focus on molecular and immune therapies in AML and Myelofibrosis and is principal investigator on >25 ongoing institutional, national and international clinical trials in these diseases. These trials focus on developing a personalized therapy approach by targeting specific mutations or immune pathways expressed by patients with AML, evaluating novel combinations of targeted, immune and cytotoxic agents, and identifying and overcoming mechanism of resistance. He is especially interested in developing monoclonal and bispecific antibodies, immune checkpoint and vaccine-based approaches in AML, MDS, and myelofibrosis and is leading a number of these trials at MDACC. Dr. Daver has published >150 peer-reviewed manuscripts and is on the editorial board of numerous hematology specific journals. He has also authored numerous abstracts at national and international conferences.

Associate Principal Scientist
David is currently an Associate Principal Scientist at Harbour Biomeda. Previously, he was a Senior Scientist at Siamab Therapeutics, a small company developing therapies targeting tumor associated carbohydrate antigens (TACAs). TACAs are exploited by tumor cells to suppress innate immune function, enable tissue invasion and metastasis, resist chemotherapy and promote a stem-cell phenotype. David serves as scientific head of Siamab’s immuno-oncology and antibody engineering programs, developing therapeutic antibodies targeting TACAs that have the potential to not only kill cancer cells but also re-engage the immune system and overcome chemoresistance. Prior to joining Siamab, David was a Scientist at Visterra Inc. where he played a key role in the development of clinical-stage broad-spectrum therapeutic antibodies for influenza and dengue. Previously, David obtained his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from MIT where he co-invented the ‘Nanocell’ tumor therapy delivery system, the platform technology behind the biotech startup Cerulean Pharma.

Assoc Vice President, Bioanalytics
After obtaining her PhD from the University of London in 2001, Claire Davies performed her postdoctoral work at the William Harvey Research Institute (WHRI) at Bart’s and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry and Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston. Over the last 16 years, Dr Davies has led analytical and CMC teams in product development and analytical method development and validation. Currently, Dr Davies leads Bioanalytics, a group responsible for developing methods and strategies to support process development, product characterization and release and stability testing for therapeutic proteins and gene therapy products in preclinical and clinical development.

Professor of Structural Bioinformatics & Head of Department, Department of Statistics University of Oxford; Head of the Oxford Protein Informatics Group
Charlotte also leads the Oxford Protein Informatics group, a research group of over 20 people who work on diverse problems across the areas of protein structure function and evolution. She collaborates closely with experimentalists in both academia and industry in the design of experiments to leverage the power of computation for biological insight and has over 100 publications.

Head, Bioassay Development, Analytical Sciences for Biologics
Gaël joined UCB in July 2011 taking up the head of the bioassay development group that aims to develop, revamp, validate and tech transfer CMC biological potency assays from preclinical phase to phase III and beyond (lifecycle management). In 2007, he completed a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Mons (Belgium). Then, he joined SGS (a contract laboratory organization) for four years. During his time in SGS group, he extended his experience in Molecular and Cell Biology, as well as running a GMP laboratory. In 2010, Gaël took an associate professor position at the University of Mons (UMons, Belgium) where he lectures on quality standards in the pharmaceutical industry. In 2011, he also completed a Master degree in Management at the Louvain School of Management (UCL, Belgium). Since 2017, Gaël is providing his bioassay expertise to the EDQM MAb working party as ad-hoc specialist.

President, Deborah Finco Consulting LLC
Deborah has over 30 years of experience working in the pharmaceutical industry in the areas of immunogenicity and immunotoxicology. She was employed by Pfizer Inc. for 20 years and Merial Animal Health for 7 years prior to that. Deborah Finco is the president of Deborah Finco Consulting LLC, offering consulting services in the areas of immunogenicity and immunotoxicology.

Associate Member, Associate Attending Physician
Dr. Liang Deng received her B.S. degree from the University of Rochester, and her PhD and MD degrees from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and Weill Cornell Medical College. She is currently an Associate Member and Associate Attending Physician at MSKCC. She is a board-certified dermatologist specializing in melanoma and viral-associated skin malignancies. Her laboratory research has been focused on studying virus-host interaction and the development of vaccinia-based cancer immunotherapeutics. Her recent work demonstrated that intratumoral injection of inactivated modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) turns “cold” tumors into “hot” tumors, which results in enhanced responsiveness to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy. Based on these findings, her research program focuses on developing recombinant MVA or vaccinia to elicit strong “in situ vaccination” effects either used alone or in combination with ICB. Her research has been supported by the NIH, the Dermatology Foundation, American Skin Association, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Technology Development Award at MSKCC, and IMVAQ Therapeutics, a biotech company she and her colleagues at MSKCC co-founded.

Fellow
Building on 35 years of experience in protein and antibody engineering while a Principal Scientist at Genentech, Mark is currently a Fellow at Denali Therapeutics providing strategic direction and guidance for the development of protein therapeutics targeting neurological diseases. While at Genentech, Mark developed a practical method to deliver biotherapeutics across the blood-brain barrier, established that association with albumin could increase the serum half-life of biotherapeutics and was a key member of teams establishing early Antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) and T-cell Dependent Bispecific (TDC) technologies for oncology. Mark has authored over 60 papers and contributed to over 30 granted patents.

Associate Director, Analytical Development
Currently, I am an Associate Director in Analytical Development under the umbrella of Bio-pharmaceutics Development at Sanofi (Genzyme). Prior to joining Genzyme, I was at a small biopharma company (NitroMed). My area of expertise include method development/qualification/validation of assays for complex biologics and CMC leadership of various early and late stage programs requiring regular engagement with healthy authorities across the world.

Associate Director, Immunotherapy,
Iulia Diaconu PhD, is the Associate Director of Immunotherapy at Bluebird Bio. She started there since August 2014 where she is responsible for preclinical development of various immunotherapy T cell products (mainly developing TCR T cell products) for various Oncology indications. Iulia was formerly a post-doctoral fellow at Baylor College of Medicine/ Center for Cell and Gene therapy developing CAR T cells and virus specific T cell products for hematological cancers. She started her research career 17 years ago in the pathology department of Oncological Institute, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and she continued her training with a PhD in Pharmacology from University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Iuliu Hatieganu”, Romania studying prognostic and diagnostic markers for endometriosis and ovarian cancer. Iulia also holds a PhD in Medicine from University of Helsinki, Finland, studying efficacy and safety of oncolytic virus therapies.

Professor, Biotechnology; Director, Centre of Excellence in Biopharmaceuticals (COEBP)
Alan Dickson is Director of the Centre of Excellence in Biopharmaceuticals and is Professor of Biotechnology in the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester. Alan undertook his BSc and PhD at the University of Edinburgh, before moving to a Research Fellowship at the University of Kent and, subsequently, to the University of Manchester. His research has focused on the regulation of cell function (in terms of metabolic, protein and gene targets) in mammalian cells. The early 1990's saw the start of series of fruitful collaborations with commercial partners in relation to mammalian cell hosts for protein harvest and this continues today through the Bioprocessing Research Industry Club and via individual collaborations. The CoEBP acts to co-ordination all of the University of Manchester's activities with the bioprocessing sector. Alan has been part of the senior management team of the Faculty of Life Sciences, as Dean for Graduate Education and, subsequently, Dean for Communications.

Director, Antibody Engineering
Gundo Diedrich received his PhD in Chemistry from the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. He completed his postdoctoral training in immunology at Yale University, and worked as a Research Scientist in antibody discovery at Targeted Molecules, diaDexus, and Medimmune. In 2015, he joined MarcoGenics as Director Antibody Engineering.

Principal Scientist, Microbial Sciences
Dr. Antonio DiGiandomenico is currently a Principal Scientist in the Department of Microbial Sciences at MedImmune/AstraZeneca and has 20 years of experience in microbiology and immunology. Dr. DiGiandomenico began his training in molecular biology and microbial pathogenesis at Duquesne University and continued his doctoral training at the University of Virginia. Upon completion of a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University, Dr. DiGiandomenico accepted a position at MedImmune in 2009. Since arriving at MedImmune, Dr. DiGiandomenico has focused on the development of novel immunotherapeutics against multi-drug resistant bacteria in multiple disease settings and has contributed to pre-clinical and clinical programs.

Assoc Director, R&D
Nazzareno Dimasi received his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Rome Tor Vergata (Rome, Italy). He then pursued postdoctoral work at the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology of the University of Maryland (Rockville, Maryland) where he worked on 3D-structural determination using X-Ray crystallography of proteins of the innate immune system. Subsequently, he joined the Gaslini Children Hospital (Genova, Italy) where he worked on structure-function relationship of NK and T-cell receptors. In 2007, he joined MedImmune (Gaithersburg, Maryland) where he began research on multispecific antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates and novel conjugation modalities for oncology applications.

Vice President of R&D & Global Head of Translational Sciences-Biologics Safety Assessment
Dr. Dixit conducted extensive graduate and post-graduate training in Toxicology–Biochemistry with both Indian and US Institutions (Case Western Reserve University, Medical College of Ohio, University of Nebraska) and is board certified in Toxicology from the American Board of Toxicology, Inc. since 1992. In August 2006, Rakesh joined MedImmune, Inc. (an AstraZeneca Biologics company) as Senior Director (R &D) & Global Head of Biologics Safety Assessment, Experimental Pathology, and Laboratory Animal Medicine. In his current position as a Vice President of R &D since 2010, Rakesh is responsible for providing guidance on research and development of biological products; including nonclinical toxicology/safety support for all AstraZeneca-MedImmune biologics products, including monoclonal antibodies and vaccines. Rakesh has published more than 60 papers in renowned international journals and has given over 100 invited lectures/presentations/workshops in national and international meetings. Rakesh is one of the most invited speakers in the biotechnology industry. Rakesh’s areas of expertise are mainly in the area of pharmaceuticals and biologics drug development, safety assessment of small molecule drugs, biologics, vaccines and in exploring mechanisms of toxicity and biologics pharmacological activity. Rakesh has helped to bring several blockbuster pharmaceuticals to the market while working at Merck. Rakesh a recognized expert in safety and pharmacology biomarkers and their applications. Rakesh is the Editor-in-chief of Toxicology Mechanisms and Methods and Associate Editor for Toxicology Applied Pharmacology, and Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health. Rakesh was selected by his pharmaceutical peers as the 100 Most Inspiring People in Pharmaceutical Industry by PharmaVOICE in 2015. Rakesh also serves as an expert reviewer and in appointed committee for many programs managed by the prestigious U.S. National Academy of Sciences and US National Institutes of Health, including National Cancer Institute.

Associate Director, Specialty Bioanalytics
Zhandong Don Zhong received his PhD in Chemistry, and is currently an Associate Director in the Specialty Bioanalytics group at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries LTD. Don is currently managing biotherapeutic development projects and leading the immunogenicity assessment efforts, which encompasses development and validation of bioanalytical methods for immunogenicity risk assessment, detection of anti-drug antibodies and neutralizing antibodies, and nonclinical and clinical studies. He is experienced with regulatory interaction, IND submission, and global regulatory filing. Don has published in the areas of immunogenicity and ligand binding assay development best practices. Prior to joining Teva, Don worked on immunogenicity-related projects supporting biotherapeutic development at Amgen for over 11 years. Don has led industry-wide working groups associated with the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS).

President and CEO
Ben Doranz (President and CEO, Integral Molecular) has expertise in membrane proteins and antibodies, with 75+ publications in journals including Cell, Science, and Nature. He previously directed a business incubator in Philadelphia and helped create startups at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his PhD and MBA (Wharton).

Principal SME, Prefilled Syringes
Susan is currently Principal SME - Prefilled Syringes, Crystal Zenith®, and Combination Products at West Pharmaceutical. Prior to joining West, Susan has held various technical, commercial and academic roles in the Healthcare industry with Datwyler, W.L. Gore and as an Adjunct Professor at Temple University. She also services as Vice Chair for the PDA Packaging Science Interest Group. She holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania.

Director, Bioprocess
Zhimei Du earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University Medical College, Immunology Program, studying molecular mechanisms in tumor immunology and autoimmune disease areas. After graduation, she joined Robert G. Roeder’s laboratory at Rockefeller University, studying gene expression control mechanism during B cell development. After three years, she was recruited by Regeneron’s antibody engineering group, focusing on bi-specific antibody engineering. Later, she joined Amgen’s Cell Sciences & Technology department, focusing on cell line and process development. She then joined Teva Pharmaceuticals leading Upstream development. Currently she is the director of Bioprocess at Merck. She is also the leader and core member of multiple Industrial-side Consortium teams to generate positional white paper and common practice in various biotherapeutics development areas, including ADC/Bispeicifics BPOD Consortium team, of IQ comparability consortium team, IQ sequence variant consortium team, IQ and BPOD monoclonality consortium team.

Professor and Principal Investigator, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Franck Duong is professor in the Department of Biochemistry, University of British Columbia, Canada. He obtained is PhD at the University of Marseille, France. His research focus on the cell membrane system, with interest in translocases, ABC transporters and other membrane receptors. His laboratory has expertize with membrane mimitics nanodiscs, detergent, and SMA polymers. His laboratory recently developed the peptidisc, for rapid and efficient incorporation of membrane proteins in detergent-free nanoparticles.

Vice President
No bio available

Vice President, Discovery,
Peter Ellmark joined Alligator Bioscience in 2008 and is VP Discovery since 2018. He holds a PhD and an associate professorship in Immunotechnology at Lund University. Peter has more than 15 years’ experience of developing antibodies for immunotherapy of cancer. Dr. Ellmark´s research interest is focused on developing mono and bispecific antibodies for tumor directed immunotherapy of cancer.

Head of Laboratory, Virotherapy
Dr. Engeland received her medical degree from Heidelberg University. During her PhD at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), she developed oncolytic vectors encoding immune checkpoint antibodies. Since then, her research has focused on targeted immunomodulation of the tumor microenvironment. The aim of her work is to translate scientific results into clinical application to improve efficacy of cancer immunotherapy.

Professor, Keck School of Medicine
Alan L. Epstein MD, PhD is a Professor at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and has over 35 years of experience developing monoclonal antibodies and other reagents for the treatment of cancer. He has published 170 papers and has filed 35 patents including those describing the use of TNT antibodies for the imaging and therapy of cancer, new targets for CAR-T cell therapy, and fusion proteins and immunoconjugates for cancer immunotherapy. 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. He completed a post-doctoral training at the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Colorado under Dr. Ted Puck and then performed a belated residency in Clinical Pathology at USC before joining the faculty.

Principal Scientist, Group Leader, Bioanalytical Sciences
Eric received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Irvine, and his Ph.D. from Washington University School of Medicine, Department of Physiology and Biophysics. His first industry position was at Pfizer, Inc., and has subsequently held positions of increasing responsibility at Alpha-Beta Technology, Inc., Biogen Idec, Inc. and currently is a Principal Scientist/Group Leader in the Bioanalytical Sciences Department at Genentech Inc. Eric has 30+ years industry experience and over >18 years of experience in developing, validating and implementing pharmacokinetic, immunogenicity, and biomarker assays in support of preclinical/clinical drug development.

Head, R&D
Before joining ViraTherapeutics first as R&D Scientist and Senior Scientist in the Assay Development, now as Head of Research and Development, Dr. Erlmann worked as postdoctoral fellow and DFG stipendiate in the Laboratory of Prof. Malhotra (CRG, Barcelona) investigating the secretory pathway of proteins. Dr. Erlmann studied biochemistry with a focus on virology at the University of Tübingen and the Friedrich-Löffler-Institut in Tübingen he then received his PhD in Molecular Oncology from Stuttgart University.

Associate Director, Translational Immunology & Immunopharmacology,
Ugur Eskiocak is the Associate Director of In Vivo Immunopharmacology at Compass Therapeutics. His long-term goal is to translate innovative research into new therapies that will improve patient outcomes. Towards this goal, he has identified novel small molecules and combination therapies for colorectal cancer and melanoma during his PhD and postdoctoral training at UT Southwestern Medical Center. His current research at Compass Therapeutics is focused on determining the efficacy, pharmacokinetics and mechanism of action of antibody and protein-based drug candidates for immuno-oncology applications.

Senior Scientist, Methods and Analytical Development
After receiving her Ph.D. from Rutgers University, Abbie completed postdoctoral training and held academic positions at Cornell/New York Hospital and New York University Medical College. Before joining BMS, she worked as a technical leader for several instrument companies. Currently, as a member of the Methods and Analytical Development Department, her responsibilities include: solving challenging technical issues, establishing core-technical platforms, satisfying regulatory expectations, and boosting innovation for separation based methods.

Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering and Immunobiology
Dr. Fahmy is professor of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering and Immunobiology at Yale University and Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Fahmy is a Biomedical Engineer by training (Bachelors from University of Delaware) his PHD is from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Biophysics and Immunopathology. He has been a faculty at Yale since 2005. His record for synthesis, design and application of multifunctional systems for therapy and diagnostic applications spans over 123 publications, 7 book chapters and over 50 patents in those areas. He is currently writing a textbook titled, “Immuno-Engineering”. His background is multidisciplinary spanning training in biological physics, engineering and nanomedicine recipient of the NSF Career Award and the Wallace Coulter Foundation Career Awards, many NIH grants and other private and public funding mechanisms. He has started 6 different start-ups who have licensed his work at Yale. He focuses on the interface of nanobiomaterials and immune system regulation and is a deep believer in “rational design”, meaning materials designed to mimic and seamlessly supplement immunological function and not immunological application forced upon new and novel materials.

Scientist
Jessy Fan finished her graduate study in ETH Zurich, Switzerland, focusing on the mechanism of protein glycosylation. Her industry exposure started in 2012 as postdoc in Pfizer and stayed in the PKDM department as a senior scientist. She then moved to Amgen in 2016, and will share her experiences of using multiplexed nanoLC-HRMS approaches to characterize domains of protein therapeutics in vivo.

CEO
Dr. Fardis has extensive experience in drug development and novel cancer treatments. Prior to joining Iovance Biotherapeutics, Dr. Fardis was chief operating officer at Acerta Pharma working on the development of acalabrutinib until the company's acquisition by AstraZeneca. Before joining Acerta, Dr. Fardis held the position of chief of oncology operations and alliances at Pharmacyclics where she oversaw development of ibrutinib (IMBRUVICA®), abexinostat (HDAC inhibitor), and FVIIa inhibitor programs. She was a key contributor in the creation of a broad clinical program for ibrutinib, as well as NDA and MAA submissions. Previously, Dr. Fardis held a number of key scientific and management roles at Gilead Sciences in multiple therapeutic areas including antivirals, oncology, and cardiovascular therapeutics and worked on the development and life cycle management of ambrisentan (Letairis®). She received her PhD in organic chemistry from UC Berkeley and holds an MBA from Golden Gate University.

Director of Immunobiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Associate Professor of Medicine
Denise Faustman, MD, PhD, is Director of the Immunobiology Laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is currently leading a human clinical trial program testing the efficacy of the BCG vaccine for reversal of long-term type 1 diabetes. Her research accomplishments include the first scientific description of modifying donor tissue antigens to change their foreignness, the identification of interrupted T cell education through MHC class I, and the identification of autoimmune T cell sensitivity to TNF.

Vice President
Fortunato Ferrara, PhD has over 14 years of experience conceiving, developing, executing, improving, and leading a variety of projects primarily focused in the field of recombinant antibody and molecular immunology. His expertise spans from basic molecular biology methodologies (production and purification of recombinant protein, selection and characterization of antibodies and characterization of protein-protein interactions) to innovative approaches such as phage and yeast display.

Division of Surgical Oncology, Surgery
Soldano Ferrone received his MD and PhD degrees in 1964 and in 1971, respectively, from the University of Milan, Milan, Italy. He has held faculty positions at the University of Milan, Milan, Italy, Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, La Jolla, CA, Columbia University, New York, NY, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY and at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA. Since 2012 he is a faculty member of the Department of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. Dr. Ferrone has received many awards and honors. For the last 30 years he has been the member of many review committees including NIH Study Sections, and of the editorial boards of many scientific journals. Furthermore, he is the member of several external scientific advisory boards. Dr. Ferrone’s research program focuses on the molecular characterization of escape mechanism(s) utilized by tumor cells to avoid immune recognition and destruction and on the development of combinatorial immunotherapeutic strategies to counteract the escape mechanism(s) utilized by tumor cells. These studies are greatly facilitated by the large panel of HLA antigen- and human tumor antigen-specific monoclonal antibodies he has developed and shared with the scientific community over the years. He has described the results of his studies in more than 600 papers published in peer reviewed journals. Moreover, he has been the editor of 14 books and the guest editor of 5 special issues of oncology journals.

Head, Cell Line Development, Global Bioprocess & Pharmaceutical Development
Dr. Simon Fischer received his PhD in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology from Ulm University (Germany). Before, Dr. Fischer studied Pharmaceutical Biotechnology (B.Sc) and Biomedical Engineering (M.Sc). He also collected professional experiences at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma as well as Novartis Pharma. In 2015, Dr. Fischer joined Boehringer Ingelheim again as a Post doc and is currently heading the BPAD Cell Line Development group.

Senior Scientific Consultant, Biologics
Amanda Fitzgerald leads a team of scientific consultants at Genedata, who provide solutions for organizations with large molecule and data management needs. She received her doctorate in Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and has pharmaceutical industry experience in biotherapeutic discovery and production groups, including scientific support for strategic alliances and development of a high-throughput protein production platform at Pfizer.

CSO
Fredrik is CSO of Affibody AB, a company developing a novel class of affinity proteins based on a compact three-helical bundle protein domain, and has been involved in Affibody’s therapeutics research over the last sixteen years. Fredrik Frejd is also adjunct professor at Uppsala University, with special focus on development of minimized tumor targeting agents. He holds a Ph.D. from the Swiss federal institute of technology (ETH) under the mentorship of Professor Dario Neri, and has authored 50 publications on antibody and protein scaffold engineering with a specific focus on Affibody molecules.

Founder and President
Masha Fridkis-Hareli, MSc, PhD, is an immunologist, consultant and inventor with over 20 years of experience in academia and industry. She is a Founder and President of ATR, LLC, a translational research company providing scientific consulting and laboratory services in immunoassay development to research institutions and the biotechnology industry. During her post-doctoral training at Harvard University, she designed and developed a group of novel compounds for treatment of autoimmune diseases. After serving as Principal Investigator at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Fridkis-Hareli transitioned to industry where she held a variety of positions with increasing responsibilities at Resolvyx Pharmaceuticals, Charles River Laboratories, Taligen Therapeutics and Alexion Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Fridkis-Hareli is a co-author of over 100 publications and 17 issued patents. She is an adjunct professor at the Metropolitan College at Boston University, where she teaches biotechnology and immunology courses, and a co-chair of the Drug Discovery Working Group at the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.

Research Assistant, Biosystems Science and Engineering
Simon Friedensohn is a Ph.D. candidate in Sai Reddy’s Laboratory of Systems and Synthetic Immunology at ETH Zurich (since 02.2015). His research work focuses on developing both experimental as well as computational methods for high-throughput immune repertoire sequencing in order to improve antibody discovery and engineering from NGS datasets. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biotechnology from ETH Zurich. Previous to joining the Reddy lab, he completed a scientific internship at Roche where he worked on high-throughput (mi)RNA profiling for comparative genomics.

Senior Scientist
Richard Galas received his BS in Chemical Engineering from SUNY Buffalo and his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University. His dissertation was on developing vascular constructs to support tissue engineering applications of adult Mesenchmal Stem Cells. After his PhD he received a fellowship from the German Government partnering with the Specialty and Fine Chemicals Division of BASF at their flagship chemical plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany. At BSAF his research focused on using enzyme catalysis for industrial production of specialty compounds as well as industrial production techniques for enzymes as a final product. Upon returning to the USA he accepted a position in the Drug Product and Formulation group of Takeda Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, MA. He has focused his research at Takeda on supporting both early and late stage biologics developing final formulations as well as developing manufacturing processes.

