Speaker Biographies

• Plenary (View)
• Display of Biologics (View)
• Novel Immunotherapy Strategies (View)
• Optimisation & Developability (View)
• Engineering Next-Generation Antibody Drug Conjugates (View)
• Engineering Antibodies (View)
• Advancing Bispecifics and Combination Therapy to the Clinic (View)
• Analytical Characterisation of Biotherapeutics (View)
• Optimising Expression Platforms (View)
• Engineering Bispecifics (View)
• Novel Therapies for Cancer and Emerging Targets (View)
• Protein Aggregates & Particles (View)
• Protein Purification Technologies (View)
• Training Seminar 2: Introduction to Protein Engineering (View)
• Training Seminar 4: Next-Generation Sequencing for Antibody Discovery and Engineering (View)

Plenary

Rakesh Dixit, Ph.D.

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. Rakesh served as a Senior Toxicologist with Midwest Research Institute between 1987 and 1992. In December 1992, Rakesh joined the Department of Safety Assessment, Merck and Co., Inc, West Point, PA where he served in various management positions. During his about 14 years with Merck, Rakesh contributed to the successful filings of many blockbuster drugs. For about a year, Rakesh was associated with Johnson and Johnson PRD, La Jolla/Alza as Senior Director