Vice President, Immuno-Oncology Medical Development
Dr. Gandhi graduated from the NYU School of Medicine and completed her residency at MGH, and fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) and MGH. She worked as a thoracic oncologist and Phase I oncologist at DFCI and served as Director of Clinical Trials in the thoracic oncology program from 2013- 2016. She joined NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center as Associate Professor of Medicine and the Director of Thoracic Medical Oncology in 2016. She has worked on Phase I, II and III trials of novel targeted therapies and immunotherapies in lung cancer, with a focus on evaluating potential biomarkers of response. She has been a lead investigator in clinical trials that helped define the use of PD-L1 as a biomarker of response to PD-1 inhibition in non-small cell lung cancer. Dr. Gandhi most recently served as the lead investigator on the KEYNOTE-189 study, establishing combination chemotherapy and immunotherapy a standard of care in initial treatment for most NSCLC. On June 25, 2018, Dr. Gandhi joined Lilly Oncology to lead immuno-oncology medical development.

Director, Antibody Engineering
Raj Ganesan obtained his PhD from University of Zurich and subsequently pursued research work at several leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries which include Genentech, MedImmune and Boehringer Ingelheim. Currently, Raj is the Director of Bispecific Antibody Engineering and CAR-T at Janssen Biotherapeutics.

Researcher, Ruminant Production
PhD in Biotechnology by the Autonomous University of Barcelona. I have focused my scientific career in the fields of recombinant protein engineering and production. More specifically, during the last ten years I have been working in the optimization of protein structural formats to improve final protein activity and effective doses in both in vitro and in vivo systems. I have published 58 peer-reviewed articles with a total of 1514 citations in Web of Science yielding an H-index of 24. In addition, I have published 1 book and 6 book chapters. I have also been Editor for a book for Humana Press, Springer Group, USA. Besides, I have presented more than 100 communications and posters in scientific congresses. Regarding preparation of future researchers, I have supervised 3 PhD theses that have already been presented and, currently, I am supervising 5 more. Last, I am member of the Editorial Board of Microbial Cell Factories journal.

Senior Fellow
Gerald currently holds a position as Senior Fellow and Analytical Project Leader in Analytical Development at Novartis. He is the co-lead of the Novartis/Sandoz QbD initiative for biologics. Prior to joining Novartis in 2015 he was working at Roche where he was among other responsibilities analytical lead for Gazyva, the first biotech project with a globally approved design space. Before joining Roche in 2008 he gained professional experience as a scientist in neuroscience research and later in the diagnostic division at Abbott. Gerald holds a Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Constance (Germany) and a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Jena (Germany).

Director, Research and Development
Nimish Gera is the Director of Research and Development at Mythic Therapeutics leading multiple projects to engineer and develop novel antibody and antibody-based drugs in oncology and immuno-oncology. Prior to Mythic, Nimish has over ten years of experience in antibody and protein engineering with five years leading bispecific antibody programs in several disease areas such as rare diseases, oncology and immunology at Alexion Pharmaceuticals and Oncobiologics. Nimish received his PhD degree in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from North Carolina State University and a B.Tech degree in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.

Professor, Pathology and Lab Medicine
Ron Geyer obtained his PhD from Simon Fraser University, Canada in 199X in the area of in vitro selection. He completed his first PDF study at the Molecular Sciences Institute, USA in 199X developing peptide aptamer technologies and a second PDF at the University of Florida in 199X developing expanded genetic alphabets. In 200X, he joined the University of Saskatchewan and is currently a Professor in Pathology and Lab Medicine. His research group focuses on antibody phage display technologies and their applications diagnostics, imaging, and therapy.

PhD Candidate, Department of Biology and Biological Engineering
I graduated from the Shahid Beheshti Medical University, Tehran, Iran in 2010 with a medical degree and focus in conducting epidemiologic and case studies in infectious diseases. After medical school, my curiosity for understanding the biology behind malignancies, my unmet dream during medical school, provided me the impetus to join Irving Weissman and Samuel Cheshier laboratories at Stanford. In Irving Weissman laboratory, my fervor for basic biomedical research was reinvigorated when I started on developing humanized antiCD47 treatment as a safe and effective modality for adult and pediatric brain tumors. My research endeavors established the grounds for bringing a newly designed immunotherapeutic, humanized anti-CD47 antibody, to phase one clinical trial in patients with pediatric and adult brain tumor. Despite my remarkable experience at Stanford as a postdoctoral fellow to conduct translational studies, I realized a huge demand for new technologies and approaches to fight against cancer. Therefore, I was driven to join Biology and Bioengineering Graduate Program at California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Caltech offers me a unique setting to address this demand through developing novel technology and approaches for treatment of malignancies. Here, my goal is to develope a new immunotherapeutic for brain tumors using single cell technology. As a physician-scientist, I hope I can apply chemical physics to biological problems and make progress in the fight against cancer."

Professor, Chemical Engineering
Raja Ghosh is Professor of Chemical Engineering at McMaster University, Canada. He obtained his Doctorate degree from Oxford University, United Kingdom. His research interests are primarily in the areas of purification and analysis of biopharmaceuticals using membrane technology and chromatography.

Center for Cell Engineering
Theodoros is a PhD student at Cornell University and is completing his thesis work at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center under the supervision of Michel Sadelain. Theodoros established the first mouse model for anti-CD19 CAR T cell elicited cytokine release syndrome and is investigating the pathogenesis of the syndrome in order to identify novel treatments. Theodoros completed his undergraduate studies in Biology at the University of Patras, Greece and his Master’s in Biotechnology at Columbia University. Theodoros’ interests revolve around cancer immunotherapy, cell engineering and commercial development of these technologies.

Vice President, Research
Dr. David Edward Gilham has been Vice-President of Research & Development at Celyad SA since September 2016. Dr. Gilham is heading the implementation of Celyad's Research and Development strategy for its programs in immuno-oncology. He is a Senior Lecturer Clinical and Experimental Immunotherapy Group Director of the Institute of Cancer Sciences, Manchester. The group moved to Manchester in 1998 where his research activity has focused on engineering T-cells for cancer therapy and developing the necessary pre-clinical studies to support translation of this therapy into phase I/II clinical trials in Manchester. Prior to joining Celyad, he was a Reader in the Institute of Cancer Sciences, University of Manchester, UK and led the Clinical and Experimental Immunotherapy Group based within the Manchester Cancer Research Centre. Dr. Gilham served as a Member of Scientific Advisory Board at Celyad SA since April 6, 2016 until February 22, 2017. Dr. Gilham received his Ph.D in Molecular Pharmacology at the University of Dundee prior to moving to Bristol University in 1996 to work on CAR T cells with Professor Robert Hawkins.

Principal Scientist, RAS Reagents Core; Deputy Director, Protein Expression Laboratory, Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc.
Dr. Gillette is a group leader focused on expressing and purifying proteins that support the multiple goals of the RAS project at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research. The RAS project requires proteins for a variety of applications including: X-ray crystallography, NMR, tethered bilayers, cryo-electron microscopy, enzymatic assays, and high-throughput screens. Molecular biologist with deep experience working in a collaborative multi-group environment in the areas of protein expression and purification, protein/protein interactions, and protein/DNA interactions.

Co-Founder & CSO
Jacob Glanville is an Entrepreneur and Computational Immuno-Engineer. He is co-founder of Distributed Bio, as well as an academic who has developed seminal methods in fields including high-throughput antibody repertoire sequencing (PNAS 2009) and repertoire decoding algorithms (Nature 2017). He is a Stanford University Scientific Advisory Committee member, a Scientific Advisory Board member for the University of San Francisco's Biotechnology program and a repeat Gates Foundation Grant Recipient.

Professor, Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology
Ben Glick was a graduate student with Jim Rothman at Stanford University, where he studied intracellular membrane transport in mammalian cells, and a postdoctoral fellow with Jeff Schatz at the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland, where he studied protein import and sorting in yeast mitochondria. He is now a Professor at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the biogenesis and dynamics of secretory pathway organelles using molecular genetics and 4D microscopy. In addition, his group has engineered and commercialized novel fluorescent proteins.

Professor & Senior Scientist
Sayed K Goda is Professor of Biochemist and an honorary visitor at the Medical school, Southampton University, UK. He was a professor of Biochemistry at Qatar University (2006-2010). He then was appointed as the Director of Research and Training/Principal research scientist at SMGC, Qatar (Feb 2010- November 2011). Currently, he is a professor at Cairo University and a senior research scientist at the anti-doping Qatar.

CSO
Since 2012 Maria Gonzalez-Pajuelo is co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at FairJourney Biologics, a company that provides fast and high quality solutions for monoclonal antibodies needs. Maria initiated her career in the antibody field in 2006 at Ablynx, where she worked on the identification of Nanobodies® as Scientist-Team leader until 2012. Maria is co-inventor in 13 patent applications on antibodies and on antibodies technologies and co-author on 13 Peer Reviewed Publications.

Principal Scientist, Cell Line & Molecular Development
Dr. Goepfert received his professional training in molecular biology and biochemistry at the University of Tuebingen and the Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry in Munich. In 2002 he joined the Large Molecule Research group of Roche in Penzberg. As a technical expert in cell line engineering and molecular characterization he contributed to the pre-clinical development of numerous therapeutic proteins. In addition, he has been working on various aspects of cell line development, such as molecular mechanisms of cell line instability, cell culture automation, clonality and the detection of sequence variants.

Senior Scientist, Bioassay Development
Bharathi Govindarajan is a Senior Scientist at Immunogen. In her current role, Bharathi is a group leader of the Bioassay potency assay development team. The team is responsible for the development, optimization, release and transfer of binding and cell based potency assays. Prior to joining Immunogen, Bharathi worked at Momenta pharmaceuticals and Alcon laboratories contributing to various programs that required support for development of potency assays. Bharathi completed her PhD from Case western Reserve university, Cleveland, OH and postdoctoral research at Schepens Eye Institute, Harvard Medical School prior to joining Alcon laboratories.

Director, Antibody Discovery and Engineering
No bio available

CSO
Paola is widely regarded as a scientific leader in the field of immuno-oncology and is responsible for directing the clinical and translational research program at Cold Genesys. Paola earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Ferrara (Italy) in 2001 before moving to the U.S. to pursue her interests in oncolytic Herpes Simplex Virus-based vectors for the treatment of recurrent malignant glioblastoma. After four years of post-doctoral research at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Paola joined the Departments of Neurological Surgery and Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine where she developed the next-generation Oncolytic HSV-based vectors armed with novel payload combinations that altered the tumor microenvironment (TME) to promote the development of anti-tumor immunity. As an NIH funded principal investigator, she carried out pioneering work to combine the use of retargeted HSV vectors with cellular microRNA regulation of viral genes in non-tumor tissue to limit vector oncolytic activity to brain tumors. Her academic research produced several key patents that provided the core technologies to establish a start-up oncolytic vector company, Oncorus, Inc. in Cambridge, MA as company co-founder, scientific advisory board member and early stage director of company research.

Professor, Protein Science
Professor Torbjörn Gräslund holds a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from KTH since 2001. After two years of post-doc training with professor Carlos Barbas at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, he has been principal investigator at the department of protein science at KTH since 2003. His main research focus is on designing proteins such as affibody molecules for diagnostic and therapy applications. He has a particular focus on oncology applications but is also active in the field of auto-immune diseases. Dr. Gräslund is the inventor of several patents in the field.

Assoc Professor, Molecular Medicine
Jonas Heilskov Graversen, MSc., PhD. Associate Professor, University of Southern Denmark, department of Molecular Medicine – cancer and inflammation. Has extensive experience in university spin-off/early biotech start-up. Part of DeLiver pharma which owns IP for macrophage targeting trough CD163.

Staff Scientist & Team Leader, Structural Biology, Drug Discovery Program
Chris Gray is a Team Leader in the Drug Discovery Program at the CRUK Beatson Institute in Glasgow, UK. Following postdoctoral training as a protein crystallographer, he currently oversees the structural and biophysical applications that support the Beatson’s drug discovery activities, and this includes a substantial protein production effort. In this context, Dr. Gray’s team actively develops process optimizations that enhance the rates of expression, recovery and throughput towards the efficient generation of high-quality recombinant proteins.

Founding CSO, Platform Technology
Dr. Grosveld studied biochemistry at the University of Amsterdam and obtained his PhD from McGill University. He is a Professor of Cell Biology at Erasmus Medical Center. His group has filed considerable number of patents in the area of Immunology and Genomics, and collaborated with industrial partners. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Dutch Academy of Science, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Harbour BioMed.

Lab Head, PK/PD Bioanalytics Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics Biologics
No bio available

Chief or Genitourinary Malignancies Branch, & Director of Medical Oncology Service, Center for Cancer Research
Dr. James Gulley is an internationally recognized expert in immunotherapy for cancer. He graduated from Loma Linda University in California with a PhD in microbiology in 1994 and an MD in 1995. As part of this eight-year MD/PhD Medical Scientist Training Program, he completed a dissertation on tumor immunology. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Emory University in 1998, followed by a Medical Oncology fellowship at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Gulley serves within the Center for Cancer Research (CCR) of the National Cancer Institute as Chief of the Genitourinary Malignancies Branch (GMB), the Director of the Medical Oncology Service (CCR), and also Head of the Immunotherapy Section within the GMB. He has been instrumental in the clinical development of a number of therapeutic cancer vaccines. In addition, he was the coordinating PI of an international trial of avelumab that led to regulatory approval and serves as the coordinating PI of the international M7824 bifunctional agent targeting PDL1 and TGF-beta. Dr. Gulley serves on many national and NIH boards and committees. He has been an investigator on more than 120 clinical trials, authored more than 250 scientific papers or chapters, serves on a number of editorial boards and has made hundreds of presentations at national/international meetings.

Build Better Biologics with Machine Learning and Synbio
As ATUM’s (formerly DNA2.0) Co-Founder and CCO, Claes’ main focus is to connect the DNA2.0 technology with commercial applications in need of data driven bioengineering. Prior to founding DNA2.0 in 2003, Claes was at Maxygen leading their bioinformatics team, at Kosan engineering polyketide synthases, and postdoc’ing at UCSC and UCSF studying translation. Claes received his PhD 1992 from University of Umeå, Sweden and holds ~50 issued US patents.

Senior Scientist
In 2004 I started at Roche as a Technician in the Pharma Technical development Analytics Extended Characterization department. In 2013 I was to promoted to a group leader in the same department. We do apply mainly mass spectrometric based methods for our bio-therapeutic characterization work, my group focuses here on native MS technologies and glycan analysis methods. Furthermore, currently I’m the characterization scientist for two late stage bispecific antibody projects where I’m also leading the critical quality attribute assessment for these projects.

Medical Director
Dr Graeme Hacking gained his PhD from the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where his research was focused on HIV vaccine development in the 1980s. He then moved to work in the academic haematology department of The Royal Free Hospital in London, where his research focused on gene therapy for haemophilia and acute myelocytic leukaemia using the adeno-associated virus as the gene vector. Since 1998, Dr Hacking has worked in the pharmaceutical industry in various companies, including GSK, where he previously held the position of Global Medical Affairs Lead for MAGE-A3 in melanoma. Dr Hacking is also a member of the global melanoma clinical trial think tank – the International Melanoma Working Group. He has recently joined AMGEN as the new GMAL for T-Vec.

Vice President, Antibody Discovery Services
Bill received his graduate training in immunology at UCSF and has held research director positions in biotech and pharma companies. His primary focus has been the invention, development, and use of new technology for antibody discovery. In 2008 Bill co-founded Crystal Bioscience and became its CSO with the goal of creating the most diverse and effective antibody repertoires possible from wild-type and transgenic animal systems. Ligand acquired Crystal Biosciences in October 2017.

Assoc Director, Translational Research
I am a translational research lead with extensive experience in preclinical animal modeling, immunology, heme oncology, vascular biology, and cellular therapy. I am passionate about bringing novel therapeutic strategies to patients in need, and possess an outstanding ability to collaborate across functions to analyze, evaluate, and communicate results to key stakeholders for effective drug development decision making. I am currently a translational research lead for a late-stage clinical program responsible for designing and executing biomarker strategies to aid in characterizing the pharmacodynamics, mechanisms of action, identify clinical efficacy and resistance mechanisms, and inform combination strategy of candidate therapeutics in solid tumors.

Principal Scientist, Biologics – Protein Technology
Haruki is a molecular cell biologist specializing in protein folding and intracellular trafficking of therapeutically important proteins. After receiving a Ph.D. in Molecular Cell Biology from the University of Michigan, Haruki undertook a postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda. His first pharma experience came from the Assay Development group in Bayer’s Kyoto Research Center. For the last 13+ years at Amgen, Haruki works closely with disease area scientists to advance early exploratory projects from target validation and proof-of-concept studies to biologics lead selection.

Senior Investigator & Chief, Thoracic and GI Malignancies Branch
Dr. Raffit Hassan is a Senior Investigator and Chief of the Thoracic and GI Malignancies Branch at the National Cancer Institute, NIH. Dr. Hassan’s research interest is focused on developing mesothelin-targeted immunotherapy for cancer. Work done by him and his collaborators have validated mesothelin as an attractive tumor antigen for cancer therapy. Since treating the first patient with an anti-mesothelin agent in 2000, Dr. Hassan has played a key role in bringing mesothelin directed therapies to the clinic. He is currently leading clinical trials of mesothelin directed agents for treatment of malignant mesothelioma. Dr. Hassan is a recipient of several national and international awards for his work on mesothelin including the ASCO Career Development Award, the NIH Patient Oriented Research Career Development Award, and the Pioneer Award from the Mesothelioma Foundation and in 2014 received the Wagner Medal from the International Mesothelioma Interest Group.

Staff Scientist, Immunology and Microbiology
Dr. Hastie studied Ecology and Environmental Biology, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She then joined Erica Ollmann Saphire’s group at The Scripps Research Institute and completed her graduate studies in October, 2011. As a Staff Scientist in the Ollmann Saphire lab, Dr. Hastie conducts an independently NIH-funded research project aimed at expanding structural knowledge of glycoproteins of Lassa and other arenaviruses. In addition, she serves on international task forces to steer thought about how to better elicit and detect the right responses and to deliver a much-needed vaccine for Lassa virus, which infects hundreds of thousands of under-served in West Africa every year.

PhD Student
Hezi is a PhD student in the department of Biotechnology Engineering at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. Hezi started his Bachelor's degree in the same department following his passion to genetics, but the exposure to the field of therapeutic proteins led him to the direct PhD program under the supervision of Dr. Niv Papo in the field of protein engineering. In his study, Hezi is improving the pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetic properties of therapeutic proteins using incorporation of unnatural amino acids.

Scientist, Infectious Diseases
Wouter Hazenbos is a scientist at Genentech, South San Francisco. He received his PhD from Leiden University (The Netherlands) studying interactions between bacteria and phagocytes. He specialized further in the fields of immunology and infectious diseases.

Vice President, ADC Task Force
Tom Held is Vice President, ADC Task Force at Daiichi Sankyo. Working within the construct of Daiichi Sankyo’s Cancer Enterprise, Tom has franchise level responsibility for clinical stage ADC Global Program Teams and leads a broad cross functional team focused on evolving the ADC Technology Platform at Daiichi Sankyo.

WijnandProfessor of Translational Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery
Wijnand Helfrich (1962) is professor of Translational Surgical Oncology at the University Medical Center of Groningen, The Netherlands. Central theme of his research program is the design and (pre)clinical development of novel immunomodulatory therapeutics, including light-activatable small molecules, antibody fragment-targeted immunocytokines (e.g. TRAIL, CD40L and 4-1BBL) and tumor-targeted bispecific antibodies that block immune checkpoints such as PD-L1/PD-1, CD47/SIRPα, CD200/CD200R, 4-1BB/4-1BBL.

Vice President and Head, Oncology Research
Dr. Ronald Herbst serves as Vice President of Research and Development and Head of Oncology Research for MedImmune. Dr. Herbst is responsible for the overall oncology research strategy and pre-clinical development of novel drug candidates. He joined MedImmune in February 2006 as associate director of oncology research. He was Senior Principal Investigator in the Oncology Department at Schering-Plough Biopharma (formerly DNAX). He has been Member of Scientific Advisory Board at Definiens AG since September 15, 2015.

CSO
Guy joined Isogenica as CSO in January 2016. He brings in over a decade of experience in antibody fragment discovery and early development, as well as antibody discovery technology development. At Isogenica, he leads the internal technology and product development, as well as drive scientific interactions with prospective or current licensees and other partners.

Co-Founder, Business Development and Strategy Lead
Kevin Heyries holds a PhD in biochemistry (Uni. of Lyon, France) where his doctoral work focused on the development of miniaturized technology using microfluidics for antibody analysis. During his postdoctoral work (Uni. of British Columbia), he developed high throughput microfluidics systems for digital PCR and single-cell genomics. Dr. Heyries was instrumental in the development of AbCellera’s technology, where he also led several antibody discovery programs and is now leading business development and strategy.

Assoc Director, Pipeline R&D
Stuart is an Associate Director in Science, Technology and Translation and Lung Portfolio Lead at ImmunoGen Inc. in Waltham, MA USA. At ImmunoGen, he leads a group charged with the identification and validation of novel antibody drug conjugate therapeutics to support the advancement of ImmunoGen’s oncology pipeline. He has led or supported several preclinical ADC programs from discovery into clinical development. Stuart received a PhD in Biochemistry, Cellular, Molecular Biology from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and then continued his training as a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University School of Medicine.

Vice President, Molecular Biology/Protein Engineering, Drug Discovery
Oliver Hill joined Apogenix AG in March 2006 as an expert for protein engineering and protein expression technologies. Prior to this, he was heading the protein expression and purification group at Graffinity Pharmaceutical Design GmbH (Heidelberg, Germany) from 1999 to 2006 where he was responsible for delivering a broad spectrum of target proteins to be screened with a chemical microarray platform technology. His workscope in former academic R&D-positions at the Lower Saxony Institute for Peptide Research (Hannover, Germany; 1992-1996) and the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology (Jena, Germany; 1997-1998) included gene hunting, de novo protein design and the development of recombinant phage display technologies. Mr Hill studied biology at the University of Hannover where he also received in 1997 his Ph.D. from the Department of Chemistry.

Chief, Antibody Therapy Section, Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Mitchell Ho is a Senior Investigator in the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Chair of the Department of Biochemistry for the FAES Graduate School at the NIH. He received his PhD in the laboratory of Dr. Mariangela Segre at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he used anti-idiotypic antibodies as cocaine antagonists. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Ira Pastan at the NIH, where he engineered immunotoxins targeting CD22 and mesothelin for the treatment of B-cell leukemias and mesothelioma. The Ho laboratory at the NCI studies cancer cell surface proteins, focusing primarily on the role of glypicans including GPC2 and GPC3 as a new family of tumor antigens, and designs 'single domain antibodies' that modulate Wnt and other glypican signaling processes responsible for the development of cancer.

Professor & Sharon Crowley Martin Chair, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Stephen Hodi is the Director of the Melanoma Center and the Center for Immuno-Oncology at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, the Sharon Crowley Martin Chair in Melanoma at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hodi is a graduate of Harvard University and Cornell University Medical College. He completed his postdoctoral training in Internal Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and his medical oncology training at Dana-Farber cancer Institute, where he joined the faculty in 1998. His research focuses on gene therapy, the development of immune therapies, and first into human studies for malignant melanoma. Dr. Hodi is a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research, the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Melanoma Committee, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, the European Academy of Tumor Immunology and a founding member of the Society for Melanoma Research. Dr. Hodi is an internationally recognized leader in the development of immune therapy and melanoma therapeutics. In particular, he is known for the clinical development of immune checkpoint inhibitors. His clinical investigation efforts have pioneered the use of immune checkpoint blockade and combinatorial approaches to treat cancer. His publications include articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Clinical Oncology and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Head, Antibody Lead Discovery
Rene Hoet has worked for over 20 years in Biotech and Pharma Industry focusing on Antibody Research & Development. Since 2010, Rene is working for Bayer AG as Vice President Biologics Research (Cologne, Germany). His group is responsible for Antibody Discovery and Optimization for all therapeutic areas in Bayer, and during this period, a number of antibodies from Bayer´s internal pipeline entered into the clinic (eg. FXIa antibody). Additionally, Rene was appointed in 2012 to extraordinary Prof. Biopharmaceutics at the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands to guide researchers to use antibodies to Bridge the Gap between academic research and pharma applications. Between 2008-2010, Rene worked at Genmab as Sr. Director Research and was heading up Product Related Research, Scientific Communication & Translational Research. His team was driving new Antibody Discovery Programs, but was also actively supporting Clinical Antibody Programs of Ofatumumab and Daratumumab. From 1997-2008, Rene had various positions at Dyax and became Vice President of Research and Operational Manager of Dyax. Rene and his team were driving internal Antibody Lead Discovery (in Dyax Liege Belgium and Cambridge US), as well as external collaborations and supporting out-licensing of Dyax antibody phage libraries. From the antibody phage libraries developed at Dyax, now 3 antibodies have been approved Ramucirumab (Lilly), Necitumumab (Lilly), Avelumab (EMD Serono/Pfizer), and in addition over 10 antibodies from various companies (including Bayer) are still in in clinical trial.

Head, Virotherapy Research Group, Urology
Professor Per Sonne Holm, PhD, is currently running as Head of Section the Virotherapy Group at the Urology Institute, Technical University Munich, Germany. He studied Biology at the University of Kiel, Germany, and worked as a cancer scientist in Berlin and Copenhagen following two years of postdoctoral research in City of Hope/Los Angeles and Birmingham, USA. His research focuses lies on mechanisms of cancer drug resistance and the development of novel cancer virotherapies. He developed novel oncolytic adenoviruses based on the expression of the human oncogenic factor YB-1. He has several granted patents related to this work. In 2004, Prof. Holm co-founded XVir Therapeutics GmbH and serves currently as CEO.

Eugene Belle Professor, Tissue Engineering, Institute for Molecular Engineering
Jeffrey Hubbell is Professor in the Institute for Molecular Engineering of the University of Chicago. Previous to moving to Chicago, he was on the faculty of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL, where he served as Director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Dean of the School of Life Sciences), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and University of Zurich, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Texas in Austin. He holds a BS from Kansas State University and a PhD from Rice University, both degrees being in chemical engineering. He was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2010, the National Academy of Inventors in 2014, and the National Academy of Medicine in 2019. Hubbell uses biomaterials and protein engineering approaches to investigate topics in regenerative medicine and immunotherapeutics. In regenerative medicine, he focuses on biomaterial matrices that mimic the extracellular matrix and on growth factor - extracellular matrix interactions, working in a variety of animal models of regenerative medicine. In immunotherapeutics, he focuses on nanomaterials in vaccines that target lymphoid-resident antigen presenting cells and on protein engineering approaches to deliver antigen to the spleen and liver for inverse vaccines to induce tolerance to protein drugs and in autoimmunity. His interests are both basic and translational, having founded or co-founded six biomedical companies based on his technology, namely Focal, in Boston, acquired by Genzyme; Kuros Biosciences, in Zurich, in the domain of regenerative medicine; Anokion and Kanyos Bio, in Boston, both in the domain of immunological tolerance; Clostra Bio, in Chicago, in the domain of food allergy, founded together in with Prof. Cathryn Nagler at the University of Chicago; and Arrow Immune, in the domain of cancer immunotherapy, founded together with Prof. Melody Swartz at the University of Chicago.

Program Leader, Max Eder Research Group‚ CAR T-Cell Engineering, Department of Medicine II
Michael Hudecek, MD performed medical training at the University of Leipzig, Germany. In his thesis, he analyzed the role of minor histocompatibility antigens during the graft-versus-leukemia response after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Michael was recruited to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA in 2007 to perform a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Stanley R. Riddell. In Seattle, Michael focused on rationally designing chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) and defining optimal cellular compositions of CAR-T cell products. Since 2012, Michael is leading an independent translational research laboratory at the Universitätsklinikum Würzburg, Germany. Michael is an Extraordinary Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and was awarded the Artur-Pappenheim Preis of the German Society for Hematology and Medical Oncology in 2017.

Associate Senior Lecturer, Pharmaceutical Biosciences, Protein Drug Design
Greta Hultqvist is an Assistant Professor in the department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences at Uppsala University. She received her PhD in biochemistry in 2013 at Uppsala University. She is interested in protein drug designs and is designing proteins so that they can pass the blood brain barrier or to reach specific cellular compartments. She has developed an antibody format that enter the brain 80 times better than a normal antibody and that is functional as a diagnostic marker for Alzheimer’s disease.

Product Manager
Duncan Huston-Paterson is a Project Leader at Integral Molecular, where he directs development of the Membrane Proteome Array platform for applications in therapeutic target discovery, antibody deorphaning, and off-target safety profiling. Dr. Huston-Paterson obtained a DPhil from Oxford University, publishing research at the intersection of biophysics, enzymology, and infectious disease.

Independent Consultant
Catherine has spent over 21 years acquiring significant depth of experience in antibody drug discovery and platform applications, working for cutting edge biotech and pharma companies, such as Cambridge Antibody Technology (now MedImmune) and Heptares Therapeutics where she attained proof-of-concept studies to support efforts in GPCR antibody discovery. In 2015, Catherine reverted to providing independent scientific and strategic consultancy to biotechnology companies where her current assignments include GPCRs, ion channels, platform positioning and target evaluation. Catherine graduated with BSc Hons in Genetics and Cell Biology from University of Manchester, UK, and a PhD in Biochemistry and Applied Molecular Biology from UMIST, UK.

Head, R&D, CMO
Robert joined Immunomedics in April 2018 as Head of Research and Development and Chief Medical Officer bringing extensive experience in pediatrics, pediatric-hematology-oncology and bone marrow transplantation. His most recent experience was with AstraZeneca as the Global Products Vice President, and subsequently as Senior Vice President and Head of Immuno-oncology, Global Medicines Development where he oversaw full development of late phase immune-oncology assets, including durvalumab (Imfinzi), tremelimumab and combinations with additional early and late phase assets, leading to approvals for Imfinzi in 2L+ urothelial carcinoma and stage 3 unresectable NSCLC after chemo-radiotherapy.

Research Assistant Professor, Molecular Biosciences, LIVESTRONG Cancer Institute
Dr. Ippolito initially studied physics at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and then completed training in B-cell immunology at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, The University of Cologne (Germany), and The University of Texas at Austin. A former Director for Research and Development at a publicly traded antibody biologics company, he has been involved since 2011 in the launch, spearheading, and supervision of antibody technology development and human immunology projects in collaboration with Professor George Georgiou at The University of Texas at Austin.

Director, Antibody Discovery
Shelley Izquierdo is the Director of Antibody Discovery at Ligand Pharmaceuticals. She received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Molecular and Cell Biology and entered industry at Trellis Bioscience, where she worked on implementing new technologies for interrogating human and murine B cell populations. After Trellis, she worked at Crystal Bioscience where she developed and optimized the best-in-class GEM assay for multiplexed analysis of single B cells. The GEM assay has become the cornerstone for recovering antibodies from immunized chickens, including the OmniChicken™, which is the world’s first transgenic chicken producing human sequence antibodies. Shelley has since transitioned to overseeing OmniChicken partner projects at Ligand Pharmaceuticals, where she primarily focuses on discovery programs to generate antibodies against targets that are “difficult” due to high homology in mammals and partner requirements for broad epitope coverage and high species cross reactivity.

Co-Chair, Immunogenicity/Immunosafety Working Group, Senior Medical Fellow for Immunogenicity, Global Patient Safety
Dr. Ragheb has been with Eli Lilly & Co. for about 3 years. He is based in Indianapolis where he serves as the Senior Medical Fellow for Immunology in Global Patient Safety and Co-Chair of the Immunogenicity/Immunosafety Working Group. He received his MD and PhD degrees from the Johns Hopkins University and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Allergy & Immunology. Formerly, he was a Senior Clinical Investigator at NIH where he conducted clinical and basic research on immune tolerance and a Chief Medical Research Officer in the Office of Biological Products at the FDA where his research group established the BLT humanized mouse model there in an effort to predict the immunogenicity of biotherapeutics. He has published in the areas of immunogenicity, immune tolerance, CD28 and CD40L regulation, retrovirology and gene therapy.

President,
Dr. Jaen has been engaged in all aspects of drug discovery and development for more than 30 years, having advanced over 20 novel molecules into clinical development for diseases including cancer, Alzheimer’s, Crohn’s, RA, diabetes and diabetic nephropathy, psoriasis, asthma, and vasculitis, among others. In 2015, Dr. Jaen co-founded Arcus Biosciences, which is engaged in the discovery of novel oncology drugs that reverse tumor-induced immunosuppression. Prior to Arcus, Juan was co-founder and Head of R&D at Flexus Biosciences, until its acquisition by Bristol-Myers Squibb in early 2015. Previously, Dr. Jaen was Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery at ChemoCentryx, Vice President of Chemistry at Amgen, and Vice President of Chemistry at Tularik (until its acquisition by Amgen in 2004).

Director, Preclinical Pharmacology & Cancer Immunology
Anika Jäkel is a specialist in immunology and joined Glycotope GmbH in 2016. Her work focus lies on the pharmacological in vitro and in vivo assessment of immunotherapeutics designed to target and treat solid tumors. In 2018, Anika became a leading scientist and is now responsible for the Preclinical Pharmacology & Cancer Immunology group at Glycotope with its broad IO pipeline. Before her appointment at Glycotope, Anika acquired competent knowledge on the complex immune cell network of mice and humans during her PhD and as a Postdoc in the Immune Defense Mechanisms group at the Robert Koch Institute.

Associate Director, Global Lead Biologics, Clinical Assay Group, Global Product Development
Darshana Jani has nearly 25 years of practice in the academic and biotechnology field. Throughout her tenure at Genzyme, Medimmune, BiogenIdec until present employment as Senior Manager at Pfizer she has supported clinical and pre-clinical trials, in addition to post marketing studies inclusive of Safety, Immunogenicity, PK, Efficacy, and Biomarker analysis. Darshana has risen from the ranks, at the outset developing and applying boianalytical methods, while assuming numerous responsibilities germane to regulatory compliance of the validation and application of group procedure. She has guided bioanalytical lab groups, held responsible for overseeing all phases of drug recovery and development; a task which incorporated product characterization, potency determination, immunogenicity testing, as well as surrogate maker discovery.

CSO
Anass Jawhari, holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry & structural biology from Louis Pasteur University (Strasbourg, France). He was research associate at Scripps (La Jolla, US) and senior postdoc at the Gene Center (Munich, Germany) before joining Transgene as Research Investigator. Anass is now CSO at CALIXAR with expertise on macromolecular assemblies of soluble and membrane proteins. He has 20 years’ experience in R&D projects related to molecular aspects of infectious diseases, cancer and vaccine.

Associate Professor, Molecular Imaging Innovations Institute, Radiology
Dr. Jin is currently Associate Professor at Radiology Department at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. His lab is part of Molecular Imaging Innovation Institute, and a member of Meyer Cancer Center. His current research includes development of novel CAR T technology and whole body imaging of T cells and antibodies, and engineering of novel antibody formats for imaging and therapy applications. He has founded a biotech company, AffyImmune Therapeutics, Inc., which plans to commence a clinical trial using CAR T cells against refractory thyroid cancer. He has received numerous awards including New Investigator Recognition Award by Orthopedic Research Society, Scientist Development Grant from the American Heart Association, NIH Transformative Research Award by NIH, and a recipient of Brain Pool Program in Korea.

Director, Bioanalytical
John leads a group of scientists in the development and validation of bioanalytical methods, including PK, immunogenicity and neutralizing antibody for novel biotherapeutics. Previously, John was a Director at Eurofins Bioanalytical Services, Scientific Director at EMD Millipore, Associate Director at Covance and Research Advisor at Eli Lilly. John got his PhD from University of Minnesota.

CSO
Matt completed a PhD in Molecular Biology investigating novel surface proteins of the B. cereus endospore. He joined Abcam in 2005, where held several roles over his 8 years in the company, culminating in the post of Head of R&D. He built and ran a research group with interests in recombinant antibody/binder technologies, alternative detection methodologies, immunoassay development and antibody characterisation. Matt became CTO of Avacta Life Sciences in 2013.

Vice President, Antibody Therapeutics
Dr. Jonah Rainey is currently the Vice President for the Antibody Therapeutics department at Gritstone Oncology. Previously, he was the CEO of Oriole, a consulting and research organization focused on discovery through early development of biologic in San Diego. He holds a PhD in Biochemistry from Tufts University and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Wisconsin and the Salk Institute. He has been actively engaged in discovery, research, and development of bispecific antibodies in a biotech setting for 12 years. He is an inventor on several patents and applications describing novel bispecific platforms as well as current clinical candidates that exploit these platforms. Dr. Rainey led or had major contributions to research and early development of at least three current clinical candidates in phase 1 and 2, and led many additional advanced preclinical programs in oncology, infectious disease, autoimmunity, and other therapeutic areas. Industry experience spans small biotech (MacroGenics, MabVax) and large pharma settings (MedImmune/Astrazeneca).

Scientist, Pediatrics Hematology-Oncology, Center for Cell and Gene Therapy
Sujith K. Joseph is a scientist at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas. He has a background in human immunology and vaccine development. He conducts translational research with gene-modified T-cells to improve therapy for solid tumors in children and young adults along with the research team of Drs. Nabil Ahmed and Meenakshi Hegde at the Center for cell and gene therapy. His research focuses on pre-clinical development of novel and multi-specific Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cells against solid tumor targets and improving the effectiveness of CAR T-cell therapy using novel approaches stemming from an understanding of immune correlates in responders undergoing CAR T-cell therapy in clinical trials.

Senior Scientist, Predictive and Clinical Immunogenicity,
No bio available

Scientist, Analytical Development
Michelle Joubert is a Scientist with experience developing purity and real-time PCR methods in the Analytical Development group at Sanofi. She is currently an Analytical Team Lead for an early Phase Gene Therapy product. Prior to joining Sanofi, Michelle worked at ESA Biosciences as a QC analyst. Michelle has a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from Roger Williams University.

Canada Research Chair in Structural Immunology
Dr. Julien holds a Canada Research Chair in Structural Immunology. He is a Scientist in the Molecular Medicine Program at the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute and an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Immunology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Julien’s research seeks to understand how immune molecules interact, how these interactions protect humans against infections, and how this information can be applied to the design of next-generation vaccines and immunotherapies.

Director of Business Development
Meelis Kadaja is a Director of Business Development at Icosagen. He is responsible for company’s business strategy, commercialization of technologies, therapeutic, diagnostic, research antibodies, and communication with partners. He has studied previously the replication of small DNA viruses, and the maintenance of adult tissue specific stem cells. He received his Ph.D and MBA in Tartu University, Estonia, and he completed his postdoctoral training in the Rockefeller University, New York, as HFSP postdoctoral fellow.

Principal Research Scientist, Biologics Discovery, AbbVie Bioresearch Center
Denise Karaoglu Hanzatian, PhD, is a Principal Research Scientist at AbbVie Bioresearch Center. She received her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Clark University. She joined Abbott Laboratories (now AbbVie) to lead Biologics efforts in immunogenicity assessment and bioanalytical testing of biotherapeutics in various disease indications. In addition, she has worked on several drug candidates, including the ones currently in clinical trials, from different therapeutic areas such as immunology, neuroscience, and oncology. More recently, Dr. Karaoglu has been focusing on the targeting and delivery of biotherapeutics, especially, to CNS.

Associate Professor, Systems and Synthetic Biology, Bioengineering
No bio available

Research Scientist, CBER
Dr. Elena Karnaukhova is a Research and Regulatory Scientist with the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Vascular Biology, Office of Blood Research and Review, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Prior to joining FDA in 2002, she was a Principal Scientist with Starzent, Inc., VA and a Senior Research Scientist with Columbia University, NY. Her research interests include protein structure-function relationships and biophysical assessment, particularly with regards to the proteins involved in conformational diseases and heme scavenging.

MSc
Dennis Karthaus received his master`s degree in biotechnology from the University of Applied Sciences in Bremerhaven. During his thesis at the department of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at the Fraunhofer Inst. for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine he worked on the development of protein purification platforms and in cell line development. In 2012, Dennis Karthaus joined IBA Lifesciences. He is responsible for the mammalian custom protein expression & purification service and the product development in this field.

Professor & Head, Biological Sciences,
Brian Kay is a world expert in the field of molecular recognition, the science of how proteins selectively interact with each other. His current research group of 9 individuals utilizes phage-displayed libraries of combinatorial peptides, antibody fragments, and engineered proteins to probe the surfaces of proteins and identify contact sites for binding. This approach is being currently applied to develop biosensors for protein kinases, create tools to study protein expression in cells and organisms, generate affinity reagents to bacterial and human proteins, and develop diagnostics for monitoring laser-induced eye damage. He has authored 139 scientific reports and reviews, co-edited three books, and been issued 15 patents; he has an H-index of 56. He brings significant experience to this project in phage-display, library construction, screening combinatorial peptide libraries, generating recombinant affinity reagents with high affinity and selectivity, technical trouble-shooting, and research leadership.

Expert Scientist, Large Molecule Bioanalytical R&D
Kay-Gunnar Stubenrauch, PhD, is an Expert Scientist, heading the department of “Large Molecule Bioanalytical Sciences 1” at Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED), Roche Innovation Center Munich (Germany). He joined Roche Diagnostics in 2000 and moved to Roche Pharma in 2003. Since then he worked in Large Molecule Research and Pharmaceutical Sciences. In his current position, his focus is on large molecule bioanalysis and immunogenicity testing. Kay has been involved in several projects of therapeutic proteins and antibodies from preclinical up to in-market stages. Kay is a biochemist and received his PhD from Martin-Luther-University, Halle-Wittenberg (Prof. Rainer Rudolph) in 2000. He has authored/co-authored numerous publications in the fields of large molecule research and bioanalysis including immunogenicity testing for biologics.

US Business Development Manager
Alex is responsible for growing Retrogenix’s North American business portfolio and is based at Retrogenix's UK headquarters in the Peak District. Prior to joining the company, Alex spent two years at specialist pharmacogenomics service provider Epistem. Here he built successful relationships with major pharmaceutical and biotech companies worldwide as part of his business development and lead generation role. Alex has a first class degree in Pharmacology with Industrial Experience from the University of Manchester, UK.

Research Scientist
Ryan completed his PhD in Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the guidance of Dane Wittrup. His thesis work focused on predicting and improving antibody developability and improving in vitro library designs. He now leads in vitro antibody development efforts at xCella Biosciences.

Assistant Professor, Medicine and Oncology,
The research of Saad J. Kenderian, M.B., Ch.B., and his team is centered on the development and optimization of novel-engineered T cell therapy approaches for the treatment of cancer. Using the immune system to treat cancer (immunotherapy) has emerged as a potent and potentially curative modality. The recent success of engineered T cell therapy highlights the potential for this technology as a new pillar in the treatment of hematological malignancies.

Senior Development Associate
Jennifer Kessler is a Senior Development Associate at MacroGenics. She received her MS from the University of Maryland where she studied small chemical inhibitors of bacterial Type III secretion. Her current focus is analytical method development for process residuals and impurities.

Vice President, Business Development
Ulrich Kettling is Vice President Business Development at CEVEC Pharmaceuticals. He has more than 18 years experience in executive and management roles in large industry, start-ups and as founder and entrepreneur in biopharma, protein therapeutics and synthetic biology. He graduated in Biotechnology and obtained a PhD in Biophysical Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute, Germany.

CSO
Bruce Keyt, Ph.D. CSO at IGM Biosciences has 35 years of R&D experience in biotechnology. During 16 years at Genentech, worked on Factor VIII, tPA, TNKase, Avastin and Lucentis. At Millennium, built preclinical scientist team which helped develop Velcade and anti-PMSA. As VP of Abgenix preclinical, Vectabix was approved as well as multiple INDs and corresponding clinical trials. As CTO, Trellis isolated human anti-RSV mAbs for Medimmune. Ph.D from Tufts University and B.S. in Chemistry from Washington Univ. Inventor on 35 patents and co-authored 55 articles.

Associate Professor, The Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, Departments of Molecular Genetics and Computer Science
Philip M. Kim is an Associate Professor at Donnelly Centre at the University of Toronto. He leads a research laboratory that integrates both computational and wet/experimental methods for biomedical sciences and drug discovery. Before setting up his lab at the University of Toronto in 2009, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University where he pioneered structural analyses of protein interactions networks and an associate with McKinsey & Co. He holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a BS in Biochemistry and Physics from the University of Tuebingen.

Professor, Molecular Science & Technology
Dr. Yong-Sung Kim has been a professor of Dept. of Molecular Science and Technology at Ajou University (Suwon, Korea) since 2004. Dr. Kim received his B.Sc. in Food Science and Technology from Seoul National University in 1996. He obtained his M.Sc. in Biotechnology in 1998 from KAIST and Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2002 from the University of Colorado, Denver. After obtaining the Ph.D. degree, he joined the lab of Prof. K. Dane Wittrup at MIT as a post-doc for protein and antibody engineering using yeast surface display. He spent one year (2010-2011) during his Sabbatical at Genentech Inc. (SF, USA), where he worked with scientists at Depts. of molecular oncology and antibody engineering. Dr. Kim’s research focuses on development of next-generation antibody platform technology for diverse applications, including heterodimeric Fc-based bispecific antibody, solid tumor-penetrating antibody, and cytosol-penetrating antibody to address cytosolic proteins. Dr. Kim has transferred 4 antibody-related platform technologies developed in his lab to several Korea-based and USA-based companies. Particularly, Dr. Kim co-founded ORUM Therapeutics Company with Dr. Sung-Joo Lee in 2016 for the commercialization of cytosol-penetrating antibody technology. His website is http://antibody.ajou.ac.kr/.

CSO
Dr. Kishimoto is the Chief Scientific Officer of Selecta Biosciences, a biotechnology company developing synthetic vaccines based on a novel self-assembling nanoparticle technology. Prior to joining Selecta, Dr. Kishimoto was Vice President of Research at Momenta Pharmaceuticals where he led multidisciplinary teams in inflammation, oncology, and cardiovascular disease. Previously he was Senior Director of Inflammation Research at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, where he provided the scientific leadership for four programs in clinical development, and an Associate Director of Immunology at Boehringer Ingelheim. Dr. Kishimoto received his doctoral degree in Immunology from Harvard University and his post-doctoral training at Stanford University.

Senior Director & Head, Biophysics, Biologics Development Sciences
Dr. Scott Klakamp is the Sr. Director and Head of Biophysics at Janssen R&D, LLC. Dr. Klakamp is one of the leading scientists in utilizing Biacore® and KinExA® to measure the binding kinetics and equilibrium dissociation constants of human monoclonal antibody/antigen complexes. Prior to Janssen, Dr. Klakamp was the Founder and Principal Consultant of SKD Consulting LLC. Before SKD Consulting, he was the Vice President of Chemistry and Biochemistry at BiOptix Inc. Dr. Klakamp has also held positions of increasing responsibility in the areas of analytical and biophysical characterization at Chiron, Amgen/Abgenix, AstraZeneca/MedIummune, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Klakamp has been an author on over 30 research and review papers, book chapters, and patents, and has coedited two books dealing with translational monoclonal antibody research. He has also been an invited speaker at numerous international and national meetings. Dr. Klakamp received his B.A. in Chemistry from Houghton College and his PhD in Chemistry at the Pennsylvania State University. From 1990 to 1993, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship (funded by a National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health) at the California Institute of Technology in bioinorganic chemistry.

Oncology Discovery & Translational Area, Cancer Immunotherapy Discovery, PRED
Christian Klein, Distinguished Scientist is Head of Oncology Programs and Department Head Cancer Immunotherapy Discovery at the Roche Innovation Center Zurich, Roche Pharmaceutical Research and Early Development, Switzerland specialized in the discovery, validation and preclinical development of antibody-based Cancer Immunotherapy (CIT) and bispecific antibodies. During his >14 years at Roche he has made major contributions as research project leader to the development and FDA/EMA approval of GAZYVA/GAZYVARO (obinutuzumab, GA101), to the preclinical development of five bispecific antibodies currently in active clinical development: 1) anti-Ang-2/VEGF CrossMAb RG7221 (vanucizumab) in oncology (Ph II), 2) anti-VEGF/Ang-2 CrossMAb RG7716 in ophthalmology (Ph II), 3) CEA-IL2v immunocytokine RG7813 (Ph I), 4) CEA-CD3 T cell bispecific antibody (CEA TCB) RG7802 (Ph I), 5) FAP-IL2v immunocytokine RG7461 (Ph I), and lead the development of Roche’s novel bispecific antibody technologies e.g. the CrossMAb, immunocytokine and T cell bispecific antibody platforms. Since 2012 he is doing his “Habilitation” in Biochemistry at the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich, Germany.

Vice President, Research and Development,
Dr. Klingemann has served as the company’s Vice President of Research & Development since joining full time in 2012. He is also the discoverer of the NK-92 cell line and co-founder of the company. Prior to joining NantKwest, Dr. Klingemann served as the Director of the Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplant Program and the Director for Hematological Malignancies at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. He also served as Director of the Section of Bone Marrow Transplant & Cell Therapy at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago where he established the first clinical GMP Cell Therapy facility in the Chicago area. He maintains an academic appointment at Tufts University Medical School.

Immunology Sales Specialist
Emilee gained her PhD in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology from the University of Pittsburgh under the direction of Prof. Charles Rinaldo, identifying immune responses to lytic infection with Human Herpes Virus-8. She joined ProImmune in 2013 after completing her Post Doc in Rinaldo’s lab. She works on the ProImmune team providing innovative solutions for clients that radically improve our understanding of both desired and unwanted immune responses.

Scientist, Chemical Biology, Chemistry & Chemical Biology
Luke Koblan is a student in David Liu’s lab. Before his time in the Liu Lab, he worked for both Jay Bradner developing cell-based assays for targeted bromodomain inhibition and Todd Golub on a serine protease-profiling project. These experiences led to an interest in using technology development as a platform to illuminate new biology. His current work is focused on improving current base editing technologies and developing novel editors. He is supported by an NSF GRFP fellowship.

CSO
Dr. Kolodych is a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Syndivia, a company committed to the development of disruptive cancer therapeutics. Prior to joining Syndivia, Dr. Kolodych worked on the development of novel bioconjugation technologies at the University of Strasbourg and in French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA Saclay)

Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Institute of Cell Biology and Immunology
Roland Kontermann holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Heidelberg. After working as a postdoc in the laboratory of Sir Gregory Winter at the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering, Cambridge, UK, he was group leader at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Tumor Biology of the University of Marburg, and subsequently Head of Research at vectron therapeutics AG. Since 2004, he was Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Institute of Cell Biology and Immunology of the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Current research focuses on the development of recombinant bispecific and bifunctional antibody molecules, including half-life extension strategies, for tumor therapy and treatment of inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases.

Principal Scientist/PM, Team Leader PTO, Center for Advanced Preclinical Research
Internationally recognized expert in advanced methodologies for developing genetically and biologically engineered preclinical murine disease models for studies of the molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis, tumor immune response, immune surveillance, and inflammation, mechanisms of drug resistance, implication of cancer stem cells, etc.; and to explore such models for preclinical drug development, disease systems analyses and biomarker discovery. Initiated, supervised, and successfully conducted multiple research projects and independent large-scale research and development programs aimed at investigation of molecular mechanisms governing carcinogenesis, biomarker discovery and preclinical drug evaluation in various mouse models. Oversee the preclinical operations at the Frederick National Laboratory Center for Advanced Preclinical Research – an innovative preclinical cancer modeling and drug development initiative based on genetically engineered murine models – with senior management responsibilities. Co-authored over 60 scientific papers, book chapters and original works in peer-reviewed journals.

Senior Researcher & Co-Principal Investigator, Technical University of Denmark
Dr. Michael Krogh Jensen from DTU will be the Coordinator of the MIAMi project. Dr. Krogh Jensen has extensive experience with project management in both national and international collaborative projects, including his formal roles as Dissemination Manager in HZ2020 program PAcMEN, Co-Coordinator on an international DNA synthesis project founded by the Joint Genome Institute (US), and numerous international research collaborations with visiting researchers. Scientifically, Dr. Krogh Jensen is an expert on the development of synthetic biology tools for yeast, with training obtained from renowned laboratories in Europe (Max-Planck Institute, Cologne, Germany) and the US (Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA). In 2007, he obtained his PhD in molecular biology from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. From 2008 to 2011, he held independently funded postdoctoral research grants managing international collaborations within transcriptional regulation, and from 2012 to 2013, he headed a collaboration on genome-wide protein-protein interactions between University of Copenhagen and Stanford University. Since 2013, Dr. Krogh Jensen has been Co-Principal Investigator together with Scientific Director Prof. Jay D. Keasling in the Section for Synthetic Biology Tools for Yeast at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability (CfB) at DTU with daily responsibility of 13 international scientific and technical staff members. During this period, Dr. Krogh Jensen has led the development of the CRISPR/Cas9 toolkit for yeast, the development of biosensors, DNA parts characterization, and refactoring and prototyping of MIA pathway designs in yeast. He is a co-author of 34 peer-reviewed publications with an h-index of 17 and more than 1200 citations. He is also co-inventor of a patent on the design of biosensors in eukaryotes.

Co-Founder & Managing Director
Prabuddha is one of the co-founders of Premas Biotech along with his colleagues in 2005. He has over 20 years of experience in Biotech and Pharma Industry. Prior to joining industry, he obtained in PhD in Biomedical Engineering, with specialization in antibody manufacturing and scale up. He holds 8 patents, 20 publications and is part of of governmental bodies, corporate think tanks and academic institutions. His interests are mainly with increasing operational efficiencies, reducing cost of goods, and novel technologies.

CEO
Andreas was born on 13. April 1964 in Vienna, where he studied Biochemistry from 1982-1988 receiving his PhD in 1991. He was then awarded a Schrödinger Fellowship to do his Post-Doc studies in protein structure-function relationships at the Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry under Robert Huber. From 1993-1997 he was working as a researcher (later as senior scientist) at the Sandoz-/later Novartis-Research-Institute in Vienna performing biophysical investigations of drug-receptor interactions. After receiving an Austrian Academy of Sciences fellowship to promote the interaction between basic and applied research, he became Associate Professor for Biophysical Chemistry at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in Graz. In 2005 Andreas co-founded ProtAffin Biotechnology AG, a privately-held biotech company located in Graz and in London, which developed novel, chemokine-based biopharmaceuticals for inflammatory applications such as COPD. In 2011, he was appointed Professor for Biopharmaceuticals and Proteomics at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Graz. In March 2015, Andreas co-founded his second biotech company, Antagonis Biotherapeutics GmbH, where he currently holds the CEO position. Antagonis develops novel glycan-targeting biologics in the field of immune-oncology.

Director
For almost 10 years, Dr. Kunz is working as Project Team Leader at MorphoSys in early discovery projects in order to develop therapeutic antibodies for various oncological indications. In his team the work is focused on immuno-modulatory agents that improve therapeutic responses through immune engaging bispecific compounds. Throughout the years, he and his team successfully identified, characterized and engineered multiple antibody lead candidates, handed them over to preclinical departments where they further progressed into clinical studies.

Principal Scientist, Protein Engineering
Vinodh Kurella is a protein engineer with a focus on antibody and antigen designs via structure guided computational modeling-based approach. Before joining Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, he was team lead for CAR-T designs, engineering and validations in the Immuno_Oncology division at Intrexon Corporation. He completed his post-doctoral training at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical school in Dr. Wayne Marasco laboratory and received Ph.D. in Dr. David Worthylake lab from Dept. of Biochemistry at LSU Health Sciences Center in the field of protein X-ray crystallography.

Professor, Department of Biochemistry
Jonathan Lai is Professor of Biochemistry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, NY. Dr. Lai received his undergraduate training in Biochemistry at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, then obtained his PhD in Chemistry and Biophysics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2004. From 2004-2007, he was Helen Hay Whitney Post-Doctoral Fellow in Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School. He began his independent lab at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2007. His group has broad interests in peptide, protein, and antibody engineering with application of these methods to discovery of new immunotherapies and vaccines.

Director, Research & Development
Dr. Lamerdin leads a diverse group of scientists responsible for the development of novel cell-based assays for discovery as well as qualification of bioassays for lot release and neutralizing antibody applications. Jane has over 19 years of experience in industry generating cell-based assays to support large and small molecule drug discovery, particularly in the oncology, immune-oncology and inflammation therapeutic areas. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in Genetics, and has broad expertise in molecular and cellular biology, systems biology/signal transduction, high throughput screening, high content imaging, and diverse reporter and phenotypic assay formats.

Assoc Professor, Neurosurgery, Brain Tumor Center
Dr Lamfers heads the Neurosurgery Laboratory at Erasmus MC. Her lab is focused on the development of novel treatments for malignant glioma using innovative patient-derived model systems. These treatments include novel compounds, drug repurposing strategies and oncolytic viruses. She set up a drug development pipeline encompassing biobanking of patient tissue and PBMCs, derived cell cultures/tumor organoids, in vitro 2D and 3D drug screening and in vivo validation. Her goal is to implement such model systems for predicting response to therapy and/or selecting the most optimal treatment for a specific patient. She was also involved in the preclinical development of the oncolytic adenovirus Delta24-RGD (DNX2401), studying its oncolytic and immunotherapeutic potential in various in vivo models as well as in a trial-associated study on the immune response to local Delta24-RGD infusion in recurrent glioblastoma patients.

President
David has been learning and practicing statistics for bioassays and other non-clinical applications in Pharma for 30 years. This includes 10 years at Searle/Monsanto/Pharmacia and 16 years as the owner of Precision Bioassay, Inc. David has been and is still an active participant in the work to revise the USP bioassay chapters. His education includes a year of Electrical and Computer Engineering (University of Michigan), a BS in Botany (San Francisco State), an MS in Entomology (Cornell) and finally both an MS and Ph.D. in Biometry (both Cornell).

Fellow, Cell Line Development
Dr. Laux is leading the cell line development network of “Biologics Technical Development & Manufacturing” within Novartis. Throughout his career he focused his work on functional genomics approaches as transcriptomics screens and subsequently cell line engineering editing. These efforts resulted in generation of several improved CHO production cell lines. He was also supporting the sequencing of Chinese hamster resulting in a public available Chinese hamster genome. He is additionally involved in enabling and improving the production of difficult to express therapeutic recombinant proteins.

Asst Professor, Managing Director, Harvey Cushing Neurosurgery Laboratories
No bio available

Senior Vice President, Clinical Research
Robert J. Lechleider, M.D. is Senior Vice President, Clinical Development at Seattle Genetics where he is responsible for directing development of the early and late stage portfolios. Previously, Dr. Lechleider held key roles at several biopharmaceutical companies, including MacroGenics and MedImmune. Before joining the biotechnology industry, he served as Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and Associate Professor of Cell Biology at Georgetown University Medical School. Dr. Lechleider received his A.B. cum laude from Princeton University and his M.D. from the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago. He received clinical training in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda. He was also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Scholar and a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell postdoctoral fellow.

Senior Research Scientist
Education and Experience: 1. Senior Research Scientist, Alteogen Inc. Daejeon, Korea, May 2012 ~ present; 2. Research Scientist, Division of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Texas at Austin, Texas; 3. Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Texas A&M University, Texas; 4. Ph. D., School of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea; 5. BA & MS, School of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.

Vice President, Research and Development,
James Legg Ph.D 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.

Chief Scientist, R&D Pharmaceuticals
Hans-Georg Lerchen is Chief Scientist in the Medicinal Chemistry unit of Pharmaceuticals R&D at Bayer AG. With a 30 years background in MedChem he is author or co-author of ~79 patents or patent applications and 19 publications. His current research focus is drug delivery systems, prodrugs and in particular antibody drug conjugates.

Associate Principal Scientist, Protein Mass Spectrometry Department
Xiaojuan Li, PhD, Associate Principal Scientist, Protein Mass Spectrometry Department, Merck & Co., Inc. More than seven years of biopharmaceutical industry experience with LC-MS method development for biologics characterization and in-process support.

CEO and CSO
Zonghai Li,MD, Ph.D., Founder, CEO and CSO of CARsgen Therapeutics, a leading company on CAR-T cell therapeutics in China. Dr. Li is a professor in Shanghai Cancer Institute, Renji Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine. Dr. Li got his M.D. and Ph.D. from Hunan Medical University and Fudan University respectively. Dr. Li is dedicated to developing innovative immune therapeutics to fight cancer. He has advanced several first-in-class CAR-T cell therapeutics for the treatment of patients with pancreatic, gastric, liver cancer and other cancer types.

Scientist and Group Leader
Jasper Lin graduated from University of Washington in Seattle with a Ph. D. in biophysical chemistry. His early work focused on higher order structure of proteins and how it relates to protein folding. After a post-doctoral position at the Puget Sound Blood Center Research Institute (now called Bloodworks), he joined Roche/Genentech in the Late Stage Pharmaceutical Development department. He currently is a Scientist and Group Leader in Early Stage Pharmaceutical Development.

CEO
Dr. Qingcong Lin is CEO of Biocytogen Boston, focusing on developing gene-specific humanized mouse models for immuno-oncology drug candidate preclinical pharmacology and toxicity assessment. Dr. Lin was SVP of Shenogen Pharma Group, responsible for biologic drug development. Before Joining Sheongen, he was a Principal Scientist at Pfizer and led antibody engineering group. Dr. Lin received Ph.D. degree from Albert-Einstein College of Medicine and completed postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School.

President and CEO
Thomas Little, PhD, President and CEO, Bioassay Sciences, Thomas A. Little Consulting Dr. Little is President of BioAssay Sciences (BAS) a globally recognized bioassay consulting company for biologicals and vaccines. BAS specializes in the design, calculation and control of potency and relative potency for bioassays. BAS specializes in In-Vivo and In-Vitro bioassays. BAS works with international companies and health authorities globally to achieve product development goals aligned to ICH and USP guidance. BAS is a strategic partner of SAS/JMP and a division of Thomas A. Little Consulting. Dr. Little has developed specific content courses in statistical methods and data analysis, Bioassay Design and Validation, Quality Risk Management, design of experiments, Robust Optimization, Design Space and Tolerance Design, Assay Development and Method Validation, statistical process control, mixture design of experiments, Stability Analysis and Nonlinear Modeling. These courses are used by a variety of fortune 100+ companies to train their chemists, engineers and scientists.

Director, Protein Engineering
David Liu is the Director of Protein Engineering at Abbvie, where he focuses on antibody and protein engineering for antibody drug conjugates and other antibody-based therapeutics against cancer stem cell targets. David completed his PhD in Dane Wittrup’s lab at MIT

Senior Principal Scientist, Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics and Drug Metabolism (PPDM)
Dr Liu obtained his Ph.D. in immunology at University of Oxford followed by several years’ postdoc work at Harvard University before working in biotech industry in early 2000. Dr Liu has extensive experience in the discovery and development of mAbs and Fc-fusion proteins. He was the head of Immunology group of Syntonix Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Biogen, then Sanofi), working on mAb and Fc-fusion molecule discovery programs. He joined Merck Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics and Drug Metabolism (PPDM) department in 2007 and have worked on more than a dozen Merck Biologics programs including monoclonal antibodies and Fc-fusion proteins from discovery to development and regulatory filings.

Director, Targeted Therapeutics and Site Operations
Deryk Loo is the Director of Targeted Therapeutics and Site Operations at the Brisbane site of MacroGenics, Inc., which he joined in 2008 following the acquisition of Raven biotechnologies, Inc. Dr. Loo has been active in drug discovery and development for the past 15+ years, focusing on antibody-based therapeutics, and more recently antibody drug conjugates. Dr. Loo has authored numerous publications in the field of oncology and is an inventor on several patents.

Chief Operating Officer
James Love was educated at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and was trained as a structural biologist at the MRC-LMB. In New York, Dr. Love was the Head of Research for the New York Consortium on Membrane Protein Structures, which utilized high throughput protein production methods to express, purify and screen thousands of integral membrane proteins for structural studies. Dr. Love then developed high throughput expression and purification techniques for eukaryotic and oxygen sensitive proteins at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, before joining ATUM (formerly DNA2.0) as Director of Expression Technologies. Dr. Love is also an executive editor of the journal “Protein Expression and Purification”. At the Institute for Protein Innovation, Dr. Love is building platforms for production of all human cell surface proteins, including integral membrane proteins, and specific antibodies that bind to these targets.

Senior Scientist, Analytical Sciences
Dr. Emily Lowe is multidisciplinary scientist with 15 years of research experience in immunology and host-pathogen interactions. She is currently a Senior Scientist at Kite Pharma, a Gilead company, where she has been leading the Bioassay Team since 2015 to develop cell-based potency assays in the Analytical Development group within the Product Sciences department. Prior to joining Kite, Dr. Lowe worked in Dr. Jerome Zack’s laboratory at UCLA where she helped to develop “induction/kill” strategies to eradicate HIV reservoirs in vivo using genetically engineered immunity and the humanized mouse model. During her PhD studies into innate immunity and inflammation, Dr. Lowe split her time between the laboratories of Dr. Genhong Cheng (UCLA) and Dr. Moshe Arditi (Cedars-Sinai) where she discovered that Toll-like Receptor 2 played a protective role in both the epithelial and immune compartments during the development of colitis-associated colorectal cancer. Dr. Lowe’s passion for immunology began at the University of Washington where she completed two B.S. degrees, one in Microbiology and one in Biochemistry.

Associate Professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine
Dr. Luning Prak is an associate professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She runs a research lab that studies immune repertoires and B cell subsets in humans. She also directs the Human Immunology Core facility at Penn, which performs immune repertoire profiling experiments for dozens of investigators each year. She is chair elect of the Adaptive Immune Repertoire Community (AIRR-C), an international group of investigators, legal experts and others interested in immune repertoire profiling by next-generation sequencing-based methods.

Principal Consultant
Bob has been an independent consultant in the biotech/pharma industry since 2015 and has worked with multiple clients providing strategic, tactical and operational input for their research and development efforts. Prior to initiating his consulting practice, Bob held various R&D roles over a 23 year span at ImmunoGen, Inc. In his most recent position at ImmunoGen, Bob was Vice President of Translational Research and Development with responsibility for all early stage antibody drug conjugate (ADC) development programs from lead identification through phase 2. He also served as ImmunoGen’s research lead on Genentech’s FDA-approved trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) program. Before the ADC research position, Bob was part of ImmunoGen’s Apoptosis Technology Inc subsidiary where he led the research collaboration leading to the discovery of the BH3 domain of the BCl-2 family of death regulatory proteins. Before ImmunoGen, Bob was a research and postdoctoral fellow at the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Colorado. He earned his doctoral degree in Biochemistry at Brandeis University.

Lead, Biologics Research Group
Biotechnology leader with over a decade of experience working with large pharma, biotech companies, and venture-backed startups. Extensive experience managing teams in multiple therapeutic areas and a demonstrated track record of accelerating leads into preclinical development.

Vice President, Head of Discovery
Loui Madakamutil is VP and Head of Discovery and Research at Nektar Therapeutics. In this role Loui is responsible for the discovery strategy of Nektar to deliver novel immuno-modulatory medicines in several therapeutic areas. Previously Loui was a Senior Director at J&J. Loui held appointment as the Site Head of Immunology at Takeda Pharmaceuticals in San Diego. Loui also spent five years in Immunology discovery at Celgene. He has taken several large and small molecule compounds into clinic. Loui did his Post-Doctoral training at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology and has a PhD from University of Mumbai India.

Principal Consultant
Sheila Magil, Ph.D., Senior Consultant withBioProcess Technology Consultants, has over 35years of experience in quality,bioanalytical and analytical method development for biologics, peptides andsmall molecules. Her expertise includes qualitycontrol and assurance, protein and peptide biochemistry, and analyticaldevelopment. She was formerly SeniorManager of Analytical Development and Quality Control at Biomeasure, Inc., and previously held positions at Waratah Pharma, Alkermes, Bion, and HHMI at MassachusettsGeneral Hospital. Dr. Magil has implemented quality systems and has managed external analytical and QC activities for multiple biopharmaceutical products. Dr. Magil holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota.

Assistant Professor, Center for Cell and Gene Therapy
Dr. Mamonkin is a faculty member at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, Baylor College of Medicine. Main research focus of his laboratory is the mechanisms and effects of CAR and TCR signaling in therapeutic T cells and developing new CAR-based approaches combined with genome editing and synthetic biology for the targeted therapy of aggressive hematologic malignancies and auto/alloimmune complications. Dr. Mamonkin developed and optimized CD5- and CD7-directed CARs for clinical evaluation in T-cell malignancies and AML. He serves as a PI on several ongoing and upcoming clinical trials of CAR T cells in hematologic malignancies at Baylor.

Principal Scientist, Group Leader, BioMedicine Design
Dr. Marcela Araya is currently a Principal Scientist/Group Leader in the Department of BioMedicine Design at Pfizer. She leads a group that provides regulated bioanalytical support including assay development, validation and sample analysis for non-clinical and clinical PK and immunogenicity assays. She received her Ph.D in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. She then completed her postdoctoral work at the GLP Bioanalytical Core Laboratory, Department of Pharmaceutics in Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), where she developed and validated methods for small molecule drugs. Prior of joining Pfizer, Dr. Araya spent numerous years at PPD (CRO) in their Immunochemistry Department.

Director, Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Dr. John Mascola is Director of the Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, U.S. National Institutes of Health. His background is in infectious diseases, viral immunology and vaccine research. His research focuses on antibody-mediated protective immune responses through studies of both the plasma antibody and B-cell compartments, including studies to understand the genetic and immunological characteristics that guide the development of broadly neutralizing antibodies against viral pathogens.

Senior Scientist, Antibody Discovery & Protein Engineering
Dr. Yariv Mazor joined MedImmune in 2009; he is leading the antibody discovery group at the Department of Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering and co-leads multiple antibody bio-therapeutic programs into clinical development. Yariv received his PhD in Biotechnology from Tel-Aviv University, Israel in 2005, where he studied and developed antibody therapeutics and antibody-drug conjugates for cancer. He then pursued postdoctoral training at the Dept. of Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, TX under Prof. George Georgiou where he developed a novel platform for the selection and screening of engineered full-length IgG antibodies from libraries expressed in E. coli. Yariv is the co-inventor 5 patents or patent applications and the author of 20 peer-reviewed papers.

Vice President, Head of Biotherapeutics
Charlotte McDonagh joined Magenta Therapeutics in 2017 as Head of Biotherapeutics. She previously served as a vice president at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, where she led discovery and early clinical stage programs. Prior to joining Merrimack, she led therapeutic antibody selection and engineering projects at Seattle Genetics. Charlotte holds a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Leicester, U.K, and an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Bristol, U.K.

Senior Director, Platform Technologies,
Kathleen McGinness is the Senior Director of Platform Technologies at Unum Therapeutics. Unum is discovering and developing new cellular immunotherapies for cancer using its proprietary Antibody-Coupled T-cell Receptor (ACTR) technology. Kathleen is responsible for inventing and evaluating new technologies that direct patient-derived immune cells to destroy cancer cells. Prior to Unum, Kathleen served in roles at the Broad Institute, Baxter Healthcare, and Archemix Corp. focused on target validation, drug discovery, and therapeutic platform development across a variety of therapeutic modalities and disease areas. She holds B.S. degrees in chemistry and psychology from the University of Maryland, a doctoral degree in chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute, and completed postdoctoral training in the department of biology at MIT.

Director, STING Research,
No bio available

COO
Sebastian is Chief Operating Officer of Numab Innovation, 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 headed the downstream processing and analytics unit of ESBATech, focusing on process development and characterization of novel scFv drug candidates in Phase I/II of clinical development, including RTH258 (brolucizumab). Prior to that, Sebastian was a group leader in bioprocess development at Cytos Biotechnology. Sebastian holds a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Hamburg and a PhD from the University of Zurich.

Dr. Stephen Miller is the Judy E. Gugenheim Research Professor of Microbiology-Immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in 1975 from the Pennsylvania State University and did postdoctoral training at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center before joining the faculty at Northwestern in 1981 where he currently serves as Director of the Northwestern University Interdepartmental Immunobiology Center. Dr. Miller is internationally recognized for his research on pathogenesis and regulation of autoimmune diseases. He has published over 400 journal articles, reviews and book chapters and has trained multiple generations of scientists. His work has significantly enhanced understanding of immune inflammatory processes underlying chronic autoimmune disease employing animal models of multiple sclerosis (MS) and Type 1 diabetes (T1D). His work has focused on the study of the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying treatment of established T cell-mediated autoimmune diseases using antigen-specific immune tolerance. His current work is geared to translating the use of antigen-linked biodegradable PLG nanoparticles for the treatment of human immune-mediated diseases including autoimmunity, allergy and tissue/organ transplantation.

Senior Scientist, Early Stage Cell Culture
I am a senior scientist at Genentech and have been part of the Cell Culture department since 2010. My research involves improving/innovating processes that result in generation of cell lines expressing bio-therapeutics (proteins and antibodies used as drugs) at high titers and with specific product quality attributes. Bachelors: University of California Berkeley, Molecular and Cell Biology. PhD: Harvard University, in Biological and Biomedical Sciences. Post-doctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Genentech

Senior Research Associate, Antibody Discovery
Alexey Misorin is a Senior Research associate in the Display method laboratory of Antibody Discovery Division. Alexey received a master degree in Biophysics at St. Petersburg State University in 2014. From 2015, he works in Biocad, with a focus on the application of methods that allow providing the kinetic analysis and characterization of antibodies.

CMO
Experienced Chief Medical Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the biotechnology industry. Skilled in Pharmaceutics, Biomarkers, Translational Medicine, Oncology, and Hematology. Strong healthcare services professional graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine. Practicing oncologist/hematologist, volunteer staff physician at the Palo Alto VA Hospital, a Stanford-affiliate teaching hospital.

Head of Laboratory, Research
Dr Céline Monnet is a molecular and cellular biologist. She obtained her PhD from Paris-Sud University, specializing in antibody engineering and phage display screening processes at the CEA/bioMérieux research center (Saclay, France). After 5 years of academic research in neurobiology and neurovirology, she spent 7 years at MilleGen SA (Toulouse, France) as head of the Therapeutic Antibody Development Platform. In November 2013 she joined LFB Biotechnologies (Lille, France) and is now head of the Molecular Evolution Group in charge of antibody engineering and phage display screening.

Director, Regulatory Affairs
William leads the orphan drug unit within GRA and serves as the US Agent for multiple Investigation of New Drugs, New Drug Applications and Supplements. William provides strategic advice to clients on regulatory strategy, leads regulatory projects and specialty designation requests, provides CMC technical writing and reviews for new applications (INDs, NDAs, BLAs) in rare disease space; interacts with Regulatory Agencies (FDA, Heath Canada, etc.) He has also served as the Regulatory Project lead for numerous NDA 505(b)(2) applications approved by the US FDA.

Head, Cell Line Engineering and Bio-Analytical Sciences
Dr. Hatim Motiwala has completed his PhD in Microbiology as a part of industry-academia partnership between The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and Intas Pharmaceuticals Limited, India. He has 18+ years of experience working in biopharmaceutical industry with specialty in mammalian cell culture and bioanalytics. He has worked with some of top biotech company in India such as Intas Pharmaceuticals, Biocon and Sun Pharma. He is heading Cell Line Engineering (CLE) and Bio-Analytical Sciences (BAS) groups at Enzene Biosciences Limited, India. He was involved in commercial launch of biosimilar proteins and mAbs.

Professor, Physics
Liviu Movileanu has received the Ph.D. degree in biophysics from the University of Bucharest (1997). He has acquired postdoctoral positions at the University of Missouri (Kansas City, USA, 1997-1998) and the Texas A&M University Health Science Center (College Station, Tex, USA, 1999-2004). He 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 the US 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.

Scientist, Development, Analytical Sciences
My name is Ashley Mullan, I have a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Master of Science in Biotechnology from University of Maryland. I am a scientist currently working in Bioassay Development at MedImmune located in Gaithersburg, Maryland. I have been developing Bioassays at MedImmune for 10 years utilizing both binding and cell-based assay platforms. I am responsible for bioassay development for a variety of molecule types, including fusion proteins, ADCs and more recently CAR-T.

Professor, Surgery, Neurosurgery and Pathology
Smita Nair, PhD, is a Professor of Surgery, Neurosurgery and Pathology at Duke University School of Medicine and member of the Duke Cancer Institute (DCI) and the Brain Tumor Center. Dr. Nair has 30 years of experience in the field of immunology and has gained national and international reputation as a leader in the field of T cell immunity, specifically the induction of T cell responses by dendritic cells. She started her research career in viral immunology and then transitioned to cancer immunology and immune-based therapies. Dr. Nair’s team develops novel immune-based therapies against cancer and conducts bench-to-bedside translational studies. She is a key inventor of the landmark invention: the use of tumor antigen RNA transfected dendritic cells as vaccines. Dr. Nair is also investigating oncolytic poliovirus immunotherapy and is examining oncolytic poliovirus-mediated immune changes in the tumor microenvironment (in mice and patients with cancer. Another focus of Dr. Nair’s laboratory is to augment the clinical benefit associated with immunotherapy. This includes developing combination therapies designed to induce immune responses and block immune suppression.

Senior Scientist
Dhaval Nanavati completed his PhD at University of Connecticut and Post doctoral fellow ship at Laboratory of Neurotoxicology, National Institute of Mental Health. In 2009, he joined Northwester to start new proteomics core and was director till 2016. He joined AbbVie in 2016 as Sr. Scientist, Mass spectrometry.

Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering
Brent Nannenga is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy at Arizona State University. He is also a member of the Biodesign Institute’s Center for Applied Structural Discovery. Research the Nannenga lab focuses on using structural biology, specifically crystallography and cryo-EM, to understand and engineer improved biomolecular systems, and to use engineering principles to develop novel methods in structural biology in order to solve high-resolution structures of difficult, yet extremely important targets.

Senior Director, Antibody Biotherapeutics
No bio available

Co-Director, Immunotherapy Program
Dr. Nelson is a native of Vancouver, Canada. He received his B.Sc. from the University of British Columbia in 1987 and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991. He completed postdoctoral training with Dr. Phil Greenberg and held faculty positions at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington in Seattle. In 2003, he became the founding Director of BC Cancer's Deeley Research Centre in Victoria BC. He is a Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Nelson’s lab uses genomic and molecular approaches to study the immune response to cancer, with an emphasis on ovarian cancer. As Co-director of BC Cancer’s Immunotherapy Program, he is leading a phase I clinical trials program focused on adoptive T cell therapy for gynecological cancers, leukemia, lymphoma, and other malignancies.

Director, Biophysics, Structural Characterization, Biologics Discovery Sciences
Dr. Nemeth obtained a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Scranton in 1995 followed by a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Emory University in 1999. After graduation, she worked under Dr. Richard Caprioli at Vanderbilt University as a post-doctoral research follow focusing on applied bioanalytical mass spectrometry. Leaving academia in 2000, Dr. Nemeth entered the biopharmaceutical industry where she was employed as a bioanalytical mass spectrometrist at Genetics Institute (now Wyeth BioPharma) and ExSAR Corp. Dr. Nemeth joined Centocor (Now Janssen) in 2004 to head a new mass spectrometry group focused on the characterization of molecules from inception through pre-clinical. In 2012, Dr. Nemeth stepped outside the Biophysics area to oversee discovery and clinical drug programs. In July 2017, Dr. Nemeth returned to Biophysics to create a new structural characterization lab focused on structural analyses to drive discovery programs. Her publications include detailed protein characterizations, as well as new methods for protein analysis using mass spectrometry.

Professor, Chemistry & Applied Biosciences
Dario Neri was born in Rome on 1 May 1963, but grew up in Siena (Italy). He studied Chemistry at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and earned a PhD in Chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich), under the supervision of Professor Kurt Wüthrich (Nobel Prize Chemistry 2002). After a post-doctoral research internship (1992-1996) at the Medical Research Council Centre in Cambridge (UK), under the supervision of Sir Gregory Winter, he became professor at ETH Zürich in 1996. Dario Neri is currently Full Professor of Biomacromolecules at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich. The research of the Neri group focuses on the engineering of therapeutic antibodies for the therapy of cancer and other angiogenesis-related disorders. Other research activities include the chemical proteomic discovery of novel vascular markers of pathology and the development of DNA-encoded chemical libraries. Dario Neri is a co-founder of Philogen (www.philogen.com), a Swiss-Italian biotech company which has brought various antibody products into multicenter clinical trials for the treatment of cancer and of chronic inflammatory conditions. Dario Neri has published over 350 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. He is the recipient of the ISOBM Abbott Prize 2000, of the Amgen-Dompe’ Biotec Award 2000, of the Mangia d’Oro 2001, of the Prous Award 2006 of the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry, of the Robert-Wenner-Prize 2007 of the Swiss Cancer League, of the SWISS BRIDGE Award 2008, of the Prix Mentzer of the French Medicinal Chemistry Society in 2011, of the Phoenix Prize 2014 and of an ERC Advanced Grant in 2015.

CEO
Anton is a biomedical professional, scientist, innovator, entrepreneur and venture capitalist with more than 15 years of industry and academic experience in research and drug development. At ImmunoBiochem Corporation, Anton is leading the development of a new class of tumor microenvironment-targeted anti-cancer therapeutics. Anton was formerly the Director of Drug Development at Armour Therapeutics Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing a new class of anti-cancer therapeutics for prostate, breast and ovarian cancers. Throughout his career, Anton worked on R&D and consulting projects with several biopharmaceutical companies developing biological therapeutics and immunotherapies in oncology. Anton has expertise in cancer research, immunology, chemistry, regenerative medicine and gene therapy, and authored more than 25 peer-reviewed publications and patents. Anton obtained his PhD, MSc, and Hon. BSc degrees in medical biophysics, immunology, and biological chemistry at the University of Toronto, where he also completed postdoctoral work and his MBA at the Rotman School of Management. Anton was also a trainee of the CIHR Training Program in Regenerative Medicine (TPRM), Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network. Anton was a founding board member, and former CCO and organizing committee member of the Canadian Science Policy Centre (Toronto, ON) – a national organization promoting science policy in Canada. Anton has led several venture capital investments in biomedical and healthcare companies at GreenSky Capital.

Principal Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry
Chris Neumann, PhD, is a Principal Scientist in the Medicinal Chemistry group at Seattle Genetics. He completed his graduate studies in chemistry at Harvard University in 2006, and subsequently pursued postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology. Following a period of independent research at the University of Washington, he joined Seattle Genetics in 2012 where his research program focuses on the development of novel payloads for antibody-drug conjugates and new linker technologies to better enable targeted delivery of drugs.

Professor, Antibody and Therapeutic Engineering, Biochemical Pharmacology
Ahuva Nissim graduated in Molecular Immunology in Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and was trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering in Cambridge until 1995. During this period, she developed a phage display semi-synthetic human antibody library which has been used worldwide. She joined Queen Mary University in 2000.

Co-Founder, Head of Research and Development
Dr. Tatiana Novobrantseva is a co-founder and the Head of Research and Development in the new immunology focused company Verseau Therapeutics. Prior to co-founding Verseau, she consulted for multiple companies on various immunological aspects of drug development across different stages and therapeutic modalities. At her prior position as Director of Tumor Immunology at Jounce Therapeutics, Tatiana defined research plans for several programs at the company’s inception, as well as led a portfolio of programs on (re)activating the immune system against cancer. Her previous positions include Associate Director at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Scientist II at Biogen. Some of Tatiana’s scientific accomplishments include discovering the critical role for B cells in liver fibrosis, pushing the envelope on siRNA delivery to immune cells and championing a siRNA-assisted dendritic cell cancer vaccine project. Tatiana is an inventor on more than 22 patents and an author on more than 36 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Tatiana completed her PhD with Dr. Klaus Rajewsky in Cologne, Germany, focusing on B cell development and function.

GI Malignancy Oncologist
No bio available

CSO
Maureen is a prolific inventor and an expert in the development of targeted biological therapeutics. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, including over 50 publications in the TGF-β field. Maureen also holds numerous patents. Prior to joining Forbius, Maureen was Principal Research Officer and Section Leader at the Canadian National Research Council (NRC). While at NRC, Maureen served as a Scientific Leader of NRC's Biologics Program, a pan-Canadian network of over 10 research teams. Under her leadership, this program established a successful track record in developing innovative protein therapeutics, many of which are under active clinical investigation. Maureen is the recipient of many awards, including the Gervais-Dionne Award (2012) for her work on “New Cancer Targets and Matching Antibodies for Diagnostic and Therapeutic Use”. Maureen received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Alberta and completed post-doctoral training at the laboratory of Drs. Michael Sporn and Anita Roberts, where TGF-β proteins and their relation to carcinogenesis was newly-discovered.

Senior Vice President, Preclinical and Clinical R&D,
No bio available

Senior Principal Scientist
Eliud Oloo is a Senior Principal Scientist at Schrödinger where he works on computational design and optimization of Biologics. Prior to joining Schrödinger, he was a research scientist at Sanofi for over ten years, spearheading structure-based vaccine design initiatives against a variety of infectious disease targets. Eliud completed his Ph. D. in Biomolecular Simulations at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, Canada.

Head, Protein Engineering
No bio available

Co-Chief, Laboratory of Molecular Biology; NIH Distinguished Investigator; Head, Molecular Biology Section
Ira Pastan is co-chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, National Cancer Institute. He is interested in targeted cancer therapy with Recombinant Immunotoxins. These are chimeric proteins in which the Fv of a Mab reacting with a cancer cell is fused to a portion of Pseudomonas exotoxin A. His group is conducting clinical trials with SS1P and LMB-100 that target mesothelin and has completed a Phase III trial with Moxetumomab pasudotox that targets CD22 in Hairy Cell Leukemia. His current research is directed at improving the properties of these agents and combining them with check point inhibitors.

Chief Executive Officer
Following her training at Rutgers and Mayo, Dr. Pastrana has dedicated thirty years to developing and patenting cutting-edge solutions for protein and biologic characterization. She is a tenured faculty member at the University of Puerto Rico, and has trained a generation of students for subsequent employment in the biopharmaceutical industry.

Vice President, Biotherapeutics Discovery
Li Peng is a Vice President of Biotherapeutics Discovery at Palleon Pharmaceuticals, a leading biotechnology company focused on developing Glyco-Immune Checkpoint inhibitors to treat cancer. Li led the invention of two core platform technologies for Palleon – the EAGLE platform for targeting glyco-immune checkpoint ligands, as well as the HYDRA platform for enabling patient stratification. Previously, she worked at Medimmune/AstraZeneca for ~10 years with increasing responsibilities from antibody engineering and characterization to leading drug discovery programs and cross-functional project teams. Li has a PhD in Biochemistry, MS in Genetics, and BS in Biology. She has published ~30 papers and authored 7 patents.

Senior Scientist, Discovery Chemistry
Thomas Pillow received his Ph.D from Stanford University in organic chemistry under the direction of Professor Paul Wender. Upon graduation he moved to Genentech in 2009 where he is currently a senior scientist in the discovery chemistry department leading Genentech’s effort on antibody-drug conjugates.

Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Scientific Advisor, Proteomics Platform CHU of Quebec
Guy G. Poirier, a professor at the Université Laval, is one of the world leaders in the field of proteomics, and he is undoubtedly the foremost specialist in the study of certain enzymes (PARP) that play a fundamental role in signalling DNA damage and in its repair. A better understanding of DNA damage signals and of a phenomenon known as apoptosis (programmed cell death) will greatly improve the diagnosis and treatment of widespread diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases and several types of cancer. An extremely prolific author, Dr. Poirier is the most cited researcher in this field.

Executive Vice President of Early Development & CSO
Tony Polverino, PhD, joined Zymeworks in September 2018 and currently serves as Executive Vice President of Early Development and Chief Scientific Officer. Prior to joining Zymeworks, from 2015 until 2018, Dr. Polverino was at Kite Pharma, Inc., which was acquired by Gilead Sciences, Inc. in 2017. While at Kite he served as the interim Chief Scientific Officer and before that as Vice President of Research. During his tenure, Yescarta®, Kite's lead chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy, was approved for relapsed or refractory B cell lymphoma, and multiple programs were advanced to the clinic. Dr. Polverino also assembled an innovative chimeric antigen receptor discovery and development team. Prior to Kite, he was at Amgen Inc. from 1994 to 2014, serving in a number of research leadership roles of increasing responsibility. While at Amgen he managed and advanced numerous research programs utilizing multiple therapeutic modalities, including immunotherapy, oncolytic viruses, bispecific antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates, and small molecules. He also played a key role in the development of over 12 novel antigens for antibody therapeutics. Dr. Polverino earned his undergraduate degree in pharmacology from Adelaide University and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Flinders University, both in Adelaide, Australia.

Director, Analytical Development
Francis Poulin is a Director of Analytical Development at Sanofi in Framingham, Massachusetts, where he is responsible for the development, qualification and validation of bioassays and molecular assays to support the release of biologics in preclinical and clinical development, including gene therapy products. Prior to joining Sanofi, Francis was a postdoctoral fellow at HHMI/University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Francis received his PhD in Biochemistry from McGill University.

Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
The Powell Lab is actively investigating the application of immune-based therapy for cancer. Building on interrogations in basic T cell biology in the lab, bench-to-bedside translational immunology is being developed, with a strong focus on T cell-based therapy for ovarian cancer.

Associate Director, Manufacturing Technologies
Ken Prentice graduated from the University of Washington with BS degrees in both Chemistry and Oceanography. He pursued a brief career as a Forensic Scientist with the Washington State Patrol before joining Amgen in 2002. Ken spent the next 13 years across Quality and Analytical Development organizations at Amgen with the final 5 years focusing on high resolution chromatography and mass spectrometry for in depth characterization of monoclonal antibodies. Ken joined Juno Therapeutics in 2015 with the goal of introducing bioanalytical and physiochemical techniques and built a high performing team of biochemists who developed of the state of art and innovative methods to support process development and characterization of cell therapy products. Most recently Ken joined Shape Therapeutics to help bring novel gene therapies to market.

Postdoctoral Researcher, The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability (CFB)
Nuša Pristovšek is a postdoctoral researcher at The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark. Her current research is focused on the development of high-throughput screening and genome-editing technologies for optimization of CHO cell factories with industrial applications. In particular, she is interested in improving targeted integration approaches allowing for programmable mammalian engineering and controllable recombinant protein production.

Vice President, Marketing
John did his doctoral work in Neuroscience at UCSF where he made several transgenic mice studying the role of beta8 integrin in neurovascular development. After graduating, he entered the life science tools space working for organizations that have consistently challenged the status quo in bioanalytical and cell analysis instrumentation. John recently joined Halo Labs as VP of Marketing.

Firmenich Professor of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry
Ron Raines is the Firmenich Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He received ScB degrees in chemistry and biology from MIT, performing undergraduate research with Christopher T. Walsh. He received AM and PhD degrees in chemistry from Harvard University for research done with Jeremy R. Knowles. He was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow with William J. Rutter in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. He joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1989, was a Visiting Associate at Caltech in 2009, and returned to MIT in 2017. Raines has contributed broadly to our understanding of the chemistry and biology of proteins. He discovered an RNA-cleaving enzyme that is in a multi-site human clinical trial as an anti-cancer agent; revealed that unappreciated forces—the n→π* interaction and C5 hydrogen bond—stabilize all proteins; created hyperstable and human-scale synthetic collagens; and developed processes to synthesize proteins, catalyze their folding, and facilitate their entry into human cells, and to convert crude biomass into useful fuels and chemicals. Dr. Raines has published over 500 papers and abstracts, delivered over 300 invited lectures, and supervised 58 doctoral theses. He holds 57 U.S. patents, and founded Quintessence Biosciences, Inc.; Hyrax Energy, Inc.; and Ghost Proteins, Inc., which are developing inventions from his laboratory.

CEO
Jonah Rainey holds a PhD in Biochemistry from Tufts University and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Wisconsin and the Salk Institute. He has been actively engaged in discovery, research, and development of bispecific antibodies in a biotech setting for 12 years. He is an inventor on several patents and applications describing novel bispecific platforms as well as current clinical candidates that exploit these platforms. Dr. Rainey led or had major contributions to research and early development of at least three current clinical candidates in Phase I and II, and led many additional advanced preclinical programs in oncology, infectious disease, autoimmunity, and other therapeutic areas. Industry experience spans small biotech (MacroGenics, MabVax) and large pharma settings (MedImmune/Astrazeneca).

Research Associate, Analytical Sciences
Romesh has over six years of experience in biopharmaceutical analytical development and has an in-depth knowledge of mass spectrometry techniques and protein characterization. He joined Seattle Genetics as a member of the Analytical Sciences Mass Spectrometry Core Group in 2015. In his current role he is responsible for providing analytical characterization to support process development for early and late phase antibody-drug conjugate programs. Romesh earned his B.Sc degree in Neurobiology from the University of Washington.

Senior Principal Scientist, Molecular Technology
Harun has 18 years of biotech R&D experience in cutting-edge molecular biology with expertise in protein engineering and recombinant protein expression optimization, synthetic biology, genome engineering and strain development. Currently, as Head of Molecular Technology Department and Project leader for anti-CD3 bispecific program at Ambrx, Harun is leading the efforts to identify and optimize antibodies for multiple immuno-oncology programs. Prior to that, he had engineered protein therapeutics, and optimized expression systems at Genencor International and at Catalyst Biosciences from which three molecules are now in various stages of clinical development in hemophilia and oncology areas.

Senior Principal Scientist, Molecular Technology
Harun has 18 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.

Associate Director, Research,
Andreas Raue develops new therapeutic strategies for cancer treatment by combining in vivo and in vitro experimentation with systems and computational biology approaches. Currently, he is Associate Director of Research at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, where he leads the preclinical immuno-oncology research.

Theresa and Eugene M. Lang Professor, Immunology, Virology, and Microbiology
No bio available

Assistant Professor, Biosystems Science and Engineering
Sai Reddy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biosystems Science & Engineering, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His research group uses methods in systems and synthetic biology to study and manipulate immune responses for applications in biotechnology, vaccination, and immunotherapy. Sai Reddy holds B.S. (2003) and M.S. (2004) in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University (Evanston, IL, USA). He completed his Ph.D. thesis at Ecolé Polytechnique Féderale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) in Bioengineering and Biotechnology (2008). Sai Reddy did post-doctoral research at the University of Texas, Austin (2008-2011).

Associate Member, Laboratory of Cancer Immunotherapy, Director, Immune Monitoring Laboratory,
The overall goal of our research is to elucidate the mechanisms by which the provision of co-stimulatory signals in conjunction with checkpoint inhibitor blockade boosts tumor immunotherapy. Specifically, we are interested in how these therapies augment the function and differentiation of tumor-specific T cells. Another major focus of my laboratory is investigating the mechanisms by which vaccination plus combination immunotherapy rescues anergic CD8 T cells to augment anti-tumor immunity. In addition, we are investigating how tumors suppress T cell-mediated immunity and are developing novel approaches to overcome this hurdle to generate more potent anti-tumor immunity.

Executive Director, Lead, Bioanalytical Sciences
She leads the Bioanalytical Sciences Department comprising bioanalytical discovery, development andbiomarker functions that support small and large molecules and novel modalities at BMS.

Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine
Dr. Ridker serves as the Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and directs the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, a translational research unit at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston focused on inflammatory mechanisms of atherosclerosis, population biology, genetic epidemiology, and the biology of innate immunity and vascular inflammation as it relates to cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis. Among ongoing multi-national projects, Dr. Ridker currently serves as Trial Chairman of the Canakinumab Anti-Inflammatory Thrombosis Outcomes Study (CANTOS) and the NIH-sponsored Cardiovascular Inflammation Reduction Trial (CIRT), large-scale outcome trials seeking to address whether reducing inflammation without altering LDL cholesterol can reduce vascular event rates.

Senior Consultant
Frank J Riske, Ph.D., Senior Consultant at BioProcess Technology Consultants has over 25 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining BioProcess Technology Consultants, Dr. Riske was Senior Director in the Late Phase Process Development Group at Genzyme, a Sanofi company. Before Genzyme, Dr. Riske held positions at Epic Therapeutics, Repligen and Hoffmann-LaRoche. Dr. Riske has extensive experience in the development of downstream processes for cytokines, proteins and virus from plasma, E coli, Pichia and mammalian systems and in the development and manufacture of novel drug delivery systems. Dr. Riske received his B.S. in Biology from Fairfield University, Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Microbiology from Rutgers University and completed a post-doctoral position at Hoffmann-LaRoche.

Senior Director, Protein Therapeutics
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.

Senior Group Leader, R&D, Immunochemistry
Scientist with expertise in the following therapeutica areas: inflammation/immunology, oncology, & CNS. Direct assay development, validation, and sample analysis from clinical trials under GLP conditions for the assessment of pharmacokinetics (PK), pharmacodynamics (PD), immunogenicity, genomics (PGx), and Companion Diagnostics (CDx). Project management of out-sourced development partners (CROs) and budgets.

Scientist, Technology Development
Marc-André Robert is passionate by the development of novel applications and manufacturing technologies for recombinant adeno-associated, lentiviral and adenoviral vectors. From 2008 to 2013, he did his Ph.D. off-campus at the National Research Council Canada (NRC) and obtained his degree from the University of Montreal. His work aimed at developing a gene therapy approach for Duchenne muscular dystrophy using gutless adenoviral vectors and gene editing. After his Ph.D., he started a postdoctoral fellowship at the NRC and Laval University where he developed a new platform for production of HIV-1 virus-like particles as a mean to deliver therapeutic proteins. In addition, he explored a new preventive immunotherapy approach for Ebola infections using adeno-associated vectors and achieved up to 100% protection in mice. BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. - an innovative company specialized in the treatment of rare inherited diseases - hired him in 2017 as a scientist and gene therapy expert. He is currently developing new platforms/processes for production of lentiviral and adeno-associated vectors.

Senior Investigator, Head, Biochemical Pathology Section, Laboratory of Pathology, CCR
Dr. Roberts received his BS in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his PhD in Biological Chemistry from The University of Michigan. He is currently a Senior Investigator and Head of the Biochemical Pathology Section in the Laboratory of Pathology of the National Cancer Institute. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and recipient of a NCI Director's Merit Award and several NIH Federal Technology Transfer Awards. His research focuses on the tumor microenvironment and the role of cell-extracellular matrix interactions in regulating tumor angiogenesis and antitumor immunity. His laboratory discovered molecular mechanisms by which thrombospondin-1 signaling through its receptor CD47 regulates redox signaling in vascular cells, the activation and cytotoxic function of T lymphocytes, and the maintenance of malignant and nonmalignant stem cells. His lab is developing therapeutics to target CD47 that protect nonmalignant tissues from cytotoxic stress while enhancing adaptive antitumor immunity.

Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology & Center for Synthetic Biology
Gabriel Rocklin did his Ph.D. research at the University of California, San Francisco, supervised by Brian Shoichet and Ken Dill. There, he developed methods to improve the accuracy of molecular dynamics-based free energy calculations of protein-ligand binding. He then joined David Baker's lab at the University of Washington as a postdoctoral fellow, where he pioneered the use of large-scale protein design to understand protein biophysics. This work makes it possible to computationally design and experimentally characterize thousands of diverse proteins for folding, binding, dynamics, and therapeutic potential. In March 2019 he is opening his independent lab in the Pharmacology Department of Northwestern University as part of Northwestern's Center for Synthetic Biology.

Department of Microbiology and Immunology,
Theo Roth is an MD/PhD student at the University of California, San Francisco working with Dr. Alexander Marson. He completed his undergraduate studies in Biology and a masters in Biomedical Informatics at Stanford University. While an undergrad he studied the immediate cellular response to traumatic brain injuries at the National Institutes of Health with Dr. Dorian McGavern. At UCSF he has developed non-viral gene editing tools in human T cells for rapidly accelerated cancer and autoimmune cell therapies applications.

Scientist, Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering
Gargi Roy is a Scientist in MedImmune, LLC. She has been involved with protein expression technology development, cell line engineering and antibody expression for more than 15 years. Prior to MedImmune, she had held various positions within Acorda Therapeutics Inc., US Patent Office and academic institutions such as Georgetown University in Washington DC and UTMB at Galveston, TX.

Clinical Instructor, Associate Director, Dr. June’s Laboratory, Center for Cellular Immunotherapies, Perelman School of Medicine
Dr. Marco Ruella obtained his medical degree with high honors at the University of Torino, Italy, in 2007, and completed his specialization in clinical hematology in 2012. He worked as attending physician at the Hematology and Cell Therapy Division of the Mauriziano Hospital and was Instructor at the Biotechnology School at the University of Torino. From 2012 to 2018 he was a Post-doctoral fellow and then Instructor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Center for Cellular immunotherapies under the mentorship of Drs. Carl June and Saar Gill. From 2017 to 2018 Dr. Ruella served as the Associate Director of Dr. June’s laboratory. In 2018 Dr. Ruella was appointed Tenure-track Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology and the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies and Scientific Director of the Lymphoma Program at the University of Pennsylvania. His research is focused on the mechanisms of relapse after chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CART) immunotherapies with the goal of rationally design innovative combined immunotherapies for relapsing/refractory leukemia and lymphoma. Dr. Ruella was awarded the inaugural SITC EMD-Serono Cancer Immunotherapy Clinical Fellowship (2014), the AACR-BMS Oncology Fellowship in Clinical Cancer Research (2015), the ASH Scholar Award (2016), a NIH K99-R00 award (2017), the “Paola Campese” Award Leukemia Research (2017) and more recently the Cancer Support Community Award (2018). Dr. Ruella is the author of numerous peer-reviewed publications on targeted immunotherapies for hematological cancers and is an inventor in several patents on CART therapy.

Professor, Chemistry
Brandon T. Ruotolo received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from St. Louis University in 1999. While there, he was able to participate in some undergraduate research under the direction of Dana M. Spence (currently at Michigan State, Department of Chemistry). He then went on to join David H. Russell’s research group at Texas A&M. While at A&M, Brandon focused on the design, development, and implementation of hybrid Ion Mobility-Mass Spectrometry (IM-MS) instrumentation for applications in proteomics, and received his Ph. D. in 2004. Directly after his graduate work, Brandon joined Prof. Dame Carol Robinson’s laboratory at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and pioneered the construction of IM-MS methods for the analysis of multi-protein complex structure. In 2009, Brandon began his independent career the Department of Chemistry, at the University of Michigan, where he currently holds the rank of Professor of Chemistry. The Ruotolo group is primarily focused on developing IM-MS as a next-generation high-throughput tool for structural proteomics and drug discovery. As of 2018, Brandon’s record currently includes over 107 peer reviewed publications, as well as ~150 invited or keynote seminars at institutions and conferences around the world. Brandon’s work as an independent investigator has garnered a number of awards, including the Eli Lilly Young Investigator award, an NSF CAREER award, the American Society for Mass Spectrometry Research Award, the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, the Protein Society Young Investigator Award, and the Agilent Thought Leader Award.

CMO
Charlotte A. Russell is a medical doctor with board certifications in hematology and internal medicine and has a PhD from Copenhagen University. Charlotte has more than 25 years of research and clinical experience, including more than 10 years with clinical drug development in biotech/pharmaceutical companies. The drug development experiences are focused on development of antibodies for cancer therapy.

CEO
Dr. Russell is the CEO of Vyriad. He is also the Richard O Jacobson Professor of Molecular Medicine at Mayo Clinic and Vice President of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. He obtained his MD from the University of Edinburgh in 1982 and since that time has relentlessly pursued the goal of effective oncolytic virotherapy. He specialized clinically in hematology, then undertook his PhD training at the Royal Marsden hospital where he was the first to engineer both retroviral and parvoviral vectors to deliver interleukin genes for cancer immunotherapy. He then moved to Cambridge, England where he led a research team in the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology, developed a novel method for antibody affinity maturation using phage display libraries, pioneered the display antibody domains on retroviral vector particles and on recombinant measles viruses, and founded Cambridge Genetics, a biotechnology/drug discovery company. In 1998 he moved to Mayo Clinic where he founded the Department of Molecular Medicine, built a comprehensive oncolytic virotherapy program, developed innovative engineering approaches for targeting, arming and noninvasively monitoring OV infections, and orchestrated the GMP manufacture, preclinical pharmacological/toxicological testing, IND filing and clinical translation of a number of oncolytic Measles and Vesicular stomatitis viruses for several different cancer indications. He cofounded two oncolytic virotherapy companies which merged in 2015, thereby establishing Vyriad as the first multi-platform OV company.

Director, Research and Development, Toxicology
Clifford Sachs has over 15 years of experience developing biological drugs including antibodies, fusion proteins, cell and gene therapies. Before joining MedImmune, Clifford was a Scientific Director and Janssen Fellow at Johnson and Johnson and previously held positions of increasing responsibility in toxicology groups at Biogen Idec, Abbott and Novartis Pharmaceuticals. He served as a member of the Biotechnology Organization (BIO) BioSafe Leadership committee and Chaired the BioSafe Cell Therapy and Specialty Biologics Expert Working Groups (SBEWG). Clifford is certified by the American Board of Toxicology, earned his PhD in Pathology from Duke University and BSin Biology and Chemistry from Muhlenberg College. In addition to his vocation, Clifford has an avocation: he is a part-time ski instructor. He holds a Level 1 certification from the Professional Ski Instructors Association of America and has taught over 1100 people how to ski.

Vice President, Global Biologics; Distinguished Research Fellow
• Doctorate in Microbiology and Molecular Biology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany • Postdoc at Center for Molecular Biology Heidelberg, Germany, Yang Ming Medical College, Taipei, Taiwan and Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA • Scientist in roles of increasing responsibility at BASF Bioresearch Corporation, which is today AbbVie Bioresearch Center in Worcester MA

Senior Principal Scientist, Industrial Biotechnology and Food Solutions
I have over 25 years of experience in developing production systems for industrial enzymes and therapeutic proteins. My work has mostly focused on filamentous fungal hosts, where I have work on the molecular mechanisms of gene regulation and protein secretion as well as the creation of novel fungal strains with higher productivity.

Associate Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics
Dr. Samavati is a tenured Associate Professor of Medicine and Molecular Medicine and Genetics, Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary Critical and Sleep Medicine and Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics.

Senior Medical Advisor for Immunogenicity, GPS Medical and Benefit-Risk Management
Sandra Garces, MD PhD, works at Eli Lilly since 2016, as Senior Medical Advisor in Global Patient Safety, focused on IMG-related aspects. Previously she worked as Rheumatologist-Scientist at Garcia de Orta’s Hospital and Gulbenkian Institute of Science, in Lisbon. Her work has been focused on revealing the clinical relevance of drug immunogenicity and developing strategies to assess and incorporate immunogenicity information in routine clinical practice towards more cost-effective therapeutic strategies.

Senior Director Business Development
No bio available

CSO
Barbra Sasu is the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of Allogene Therapeutics, a biotechnology company with a mission to catalyze the next revolution in cancer treatment through the development of allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapy directed at blood cancers and solid tumors. Barbra joined Allogene as CSO in April 2018 when the company acquired the allogeneic cell therapy assets from Pfizer. Barbra received her Ph.D. from the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research in Manchester, UK in the laboratory of T. Michael Dexter, FRS. She conducted her postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of T. Keith Blackwell, M.D., Ph.D. Barbra joined Amgen in 2001 to work on normal and malignant hematology initially and later expanded her focus to include immuno-oncology (IO) with a large emphasis on T cell redirective therapies, specifically BiTE molecules. In 2013 she joined Pfizer to become involved with large molecule IO including the Pfizer T cell redirection programs and led diligence to look for a CAR T collaboration partner. This collaboration search resulted in the Cellectis partnership in 2014 and the collaboration with Servier, for clinical execution of UCART19 and for other preclinical assets.

Chief Scientific Officer
Aaron is CSO of the Pharma Vertical at Twist Bioscience. Prior to Twist, he served as Chief Scientific Officer of LakePharma, leading the California Antibody Center, which discovers novel antibody therapeutics for its clients. He also oversaw all discovery research functions both as Vice President of Protein Sciences at Surrozen, and previously, as Vice President of Research at Sutro Biopharma, Inc. He also held director level positions at both Oncomed and Dyax Corp.

Chief Scientific Officer
Andreas holds a PhD in plant biotechnology. Before joining Greenovation in 2009, he held positions at Universities of Muenster and Freiburg. At Greenovation, Andreas was responsible for advancing BryoTechnology to a fully viable biopharmaceutical platform and establishing the company’s product pipeline. Since 2015, Andreas is acting as Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Sharfstein joined the faculty at the University of Toledo in Bioengineering in 1996. In 2000, she received a National Science Foundation POWRE award to study glycobiology at the New York State Department of Health Wadsworth Laboratories. In 2001, she joined the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and in 2007, she received a dual appointment in Biology. In 2010, she joined the faculty at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

Lab Head/Investigator II
Dr. Schaefer is heading an R&D laboratory supporting Novartis’ lead finding through the utilization of Encoded Library Technologies (e.g. DNA encoded libraries (DEL)), using various screening methods to select low-molecular-weight compounds against a broad variety of protein targets. Prior to this assignment, Jonas did establish and headed the High-Throughput Binder Selection Facility at the University of Zurich for many years, using automated Ribosome Display and various High-Throughput screenings to develop specific proteinaceous affinity reagents called DARPins. For over a decade, Jonas focused on the development of new methodologies and technologies enabling the improved generation, screening and validation of various affinity compounds, which were used in applications ranging from basic research to diagnostic usage and medical applications.

President and Chief Technology Officer, Research & Discovery
Dr. Volker Schellenberger is a co-founder of Amunix and currently serves as President and Chief Technology Officer. Dr. Schellenberger has extensive industry experience in protein engineering and drug discovery. Previously, he headed the Protein Engineering department at Genencor, where he invented combinatorial consensus mutagenesis, selection by micro-compartmentalization, as well as mutator technology. In addition, he initiated and led collaborations with Seattle Genetics that focused on antibody-enzyme fusion proteins. Prior to his work on biotherapeutics, Dr. Schellenberger directed projects optimizing enzymes for industrial applications as well as microbes for metabolic pathway engineering. Dr. Schellenberger received his Ph.D. from Leipzig University, where he studied protease catalyzed peptide synthesis. After postdoctoral studies at the Institute for Protein Research in Pushchino (Russia), he moved to the University of Göttingen where he developed a novel method for the production of peptides from recombinant peptide-multimers. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Bill Rutter at the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Schellenberger joined Genencor in 1994. Dr. Schellenberger is the author of over 40 scientific papers and an inventor on more than 70 issued and pending patent applications. He is also the recipient of the Karl Lohman award of the German Society of Biochemists.

Senior Vice President, Clinical Development and Deputy CMO
Dr. Scherer is a board-certified physician, bringing more than two decades of medical and scientific research and business experience from his time at various pharma and biotech companies to Cellectis. In his prior role as Head of Early Development, Strategy and Innovation for U.S. Oncology at Novartis, Stefan was responsible for the strategic direction and management of the Company’s immuno-oncology and targeted therapy portfolios. In addition, Stefan built a comprehensive clinical research alliance network and developed an immuno-oncology translational research team to harness scientific discovery for targeted patient outcomes.

CSO, Research & Development,
Taylor co-founded Shattuck Labs and currently serves as Chief Scientific Officer and is a member of the Board of Directors. Taylor is the lead inventor of Shattuck’s ARC technology platform. Prior to Shattuck, Taylor served as Chief Scientific Officer of Heat Biologics, Inc. where he was a co-inventor of significant elements of Heat's ImPACT and ComPACT technology platforms. He was also the co-inventor of TNFRSF25 agonist technology developed by Pelican Therapeutics, where he served as Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board. Taylor has numerous publications in the field of tumor immunology and immunotherapy, spanning the subjects of cancer vaccines, therapeutic proteins and antibodies, adenosinergic and IDO mediated immunosuppression and regulatory T cell biology. In 2008, Taylor received the best overall research award at the National Student Research Forum and in 2011 he was nomited as a Future Leader in Cancer Research by the American Association for Cancer Research. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the Sheila and David Fuente Program in Cancer Biology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He received his B.A. in Biology from Bucknell University.

Principal Research Scientist, Global Biologics
Jane Seagal is a Principal Research Scientist in Biologics Generation Group at AbbVie Bioresearch Center in Worcester, MA. She joined Abbott/AbbVie in 2010 and has been leading and supporting biologic drug discovery projects in Immunology, Oncology and Neuroscience. Currently, she is leading the In Vivo Antibody Discovery Group and chairs the Biologics Generation Request Team responsible for biologics discovery and screening funnel strategies. Jane’s scientific training is in Immunology focused on B cell biology and antibody responses. She received her PhD in Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and completed her post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School.

Scientist, Antibody Discovery & Protein Engineering
Dr. Lu Shan is a Scientist in the Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering group at MedImmune, the biologics division of Astrazaneca, where she is working toward the discovery and development of antibody therapeutics for multiple disease areas, as well as leveraging technology innovation in drug discovery. Prior to Medimmune, she worked for Lexicon Pharmaceuticals supporting novel assay development and screening for DNA-encoded small-molecule libraries. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University and a postdoctoral training from Baylor College of Medicine in the area of transcription factors.

Director, Regulated Immunogenicity and Molecular Biology Bioanalytics
Shara has experience in complex product characterization of monoclonal antibodies and therapeutic protein products. Some responsibilities include glycan, capillary electrophoresis, HPLC/UPLC assay method development and testing support for biologics products. She developed and implemented extended characterization strategy to support Phase I and Phase III IND submissions. Shara is also an author and reviewer of FDA regulatory submissions and associated supporting technical reports and memos. She also has experience with quality by design (QbD) and leader of critical quality attribute (CQA) team. Shara got her PhD from Northwestern University.

Professor, Nanobioscience, Nanoscale Science and Engineering
Susan Sharfstein is a Professor of Nanobioscience at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany, New York. Professor Sharfstein received her B.S. in chemical engineering with honors from Caltech in 1987 and her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley in 1993, receiving graduate fellowships from the university and the National Science Foundation. She received a National Institutes of Health Individual Research Service Award to pursue postdoctoral studies, initially at UC Berkeley and subsequently at the UCLA Medical School. Professor Sharfstein received an NSF CAREER grant in 2000 for her work on hyperosmotic stress responses of hybridoma cells and the School of Engineering Education Excellence Award and the Class of 1951 Outstanding Teaching Award in 2007. Professor Sharfstein’s research interests include mammalian and microbial cell bioprocessing, control of protein glycosylation, metabolic engineering, biosensing, and development of systems for high-throughput screening of nucleic acids and small molecules. Professor Sharfstein serves as the subject editor for biotechnology for the Elsevier Major Reference Work Life Science Module. She is the author of over 60 papers and book chapters in the fields of biotechnology and bioprocessing. She was a 2017-18 recipient of a Fulbright Global Scholar award and spent her sabbatical at Dublin City University, in Dublin, Ireland and University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia performing proteomic analysis of Chinese hamster ovary cells and studying bispecific antibodies.

Manager, Analytical Development, Vaccine Development & Manufacturing
Vaneet Sharma is Manager, Analytical Development in the Vaccine Development & Manufacturing division of International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). He is responsible for the analytical methods development and physiochemical characterization of the recombinant protein-based HIV vaccine candidates for Phase I/II clinical trials. Prior to this position, Dr. Sharma was a scientist, technical development at Novartis Vaccines. Dr. Sharma is also member of the USP Viral Vaccines Expert Panel (2015-2020). Vaneet received his PhD from Northeastern University, MS from University of Connecticut, and BS from G.N.D. University, India.

Director, Biotechnology Core Lab
Adjunct Professor, Johns Hopkins University, Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, 2004. Ph.D., Hebrew University, Israel, 1975. My laboratory’s main interest is the production and purification of biological products from both prokaryotes and eukaryotes of native and recombinant strains. Our work involves all aspects of this process including research, development, and production.

Director, Immunology Research
Anthony Shock received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of London in 1987 followed by post-doctoral work at the National Heart & Lung Institute in London. He was then employed by a Biotech company called Celltech which eventually transformed into the global biopharmaceutical company, UCB. He has researched on a wide range of antibody-based therapies, including two antibody targets that have been evaluated in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, epratuzumab and dapirolizumab pegol, and rozanolixizumab which is currently in phase 2 clinical studies in patients with immune thrombocytopenia and myasthenia gravis, which are autoimmune disorders driven by IgG autoantibodies.

Chair, Professor and EMBO Young Investigator Intermediate Fellow
Dr. Shukla did his Masters (M.Sc.) in Biotechnology from the Center for Biotechnology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He then completed his Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular Membrane Biology at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt, Germany under the supervision of Prof. Hartmut Michel (Nobel Laureate, 1988). Dr. Shukla did his post-doctoral work with Prof. Robert Lefkowitz (Nobel Laureate, 2012) in the Department of Medicine at Duke University in North Carolina, USA in a very close collaboration with Prof. Brian Kobilka (Nobel Laureate, 2012) in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Stanford University in San Francisco, USA. Dr. Shukla is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering at IIT Kanpur. Dr. Shukla’s research program is focused on understanding structure, function and regulation of G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs), the largest family of cell surface receptors in the human genome and the target of about half of the currently available medicines.

Principal Scientist, PPDM Global Bioanalytics
Shuli manages a group of scientist to develop PK, immunogenicity and biomarker assays for biologics, set up strategy and manage bioanalytical outsourcing to CROs, publish and review technical reports and regulatory documents. Shuli got his PhD from Indiana University School of Medicine in the Immunology and Microbiology.

Director or McMaster Surgeon Scientist Program & Professor of Surgery
Dr. Sheila Singh is a professor of surgery and biochemistry, chief pediatric neurosurgeon at McMaster Children’s Hospital, the Division Head of Neurosurgery at Hamilton Health Sciences, and scientist appointed to the Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute at McMaster University. She holds a Tier 1/Senior Canada Research Chair in Human Brain Cancer Stem Cell Biology and is Director of the McMaster Surgeon Scientist Program. Her PhD thesis described the novel identification of a population of cancer stem cells that exclusively drive the formation of brain tumours. Since 2007, Dr. Singh's lab applies a developmental neurobiology framework to the study of brain tumorigenesis. Building upon previous cell culture techniques developed for the isolation of normal neural stem cells (NSC) and applying them to brain tumours, and through development of a xenograft model to efficiently study brain tumour initiating cell (BTIC) activity, Dr. Singh's lab aims to understand the molecular mechanisms that govern BTIC self-renewal. Dr. Singh is currently studying the regulation of BTIC signaling pathways in glioblastoma, brain metastases and childhood medulloblastoma, with an ultimate goal of selectively targeting the BTIC with appropriately tailored drug and molecular therapies. Her laboratory is funded by CCSRI, CIHR, TFRI, CRS, the Stem Cell Network, McMaster Surgical Associates, Brain Canada and the Boris Family Fund.

The Beacon™ Platform for the Rapid Discovery of Rare Antibodies to Difficult Targets
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 patents now licensed and commercialized for molecular disease diagnosis, the discovery of antibody therapeutics, and development of cell-lines for bioproduction. At Berkeley Lights, Anupam leads the design and development of next-generation platforms for the discovery and development of biologics.

Director, Business Development
Will Singleterry, PhD, Director of Business Development at IsoPlexis, who uses a single cell proteomics platform to accelerate development of therapies by revealing the highly functional cell subsets driving clinical response. Dr. Singleterry manages collaborations between IsoPlexis and Bio-Pharmaceutical partners for clinical trial biomarkers, early stage discovery and biomanufacturing applications.

Assistant Professor, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology & Biophysics, Biotechnology Institute
Michael Smanski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics and the BioTechnology Institute. Dr. Smanski received a B.S. degree in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the University of California – San Diego and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Wisconsin, where he deciphered the genetic and biochemical basis for the production of antibiotics platensimycin and platencin by Streptomyces platensis. As an HHMI Fellow of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, he worked with Chris Voigt at MIT to develop a comprehensive pipeline for the design, construction, and analysis of large libraries of multi-gene plasmids. He is a recent the recipient of the Dale F. Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientists. Dr. Smanski’s goal is to develop enabling technologies to engineer biology in ways that address challenges in medicine, agriculture, and the environment.

Head of Biologics, US
Christopher Smith, Head of Biologics US, Genedata Christopher Smith 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 Ph.D. at the University of California, San Francisco in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Director, Bispecifics
Dr. Eric Smith received his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from Duke University in 1997. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at NYU, he joined Regeneron in 2002 as a member of the Antibody and Trap Technologies group, where he worked on cytokine traps and related molecules. In 2008, he became a member of the Bispecific Antibodies team and is currently the Director of Bispecifics at Regeneron.

Senior Manager, Statistics
Perceval Sondag holds a Bachelor Degree in Physical Therapy and a Master’s Degree in Biostatistics, both obtained from the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium. After starting his career by implementing statistical thinking in the newly created Operational Excellence department of the Brussels Saint-Luc University Hospital. He joined Arlenda in 2013 as a Statistician consultant, and moved to the US based team in 2015. He specializes in Bayesian modelling and statistics applied to bioassays and process manufacturing. In addition to his job at Arlenda, providing statistical support for small and big pharmaceutical companies across the globe, he currently works on a PhD thesis about Similarity Testing for Bioassays. He is a member of the USP Expert Panel for Bioassays and has authored or co-authored multiple publications, including a book chapter on assay validation.

Reed and Carolee Walker Professor of Pediatrics, Human Oncology, and Genetics, and Director of Research, UW Division of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and BMT
Paul Sondel, MD, PhD is the Reed and Carolee Walker Professor of Pediatrics, Human Oncology and Genetics and Director of Research for the Division of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and BMT at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (UW). He has focused on basic, translational and clinical cancer immunotherapy since 1969. Following BS-1971 and PhD- 1975 (UW, mentored by BMT pioneer, Fritz Bach, MD), MD- 1977 (Harvard Medical School) and residencies at U. of Minnesota and UW, he joined the UW faculty in 1980. He was Head of PHO-BMT from 1990 – 2016, and helped lead cancer immunology research at the UW-Carbone-Cancer-Center (UWCCC) since 1990. His laboratory has pursued strategies for enabling immune responses to impact on cancer; some have moved into clinical testing in adults at the UWCCC and in children through the COG. This includes collaborative development of an FDA-approved immunotherapy regimen (dinutuximab+ IL2+ GM-CSF) for children with neuroblastoma. He has held multiple committee/leadership roles, including at the NIH/NCI, American Cancer Society, Children’s Oncology Group, and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. He has been a scholar of the Leukemia Society of America, recently received a 7-year Outstanding Investigator Award from the NCI, and the SITC’s Smalley Award for 2017. He has published more than 390 scientific articles and chapters, and trained more than 70 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in his lab. He also enjoys biking and canoeing; but most of all, he and his wife of 45 years (Sherie) love being parents and grandparents.

Senior Vice President, Development Sciences
An Song, Ph.D, is Senior Vice President of Development Sciences at Immune-Onc Therapeutics, Inc., accountable for translational development of Immune-Onc’s portfolio, including preclinical PKPD and toxicology evaluation, clinical pharmacology, bioanalytical and biomarker/diagnostic development and certain analytical aspects of technical development. Prior to Immune-Onc, An was a Senior Director in BioAnalytical Sciences at Genentech, where she led the Assay Development and Technology group for the company’s large molecule portfolio globally. During her 16-year tenure at Genentech, An contributed to, and oversaw 40+ IND/CTA and BLA/MAA regulatory filings for products including Rituxan@, Avastin®, Herceptin®, Lucentis ®, Kadcyla®, and Tecentriq®. Additionally, she played a significant role for the development and approval of Ocrevus®. An holds a B.S. in Biochemistry from Nanjing University in China. She received her PhD. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from Indiana University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in immunology at Stanford University. Upon completion of postdoctoral work in T-cell activation she joined Stanford as a Research Assistant Professor and as faculty of the Immunology Program. An has published a number of original manuscripts, review articles and book chapters, as well as contributed to several industry white papers on immunogenicity and antibody Fc effector function evaluation. She is an active member of American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientist (AAPS), having served as an executive member of the Biotech Section and the chair of Therapeutic Product Immunogenicity (TPI) Focus Group/Community.

Senior Principal Scientist
No bio available

Director, Immunogenicity Assessment, BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc.
Soumi Gupta received her Ph.D. in Microbiology from University of California, Davis in 2003, where the focus of her research was aimed at furthering our understanding of the immune correlates of protection towards a successful AIDS vaccine. She pursued post-doctoral training in Immunology at Chiron Corporation where she investigated anti-HIV T and B cell-mediated responses in mucosal and systemic compartments following mucosal immunization with alphavirus-based replicon particles encoding for HIV-Gag, Pol and Env. Following her post-doctoral training, she worked at Monogram Biosciences as a scientist in research and development, developing assays to characterize genotypic and phenotypic resistance to HIV antivirals. While at Monogram, she also worked in oncology clinical data development. After five years at Monogram, Soumi joined Janssen Pharmaceuticals working in medical affairs in Infectious Diseases. Soumi joined BioMarin in February of 2015 as a Director in Immunogenicity Assessment where she provides immunologic expertise to drug programs across developmental stages and develops immunogenicity and safety strategies for novel biologic therapeutics. Soumi has over 15 years of experience in immunology and infectious disease, vaccinology, HIV drug resistance, oncology diagnostics and drug development.

Senior Scientist, Antibody Engineering
Christoph Spiess received his PhD from the University of Konstanz (Germany). After completing his postdoctoral studies in the field of protein folding at Stanford University, he joined Genentech in 2007 and is currently a senior scientist in the Department of Antibody Engineering. His group is involved in the development of technologies to identify and produce bispecific antibodies for research and clinical development, developability assessment of antibodies, and engineering of antibodies for tissue specific targeting.

PSI Founder Fellow, Center for Radiopharmaceutical Studies (CRS)
Dr. Spycher is a PSI Founder Fellow at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) Villigen (Switzerland) since end of 2017 working on the site-specific modification of native antibodies. He studied at the University of Basel (Switzerland) Nanoscience and at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) Biomedical Engineering with a focus on drug delivery and targeting. During his doctoral studies at ETH Zurich, he worked on protein and materials engineering for the site-specific immobilization of proteins onto micro-patterned surfaces using enzymes. He then performed a post-doc at PSI Villigen on the site-specific modification of antibodies and fragments using enzymes for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Dr. Spycher has over 8 years experience with ADCs and materials engineering, he is particularly interested in the development of drug delivery systems for improved targeting.

Senior Director
Dr. Kuldip Sra has over 25 years been work experience in biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Currently, Dr. Sra is working as Senior Director, Late Stage Development at CRISPR Therapeutics. Previously. Dr. Kuldip Sra has worked at MedImmune/AstraZeneca Company for 17 yrs. Dr. Sra led Vaccine Analytical Development and Characterization group at MedImmune at Mountain View site. Before joining MedImmune, Dr. Sra worked at Chiron Corporation, Emeryville, CA on Hepatitis C and HIV Viruses. At Sangstat Medical Dr. Sra worked on developing immunosuppressive drugs for their use in organ transplants. Dr. Sra got his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Seton Hall University, in New Jersey.

Head, Tumor Angiogenesis Unit, Mouse Cancer Genetics Program
Dr. Brad St. Croix received his Ph.D. in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto in 1998, under Dr. Robert S. Kerbel. He trained as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Bert Vogelstein at Johns Hopkins University under a fellowship from the National Cancer Institute of Canada. In 2000, while at Johns Hopkins, Dr. St. Croix published in Science the first systematic gene expression profiling of human tumor endothelium. In 2002, he established the Tumor Angiogenesis Group at the Center for Cancer Research, NCI. In 2007, his lab described the first systematic comparison of genes that can separate physiological and pathological angiogenesis. His laboratory now focuses on understanding the role of cell surface receptors upregulated on tumor vasculature and utilizes mouse models to translate new molecular information on angiogenesis into the development of novel antibody-based treatments for cancer. For example, by engineering conditional knockout mice his lab demonstrated that GPR124 is critical for angiogenesis of the developing CNS and TEM8 promotes tumor angiogenesis. Dr. St. Croix’s group has also demonstrated the therapeutic potential of targeting tumor-associated vasculature through the development of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) targeting B7-H3/CD276 and TEM8. The ability of these new ADCs to selectively target pathological angiogenesis is extremely important as current anti-angiogenic drugs, such as Avastin, cannot discriminate between normal angiogenesis (e.g., during ovulation, menstruation and wound healing) and that associated with disease.

Investigator
Lasse graduated with a BSc. In Biochemistry from University College London in 2008. He subsequently studied protein crystallography in the field of protein kinase signalling at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London, being awared a PhD. In 2013. A PostDoc followed at Imperial College London, on structural and mechanistic studies of protein homeostasis. In 2017, Lasse joined GSK on the Future Leader Programme. Upon joining, he worked as a Senior Scientist in the biopharm high-throughput characterisation group, screening molecules using a range of biophysical techniques and developing novel assay formats for challenging targets. Currently, Lasse works in the biopharm developability profiling group as scientific investigator, where his responsibilities include the biophysical developability assessment of biopharm lead molecules.

Head of Discovery, Large Molecule Research, Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED)
Martin earned his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Basel, Switzerland studying molecular mechanism of inflammation at the Max-Planck- Institute for Immunology in Freiburg, Germany. Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, he spent 4 years as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Richard Scheller at Stanford University Medical School elucidating the biochemical mechanisms underlying neurotransmitter secretion. In 2000, he joined Boehringer Ingelheim’s Oncology Drug Discovery Department and held positions with increasing responsibility. Martin joined Roche in 2006 in Basel and has held a number of positions since then. In his current role as Head of Discovery in Large Molecule Research, Martin is responsible for a team of approximately 90 scientists and research associates who generate and profile new therapeutic antibodies for the different therapeutic areas within Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED). Furthermore, the discovery unit is responsible for designing and discovering novel biotherapeutic formats including pREDs proprietary bispecific antibody format CrossMab and the brain shuttle technology to combat brain disorders.

Pediatrician, Pediatrics, Medical Genetics
No bio available

Pediatric Oncologist, Hematology & Oncology
Dr. Streby is a pediatric oncologist in the Division of Hematology/Oncology/BMT at Nationwide Children's Hospital and an assistant professor at The Ohio State University. Dr. Streby received her undergraduate degree from the University of Akron and completed her medical degree from Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine. She went on to complete her pediatric residency and pediatric hematology/oncology fellowship at Nationwide Children's Hospital. Dr. Strebys research and clinical interests are focused on embryonal solid tumors, especially neuroblastoma. Her current research utilizes an oncolytic herpes virus and gene therapy to enhance targeted radiotherapy with 131I-mIBG for children with neuroblastoma.

Professor, Biochemistry and Biophysics, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Macromolecular Structure Group (MSG)
A world leader in structural biology, Dr. Stroud's research has addressed a breadth of systems that impact a wide array of biological processes. This work has aimed to understand the molecular level cellular signaling and communication across cell membranes, and the macromolecular encoding of specificity and affinity at protein/protein and protein/ligand interfaces. Dr. Stroud has more than 340 peer reviewed publications and 300 structures to his credit. Dr. Stroud's contributions have been recognized by his election to the Royal Society of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Dr. Stroud is Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Professor of pharmaceutical Chemistry in the Department of Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. He received his PhD from University of London and completed postdoctoral training at California Institute of Technology. Dr. Stroud joined UCSF in 1976 to start the University's first structural biology program.

Senior Scientist
No bio available

Postdoctoral Associate, Molecular Engineering
Dr. Chaitanya Sudrik is a postdoctoral associate in Prof. Bernhardt Trout’s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his postdoctoral research, Dr. Sudrik has worked on several projects involving the characterization of protein-excipient interactions and their effect on the aggregation and viscosity behavior of high concentration monoclonal antibody formulations with an eye towards the rational design of such formulations. Prior to joining MIT, Dr. Sudrik received his PhD in chemical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, under the guidance of Prof. Ravi Kane. His thesis research focused on the development of novel molecular switches for the construction of synthetic biological circuits inside mammalian cells.

Senior Research Officer, Human Health Therapeutics
Dr. Traian Sulea has joined NRC Canada at its Biotechnology Research Institute in Montreal as a post-doctoral fellow in 1995, and as a Research Officer in 1997. He is also cross-appointed as Adjunct Professor with 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. In recent years, he applied computational structural modeling to the design of biotherapeutics including growth-factor traps and avidity-optimized Intellimabs for tumor targeting, as well as to antibody humanization, affinity maturation and de novo design. Dr. Sulea has authored over 80 scientific articles and book chapters, and is an inventor on 10 issued and 8 pending patents.

Head, Recombinant Protein Production
PhD in Microbiology at the University of Munich “Design of New Selenoproteins”, PostDoc Student and Senior Scientist at Helmholtz Center Munich and Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, Switzerland (Neurodegeneration, Immunology); since 2005 Head of Recombinant Protein Production at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany.

Presidential Scientific Fellow, Translational Medicine Early Development,
Dr. Richards currently is a member of Translational Medicine Early Development (TMED) in Sanofi R&D where she contributes as global scientific expert in immunogenicity and chairs the TMED Immunogenicity Council. Previously, she was the Head of the Clinical Laboratory Sciences Department in Sanofi/Genzyme Biologics R&D, responsible for four functional areas: Clinical Assay Development, Clinical Specialty Lab, CLS Quality Systems, and Investigative Clinical Immunology. Assays were developed as “fit for purpose” including fully validated using various technology platforms (ligand binding, cell-based, flow-cytometry, molecular, LC-MS/MS) for bioanalysis of PK, biomarkers and immunogenicity of biotherapeutics in clinical development. Clinical Specialty Lab is CLIA certified in Immunology, Clinical Chemistry and Urinalysis and supports clinical trials and post-marketing requirements. Research activities included investigating the use of methotrexate for immune tolerance induction. Dr. Richards has also been an active member of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) for over 15 years and currently is the Past Chair and a Steering Committee member of the Therapeutic Product Immunogenicity Focus Group (TPIFG).

Vice President, Research
Philip Tagari is currently Vice President of Research (Therapeutic Discovery) at Amgen Inc, the world’s largest biotechnology company. His laboratories are responsible for biologics discovery, scaffold engineering, optimization and early manufacturability assessment; medicinal, oligonucleotide and peptide chemistry; protein conjugates (ADC, peptibodies) and reagents; assay development, screening, enzymological and pharmacological characterization and profiling (in vitro), as well as structural biology, biophysics, computation and modeling, analytical chemistry, materials logistics and automation. Prior to joining Amgen in 1998, Philip was a Research Fellow at Merck Frosst (Canada) Inc, where he contributed to several programs in eicosanoid and inflammatory biology, culminating in the discovery of odanacatib and rofecoxib, as well as the clinically active leukotriene D4 receptor antagonist MK-571 and the leukotriene biosynthesis inhibitor MK-591. In addition to the elucidation of leukotriene metabolism in several species, Philip established one of the first robotic screening laboratories at Merck, building on work performed at McGill and Oxford Universities on automated image analysis, quantitative immunohistochemistry and neurotransmitter measurements in neurodegeneration and cerebrovascular research. Philip is a graduate of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University (UK).

Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Dr. Takagi is an Associate Professor in Indiana University School of Medicine. He received a BS degree from Ibaraki University, a MS degree from The University of Tokyo, and PhD degree in biochemistry from University of Oklahoma. He conducted a postdoctoral research at the laboratory of Dr. Roger Kornberg (Nobel Laureate 2006) at Stanford University. Takagi laboratory is interested in understanding the mechanisms of assembly, structure and function of large multi-protein complexes -“molecular machines” - involved in eukaryotic gene regulation. His lab is particularly interested in development of new expression technologies, which enable productions of large and often problematic proteins and protein complexes for structural (x-ray crystallography, and cryo-EM), and functional studies.

Associate Professor and Principal Investigator, Division of Protea-Drug-Discovery Sciences, Proteo-Science Center
Hiroyuki Takeda, Associate Professor, Division of Proteo-Drug-Discovery Sciences, Proteo-Science Center, Ehime University. He received his Ph.D. degree at Hiroshima University, Japan in 2004. Soon after that he joined NEDO national project, as a postdoctral fellow, and tackled development of protein library and high-throughput screening of human protein kinases. In 2006, he moved to Oxygenix Co., Ltd., a start-up biotechnology company, and worked in Singapore in protein drug-delivery system team. After he came back to Japan, he participated in a bio-ethanol project in Kyoto University as a postdoctoral fellow from 2008 to 2010. In 2011, he began to work at Ehime University as an Assistant Professor. There he joined Professor Yaeta Endo and Tatsuya Sawasaki’s laboratory, which is famous for the development of wheat cell-free protein production. He became an Associate Professor and a principal investigator as well in 2016. His interest consistently focuses on development of methodology for drug discovery, such as membrane protein production, antibody production, protein array, and high throughput screening.

Head, TC Facility, Biochemistry
Dr. Rastislav Tamaskovic is head of TC facility at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Zurich. After completing PhD at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Switzerland, he joined as a postdoctoral fellow the Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) in Basel. Here he pioneered the work on tumor suppressor protein kinase NDR and postulated its function in cell cycle progression and mitotic exit network. He and his colleagues also unveiled ‒ based on studies with knockout animals ‒ the crucial role of PKB kinase in the maintenance of cell survival via counteracting p53-dependent apoptosis. In 2005, he joined Plückthun’s laboratory at the University of Zurich where he initiated and led the SCL project on next generation of tumor targeting of ErbB family receptors. Among other anti-tumor compounds, he and his coworkers invented the bispecific and biparatopic designed ankyrin repeat proteins (DARPins), a novel class of tumoricidal agents triggering a potent apoptotic response in ErbB2-overexpressing breast tumors.

Director, Resesarch Fellow, DMPK-BA
Currently responsible for developing global DMPK strategy for ADCs and Biologic therapeutics. Previously oversaw non-regulated bioanalytical support for biologics including developing novel methodologies (LBA, LC/MS, hybrid) to characterize biologics PK, immunogenicity and ADC clearance mechanisms. Prior to Abbvie, completed a Postdoctoral fellowships in cell biology at Harvard Medical School, and at NIH, and received a PhD in biochemistry from the University Medical School of Debrecen, Hungary.

CSO, Cellular Technology Limited (CTL) & Adjunct Associate Professor of Pathology
Dr. Magdalena Tary-Lehmann is Co-Founding Scientist and Chief Scientific Officer for Cellular Technology Limited (CTL). Dr. Tary-Lehmann received her M.D. and Ph.D., both from the University of Tübingen, Germany. Her postdoctoral training in Immunology was at the University of California, Los Angeles. She moved thereafter to Case Western Reserve University, where she was awarded tenure and appointed as Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology. As Chief Scientific Officer for CTL she oversees the performance of immunology assays in CTL’s GCP, GLP- and CLIA compliant contract laboratory for various pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients.

Professor, Chemical Biology
Ali Tavassoli is professor of chemical biology at the University of Southampton. Ali currently leads an interdisciplinary team of scientists whose efforts are focused on the discovery and development of protein-protein interaction inhibitors. They have developed several new platform technologies to enable the generation and screening of cyclic peptide libraries of over a hundred million members. This work has resulted in the discovery of a series of first in class inhibitors of a variety of protein-protein interactions. These compounds have served as chemical tools to allow deciphering and better understanding of cellular pathways. They also form the starting point for the development of therapeutic agents that target key protein-protein interactions in disease. These molecules are currently progressing towards the clinic in collaboration with several pharmaceutical companies. Ali was Chair of the RSC's Chemical Biology and Bioorganic Group (2012-2015), and an elected member of the RSC's Chemistry and Biology Interface Division council (2012-2016). Ali has won a number of awards during his career, including the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences' medal for European Young Chemist (in 2008) and the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Medimmune Protein and Peptide Award (2017).

VP R&D
Ronen Tchelet joined Dyadic in May 2013 and has been Dyadic’s Vice President of Research and Business Development since January 2016. Dr. Tchelet received his Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology from Tel Aviv University in 1993 and did his postdoctoral as an EERO fellow at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (EAWAG) in Switzerland. In the late 2000’s, he joined the API Division of TEVA Pharmaceutical Industries LTD., where he served as a Chief Technology Officer of Biotechnology. Dr. Tchelet leaded and directed the Research and Development Biotechnology department of TEVA’s fermentation plant in Hungary. In his work he managed and organized Biotechnology and Biosimilar projects that combined multidisciplinary areas such as development, operation, and production of API and biologics. In addition, from 2000 – 2005, Dr. Tchelet was the QA manager of COPAXONE® the flag ship TEVA¹s innovative drug. From 2007 through 2013, prior to joining Dyadic, Dr. Tchelet became the founder and the Managing Director of Codexis Laboratories Hungary kft. (CLH) and a Vice President of Codexis Inc. At CLH, he established a state-of-the-art laboratory for strain engineering and all aspects of fermentation work including process optimization and scaling up. It was during this time that Dr. Tchelet engaged with the C1 technology that was successfully developed for the Biofuel and the Bio-Industrial enzymes fields

CEO
Dr. Christopher Thanos is currently the CEO and Cofounder of Actym Therapeutics, Inc. Previously he was head of Biotherapeutics Discovery at Halozyme Therapeutics (Nasdaq:HALO), where led efforts in Protein Engineering, Protein Production, Cell Biology and Immunology. Before that, he held roles at Sutro Biopharma, Catalyst Biosciences (Nasdaq:CBIO), and Sunesis Pharma (Nasdaq:SNSS). Dr. Thanos has a Ph.D in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from UCLA where he was a NIH Chemistry/Biology Interface Predoctoral Fellow. Following that, Dr. Thanos was National Cancer Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at UCSF and Sunesis.

Principle Investigator, Antibody Structure and Function
Theo Rispens studied chemistry in Groningen, The Netherlands. He received his PhD in 2004 following research of chemical reactivity in biological models systems. Since 2006 he has worked at Sanquin, where is staff member at the department of Immunopathology of Sanquin Research. Current research activities focus on the structure and function of immunoglobulins and the mutual interactions between the immune system and therapeutic antibodies. One research line involves mechanisms of humoral tolerance, in particular the biology of IgG4 antibody responses in health and disease. Furthermore, he studies the immune response to biologicals in autoimmune patients, particularly in rheumatology, and is responsible for the development of novel immunoassays to support this research line, and to implement for world-wide service testing at Sanquin Diagnostic Services, to support the optimization of treatment strategies with biologicals.

Global Head, NBE Drug Disposition
Theresa (Terry) Goletz is currently the Global Head of New Biological Entities Drug Disposition for EMD Serono where she oversees the bioanalytical support for all large molecule programs from discovery through registration. Prior to her current position, Terry served as a Director of Medical Sciences, Clinical Immunology at Amgen Inc. (Seattle WA) where she was the site head for Clinical Immunology. Her responsibilities included preclinical and clinical immunogenicity assessment, biological sample management, and cytometry services as well as immunogenicity assay development and validation compliant with GLP/GCP/CLIA. Prior to Amgen, Terry held positions of increasing responsibility at Centocor Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company initially leading a team focused on the discovery and validation of new adjuvants and vaccine targets, an extension of her academic laboratory’s focus and NIH training. After several years, she was asked to form a new group dedicated to immunogenicity prediction and immune monitoring. In addition to these responsibilities, Terry managed external collaborations and served as an SME for vaccines, gene/immunotherapies, drug delivery and immunogenicity. She has consulted on biotherapeutic drug development, authored over 30 publications and holds multiple patents.

Senior Manager, Technology and Innovation, Biologics Development
2018-now: Senior Manager Technology and Innovation at Boehringer Ingelheim. 2015-2018: Lab Head Molecular Biology at Boehringer Ingelheim. 2010-2015: R&D Project Manager at Miltenyi Biotec. 2005-2010: PhD student + PostDoc at Stefan Duebels Lab at the Braunschweig University. 1999-2004: Studies of Molecular Biotechnology at the Bielefeld University

Asst Professor, Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering
Greg M. Thurber is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan. His work focuses on applying fundamental biotransport principles to design novel therapeutics and molecular imaging agents. Prof. Thurber received his training in protein therapeutics at MIT under the guidance of Dr. Dane Wittrup. He then completed his in vivo training in molecular imaging in the laboratory of Dr. Ralph Weissleder at Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Since joining the faculty at Michigan, he has delivered 26 invited talks at major pharmaceutical companies, national and international conferences, and university departmental seminars. Prof. Thurber works with several pharmaceutical companies as a consultant, collaborator, and/or member of their scientific advisory board. He and his students have presented their interdisciplinary work at chemistry, chemical engineering, and pharmaceutical science conferences. Prof. Thurber has authored 39 peer-reviewed journal publications, 3 book chapters, and numerous conference proceedings. He has received several awards including an NIH K01 award and the National Science Foundation CAREER award.

Immunogenicity Sciences Lead, Biomedicine Design
Dr Tim Hickling is Discipline Lead for Immunogenicity Sciences at Pfizer. He obtained his Biochemistry degree and Immunology Ph.D. from the University of Oxford. He carried out post-doctoral training at Glaxo and the MRC’s National Institute for Medical Research before taking up a lectureship at the University of Nottingham. Tim has worked on various aspects of innate and adaptive immunology in infectious and inflammatory diseases. Tim joined Pfizer in 2007 and has worked on early stage vaccines and from early discover to late stage development of biotherapeutics. He is passionate about applying our growing knowledge of the immune system to the development of safe and effect therapies.

Vice President, Research
John Timmer is the VP of Research at Inhibrx, and leads single domain antibody discovery, protein engineering, and therapeutic strategy at Inhibrx. He has enabled many of Inhibrx’s therapeutic platforms, including the multivalent immune agonists, the multispecific checkpoint inversion, and tuned cytokines.

Scientist, Protein Sciences
Vivian Trang received her undergraduate degree from U.C. Berkeley where she worked with Matt Francis to make protein-polymer conjugates. From there, she moved to U.W. Madison for her doctorate under Eric Strieter where she synthesized ubiquitin chains to study the intricacies of ubiquitin signaling. After completing her thesis, Vivian began her postdoctoral work under Peter Senter at Seattle Genetics and was hired as a Scientist in the Protein Sciences department where she explores methods to improve the tumor selectivity of antibody therapeutics.

Senior Scientist, Pharmaceuticals R&D, Preclinical Research, Expression Technologies
Mark Trautwein obtained his doctorate in biochemistry from University of Tübingen, Germany. Mark joined Bayer in 2008 to establish transient & stable mammalian protein expression platforms for protein therapeutics. In his current position, Mark leads the Expression Technologies group and is involved in antigen and antibody expression as well as cell line development. In his project leadership role, he has been advancing projects with different degrees of maturity within oncology as well as ophthalmology, comprising mAbs, antibody drug conjugates, radioimmunoconjugates and various other formats.

Sr Research Scientist, Deputy Executive Director, Institute of Biologics
Shi-Chong Tsai has completed his PhD at the age of 36 from Indiana University and postdoctoral studies from Indiana University School of Medicine. He is the director of Devlepment Center for Biotechnology in Taiwan. He has published more than 10 papers in reputed journals and 11 international patents.

Professor, Bioengineering
Andrew Tsourkas Ph.D. is Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Tsourkas received his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1997 from Cornell University, his Master’s degree in 1999 from Johns Hopkins University, and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology/Emory University joint Ph.D. program in 2002. He then conducted a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Radiology at Harvard University, before joining Penn in 2004. Dr. Tsourkas is currently the co-Director for the Center for Targeted Therapeutics and Translational Nanomedicine and Co-Director for the Chemical and Nanoparticle Synthesis Core. He has over 100 peer-reviewed and invited publications and was a recipient of the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Early Career Award and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. In 2015, Dr. Tsourkas was also elected as a fellow to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Dr. Tsourkas is an inventor on over a dozen patents and has founded four biotechnology companies. The broad goal of his research program is to develop targeted imaging and therapeutic agents, with particular expertise in nanotechnology and bioconjugate chemistry.

Vice President, Drug Discovery
Mihriban has over 10 years’ experience in antibody engineering and discovery and has successfully managed a number of collaborative drug discovery projects with big pharma. Prior to joining F-star, she worked in technology enhancement in Biopharm R&D at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and in the selection and optimisation of lead domain antibodies (dAbs) at Domantis Ltd. Mihriban holds a PhD in Biochemistry from University of Sussex, UK, and a BSc in Biology from Middle East Technical University, Turkey.

Principal Scientist, Preclinical Development
Thomas Tuxen Poulsen is principal scientist in biomarkers and companion diagnostics and is primarily responsible for translational biomarker strategies for Symphogen’s drug candidates in pre-clinical and clinical development. He has substantial pre-clinical background of more than ten years within in vitro and in vivo pharmacology, with a specific focus on drug development of cancer therapeutic antibodies and antibody mixtures, and a strong academic background in molecular cancer research, cancer biology and cancer gene therapy.

Chief Development Officer,
Bahram (Bob) Valamehr is the Chief Development Officer at Fate Therapeutics, overseeing the company’s early development activities including “off-the-shelf” cell therapy products derived from the company’s induced pluripotent stem cell platform. Previously, Dr. Valamehr was the Vice President of Cancer Immunotherapy at Fate and prior to that played key scientific roles at Amgen, the Center for Cell Control (a NIH Nanomedicine Development Center) and the Broad Stem Cell Research Center developing novel methods to control pluripotency, to modulate stem cell fate including hematopoiesis and to better understand cellular signaling pathways associated with cancer. He has co-authored numerous studies and patents related to stem cell biology, oncology and materials science. Dr. Valamehr received his Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA, his M.B.A. from Pepperdine University and his B.S. from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA.

Lion Scholar and Professor, Director, Section on Molecular Cancer Therapeutics; Professor of Therapeutic Radiology
Dr. Vallera is Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center with a background in immunology and biological drug engineering. His 40-year career has focused on selective drug targeting with over 200 peer-reviewed publications. His group has brought 4 targeted drugs to first-in-human trials. Studies now focus on a new genre of immunotherapy drugs called TriKEs (Tri-specific NK Engagers) that engage NK cells to kill cancer cells.

Director, R&D Operations
Prior to Synaffix, Sander performed postdoctoral research on novel conjugation methodologies for non-invasive cancer imaging at University of Oxford. Preceding Oxford, he worked at the Leibniz-Institute of Plant Biochemistry in Halle, Germany, as postdoctoral researcher focusing on the synthesis of antitumor agent epothilone B and its derivatives. He holds a PhD and a MSc in Organic Chemistry from the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He is an inventor on multiple patents and has been author of 40 peer-reviewed publications and reviews.

Richard E. Heckert Endowed Chair in Chemistry, Director of Graduate Studies, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Department of Chemistry
Wilfred van der Donk was born in the Netherlands and obtained his PhD at Rice University. After postdoctoral work at MIT with JoAnne Stubbe, he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois in 1997, where he currently holds the Richard E. Heckert Chair in Chemistry. Since 2008, he is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Research in his laboratory focuses on combining organic chemistry and molecular biology to gain a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms of enzyme catalysis and use that knowledge for bioengineering applications, of particular interest is the biosynthesis of antibiotics.

Director, Protein Biochemistry
Anne Verhagen completed her Ph.D at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She then spent three years as a post-doctoral scientist at the German Cancer Research Centre, Heidelberg, Germany before returning to Australia where she took up a position at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne. Her research focused on identifying regulators of cell death pathways and culminated in multiple publications, including a first author publication in Cell in 2000 describing the discovery of a protein called Diablo (also known as Smac). In 2002 she was appointed to the Institute’s faculty. In 2011, she joined CSL Research, based in Melbourne Australia, where she today is Director of Protein Biochemistry. A major focus of her group in recent years has been the development of confocal microscopy based cellular assays to visualize the movement of proteins as they are internalized, recycled or degraded.

Director and Lead, Predictive and Clinical Immunogenicity
Dr. Vibha Jawa is currently a Director, Biologics and Vaccine Bioanalytics at Merck where 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 evaluating viral vectors for hemophilia therapy in the Bay area followed by City of Hope Cancer Centre Stem Cell and Gene Therapy group. At Amgen from 2003-2016, her focus was to develop methods for assessing immunogenicity to biologics and the mechanisms behind development of immunogenicity. 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 system based approach, antigen processing and presentation and the role of T cells in immune response to drug products. Vibha is a member of professional organizations like American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) and American Association of Immunology (AAI) 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 Prediction Action Program Area (IPAPA). She has been an invited speaker in multiple sessions at AAPS for past few years and has successfully moderated and organized programming at AAPS NBC (National Biotechnology Conference) and AAPS Annual Meetings. She has also organized and participated in AAPS webinar and e forum to propagate learning and sharing information among AAPS members. Dr Jawa also serves as a manuscript reviewer for The AAPS Journal and J. Pharm Sci Journal.

Director, CHO Cell Line Development, The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability
Bjørn Voldborg has more than 20 years of experience working with recombinant protein expression from both academic and industrial settings. Bjørn was teamleader in the biotech company Pharmexa A/S, responsible for molecular cloning and expression of proteinbased 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.

Principal Scientific Liaison
Mr. Walfish brings over 30 years of industrial expertise in the application of statistical methods for assay development and validation. Steven has experience applying statistical methods to all facets of the CMC process. Mr. Walfish is Principal Science & Standards Liaison in the Global Science and Standards Division at United States Pharmacopeia (USP). Mr. Walfish holds a Bachelors of Arts in Statistics from the University of Buffalo, Masters of Science in Statistics from Rutgers University and an Executive MBA from Boston University.

Principal Scientist
Dr. Jihong Wang is a principal scientist currently leading late stage characterization group at MedImmune. She was the major contributor for IMFINZI® (durvalumab), FASENRA (benralizumab), and LUMOXITI (moxetumomab pasudotox) BLA filing. During her fourteen years at MedImmune, Dr. Wang has been working on method development and qualification, peak identification for all lot release and characterization assays, product characterization including degradation pathway and CQA determination, for all types of molecules, including mAbs, fusion proteins, bispecific molecules, ADC, etc. Her expertise is mainly on glycosylation characterization and mass spectrometry, more recently on multi-attribute-monitoring (MAM). Before joining MedImmune, Dr. Wang worked on Protein Kinase substrates and Protease substrates in two biotech start-up companies in Boston area. She got her PhD degree in Chemistry from Rutgers University at New Brunswick working on Tat peptide-oligonucleotide conjugates targeting HIV-1 TAR RNA.

Associate Director, Analytical and Pharmaceutical Development
Dr. Lintao Wang is currently the Associate Director in Analytical and Pharmaceutical Science (APS) at ImmunoGen. His areas of expertise include analytical and bioanalytical method development and mass spec (MS) analysis of proteins and small-molecule compounds. Dr. Wang received his B.S. & M.S. degrees in Chemistry from Beijing University, and Ph.D. in chemistry from University of Nebraska-Lincoln (2002). He was trained as a protein biochemist and an analytical scientist in Midwest Center for Mass Spectrometry (UNL). He joined ImmunoGen in 2002 and started his career in developing anticancer immunotherapies such as antibody-drug conjugates (ADC). In 2007 he joined Shire as a senior scientist for tandem MS method development in Bioanalytical and Biomarker Development. In 2011, he rejoined ImmunoGen as the group leader for Mass Spec as well as the High Throughput Analytics. He supported ADC programs at all stages from antibody cell line screening to late-stage in-depth structural characterization. Overall, with years of experience in protein analytics and a number of publications and conference presentations, Dr. Wang is a well-established analytical chemist in the antibody and ADC development of the biopharma/biotech industry.

Senior R&D Scientist, Cell Design Studio, MilliporeSigma
Stacey received her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY, where she studied the dysregulation of cell cycle protein expression and activity by varicella zoster virus. She completed a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Connecticut Health Science Center investigating herpes simplex virus DNA replication before being awarded an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship in brain cancer biology at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, dissecting the role of sonic hedgehog signaling in medulloblastoma. Stacey joined MilliporeSigma in 2016 and has been genetically engineering cells for customer and off-the-shelf products as well as integrating the use of next generation sequencing in library deconvolution and expression.

Professor, Chemistry, Molecular Biology & Biochemistry
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 is UCI’s Entrepreneurial Leader of the Year in 2018. He and his wife live in Irvine, California with their three cats.

Professor, Biological Engineering
Ron Weiss is Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering and in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is the Director of the Synthetic Biology Center at MIT. He received his PhD from MIT in 2001 and held a faculty appointment at Princeton University between 2001 and 2009. His research focuses primarily on synthetic biology, where he programs cell behavior by constructing and modeling biochemical and cellular computing systems. A major thrust of his work is the synthesis of gene networks that are engineered to perform in vivo analog and digital logic computation. He is also interested in programming cell aggregates to perform coordinated tasks using cell-cell communication with chemical diffusion mechanisms such as quorum sensing. He has constructed and tested several novel in vivo biochemical logic circuits and intercellular communication systems. Weiss is engaged in both hands-on experimental work and in implementing software infrastructures for simulation and design work.

Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School & Associate Physician
No bio available

Associate Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering
Tim Whitehead is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering. He has won an NSF CAREER award, holds 6 patents (5 licensed), and has published over 40 research articles in journals like Science, Nature Biotechnology, and Nature Methods.

CEO and Co-Founder
Sajith is the CEO and Co-Founder of Benchling, the leader in cloud informatics for life science R&D. He has led the company through remarkable growth, increasing adoption of its platform to over 160,000 scientists across top pharmaceutical companies and high-growth biotechs.

Chief Scientific Officer
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.

Biologist, OPQ/OBP, CDER
Will Hallett received his PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Nevada, Reno in 2008. His postdoctoral studies on immunotherapy at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Madison led him to the FDA in 2012. He performs Product Quality and Immunogenicity reviews for the Office of Biotechnology Products in CDER. He is a member of the OBP Immunogenicity Working Group.

Associate Lab Head, Quality Control
Erin Williams started at EMD Serono as an Associate Scientist I after completing her master’s degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of New Haven. Her role has changed significantly in the past five years, and she is now the Associate Lab Head of the Quality Control team within the Protein and Cell Sciences department. When not at work, Erin enjoys spending quality time with her husband and two young sons.

Head, Biologics Formulation and Process Development
Recently appointed as head of Formulation and Process Development Department of Sanofi Vitry site, Pierre was previously CMC Project Leader and PAI Task Force Leader for sarilumab (Kevzara®) leading the CMC team through successful submission and registration of Kevzara in the US, EU and Japan. Prior to this, he held positions in pre-formulation and formulation development for small molecules, biotherapeutics and gene delivery technologies. Pierre graduated as an Engineer from the Institut National Agronomique Paris, France, and received his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at the Institut Gustave Roussy in Villejuif, France.

Professor, Medicine & Rheumatology, Knapp Center for Lupus and Immunology Research, Committee on Immunology
Dr. Wilson is a Professor in the department of Medicine, section of Rheumatology at the University of Chicago. Dr. Wilson’s laboratory studies B cell biology with a particular emphasis on antibody specificity and B cell selection. We characterize the human B cell response to infectious diseases such as influenza, and we study the fate, differentiation, and selection of B cells.

C.P. Dubbs Professor, Chemical Engineering and Biological Engineering; Associate Director, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
Professor K. Dane Wittrup is the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Associate Director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. From 1989 to 1999, he was Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and then J. W. Westwater Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biophysics at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana. Prof. Wittrup received a BS in Chemical Engineering Summa cum Laude in 1984 from the University of New Mexico, and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1988 under the thesis direction of Prof. James Bailey. Following a year of postdoctoral research at Amgen (Thousand Oaks, CA), Dr. Wittrup joined the faculty at the University of Illinois. Wittrup’s research program is focused on protein engineering of biopharmaceutical proteins by directed evolution. Areas of interest include: pretargeted radioimmunotherapy, biological response modification of EGFR, and immunotherapy of cancer via engineered cytokines and vaccines.

Principal Scientist, Biomedicine Design
Liliana Wroblewska is a Principal Scientist leading Molecular and Synthetic Biology group at Biomedicine Design Department, Pfizer, Inc. She completed PhD training at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, where she studied the landscape of physics-based force fields in the context of protein structure prediction. Then she moved to Ron Weiss's lab at MIT, Cambridge as a Postdoctoral Scholar to work in the field of mammalian synthetic biology. She worked on RNA-based regulation, engineering in vivo biosensors for interrogation of cellular states, and using synthetic biology to study transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulation in mammalian cells with the focus on cross-talk, insulation and orthogonality in complex cellular environments.

Senior Investigator, OBP, CDER
Dr. Wen Jin Wu currently is a Senior Investigator in Office of Biotechnology Products, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, FDA. He earned his M.D. from Wannan Medical College, China and finished his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 2002. He was recruited as a Principal Investigator (PI) in the Division of Monoclonal Antibodies in 2004. In addition to his regulatory duty as a product quality reviewer with expertise in the area of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates, and biosimilars, Dr. Wu’s laboratory focuses on understanding the roles of ERBB family receptors in breast cancer progression and the mechanisms of trastuzumab and T-DM1 resistance, and trastuzumab and T-DM1-induced toxicity. He has published many papers in highly reputed journals, including Journal of Biological Chemistry, Nature, Cell, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, and Cancer Research, and has been invited to give talks in many national and international conferences.

CEO
Mingjie received his M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from Western University in 2006 and received his M.B.A from Richard Ivey School of Business in 2016. He is currently the co-founder at Rapid Novor Inc. Prior to co-founding Rapid Novor, he was the Chief Operating Officer at a bioinformatics software company.

US Function Head, CMC Statistical Sciences, Vaccines Technical Research & Development
Ryan Yamagata is the US Function Head in CMC Statistical Sciences, Vaccines Technical Research & Development for GSK in Rockville, MD. Prior to joining GSK, Ryan was a consultant working with small biotech and medical device companies, and has also worked for MedImmune/Astra Zeneca, Shire, and Wyeth. He has over 15 years of experience supporting preclinical and clinical studies, translational science, and CMC activities (formulation, process and method design space characterization and optimization, process and method validation and transfer, stability). Ryan has an MS in Statistics from Brigham Young University and a BS in Mathematics from BYU-Hawaii.

Executive Director
Dr. Yan obtained his PhD from Purdue University. He was a professor at UCSD for 14 years before joining Biortus. He is also a joint professor at Xiamen University where he established a Cryo-EM platform. Dr. Yan dedicated his research interest in structural modeling with modern technologies such as Cryo-EM.

Senior Director, Statistical Sciences
Harry Yang, Ph.D., is Senior Director and Head of Statistical Sciences at MedImmune. He is also the Membe of USP Statistics Expert Committee. Harry has published 5 statistical books, 14 book chapters, and over 90 peer-reviewed papers over diverse statistical and scientific subjects. He is a frequent invited speaker at national and international conferences and workshops. He was also invited to develop statistical courses and conduct the training at the FDA, Chinese FDA, and USP. He received his BS and MS degrees in Applied Mathematics from Peking University and Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Pittsburgh.

Staff Scientist, Mammalian Cell Culture
Alison Young has a PhD from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and has gained more than ten years’ experience working within the biotechnology industry. She is a Staff Scientist within the Mammalian Cell Culture group at FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies. Here, her work to establish a robust cell line development platform process contributed to the launch of the Apollo™ mammalian expression platform system.

Vice President, Biologics
Dr. Young is the Vice President of Biologics at Calibr, a division of Scripps Research. He received a BS in biochemistry from Boston College and a PhD in chemical biology from The Scripps Research Institute as an ARCS scholar. At Scripps, his work focused on the development of unnatural amino acid incorporation methodologies to improve the properties of therapeutic proteins. This work was foundational for the development of programs in the Calibr pipeline today, including a bispecific antibody for prostate cancer which will enter clinical trials next year. After receiving his PhD, he completed a postdoc at Harvard Medical School with an NIH fellowship, in the department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology with Dr. Christopher T Walsh.

Staff Scientist, Biosciences and Biotechnology Division, Physical and Life Sciences Directorate
Dr. Mimi Cho Yung received her Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012 and conducted her postdoctoral work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). She is currently a Staff Scientist at LLNL in the Biosciences and Biotechnology Division. Her research interests include the development of novel peptide/protein expression strategies and synthetic biology therapeutic applications using bacterial nano- and micro-compartments.

Development Associate, Analytical & Pharmaceutical Sciences
Alexandra Zaitsev is a Development Associate at the Analytical and Pharmaceutical Sciences department at ImmunoGen, Inc. She received her MS degree in Chemistry from Tufts University in 2015 and has previously worked with proteins and peptides. Her work at ImmunoGen has been focused on developing analytical methods for antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates, and small molecule payloads. She is also involved in characterization testing of antibodies and ADCs and in supporting forced degradation and administration set IV compatibility studies.

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Department of Medical Oncology,
After studying Medicine in China, Dr. Zhang pursued Ph.D training at the Medical College of Ohio, where he studied T cell tolerance and B cell lymphomagenesis. He then had his postdoctoral training with Dr. Klaus Rajewsky and Dr. Frederick Alt at the Immune Disease Institute and Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, where he focused on understanding the pathogenesis of diffuse large B cell lymphoma, and immune surveillance against Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-infected/transformed B cells. Dr. Zhang is now an Assistant Professor at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, where his research group continues to explore the molecular basis of B cell malignancies and unravel the mechanisms of EBV-induced immune surveillance, and leverages the resulting knowledge to develop new immunotherapy approaches for treating B cell malignancies as well as other cancers.

Senior Scientist
Zhe Zhang works in Novartis focusing on biologics developability assessment since 2016. In Integrated Biologics Profiling (IBP) group, Zhe provides profiling analysis for protein drug candidates by mass spectrometry. Before joining Novartis, Zhe received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from University of Massachusetts Amherst focusing on mass spectrometry application for protein aggregation characterization. Zhe also earned his B.S. in University of Science and Technology of China.

Principal Scientist
Graduated in 1999 with a Ph.D in Analytical Chemistry from University of Minnesota under the guidance of Professor Peter Carr. Joined Pfizer as Analytical scientist/project lead supporting drug candidates from preclinical to Phase II from 1999 to 2006. Relocated from Groton CT to Boston in December 2006 and led a chromatography/mass spectrometry group in Cabot Corporation for over nine years before joining Immunogen in March 2016.

Senior Scientist, Global Biologics
Li Zhou obtained his PhD in chemistry, studying small molecule inhibitors of protein-protein interactions. He then joined the fragment based drug discovery (FBDD) group at AbbVie, conducting biophysical screening for lead ID. Currently, he heads a biomolecular interaction group at AbbVie global biologics department.

Senior Scientist, Protein Analytics
Liqiang (Lisa) Zhou has worked in Protein Analytics Department of Abbvie Bioresearch Center since 2002. She has worked on the analytical characterization of a range of molecules including mAb, Dual Variable Domain Ig (DVD-IgTM) and antibody drug conjugate (ADC). She has been the analytical lead for multiple projects in early and late stage development. Lately she has focused on tasks related to CQA risk assessment, IND and BLA drafting. Lisa received her M.Sc. in Chemistry from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2000) and Peking University (1997).

Product Quality Team Leader, Division of Biotechnology Review and Research I (DBRR I), OBP, CDER
Dr. Qing Zhou is a product quality team leader in the Division of Biotechnology Review and Research I (DBRR I) in the Office of Biotechnology Products (OBP), CDER/FDA. Dr. Zhou joined the FDA in 2010 as an Interagency Oncology Taskforce (IOTF) fellow and became a full time CMC/product quality reviewer in the Division of Monoclonal Antibody (DMA) in 2012. Dr. Zhou has extensive research experience in the areas of tumor and transplantation immunology and immunotherapy. Currently, she performs and supervises the review of regulatory submissions at the FDA for a wide range of novel and biosimilar biotechnology products.

CSO
Dr. Zhukovsky has over two decades of professional experience in the field of biotherapeutics research and development. He currently applies optimized monospecific and novel bispecific antibody platforms to the development of immunotherapeutics for cancer, with a particular focus on leveraging the biology of immune checkpoint modulators. Currently, Dr. Zhukovsky is the CSO of Biomunex Pharmaceuticals, and he also consults with other biotechnology companies. Previously, he served as the CSO of Affimed Therapeutics; there he was responsible for the advancement of candidate therapeutics from discovery to the clinic, and novel technology development. Prior to that he was a Senior Research Fellow in the Biotherapeutics Department at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. leading antibody discovery efforts in the therapeutic areas of inflammatory and cardiovascular diseases. Prior to that Dr. Zhukovsky was an Associate Director at Xencor, Inc. where he led translational research efforts resulting in several therapeutic candidates targeting malignant B cells. One of these therapeutic antibodies is currently undergoing late-stage clinical trials. Dr. Zhukovsky began his professional career employing phage display technology at Neurex Corporation. He then moved to Lynx Therapeutics (now Illumina, Inc.) to work on the development of genomics technologies before returning to protein/antibody engineering and biotherapeutics development at Xencor, Inc. Dr. Zhukovsky performed a postdoctoral fellowship at Genentech, Inc. He received a PhD in biochemistry from Brandeis University and an MS degree in bioorganic chemistry at St. Petersburg's State University.

Group Leader & Principal Scientist, Protein Engineering & Antibody Technologies, Discovery Technologies, Global Research and Development
Stefan received his PhD in 2015 from the Technische Universität of Darmstadt, Germany, where he worked in the Group of Harald Kolmar in the field of protein engineering of non-canonical antibodies. At the moment, he works as Associate Director at Merck KGaA (EMD Serono), Germany, in the Department Protein Engineering and Antibody Technologies (PEAT).

Group Leader, Analytical Research and Development
Qin Zou is currently the group leader and associate research fellow at Pfizer, 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.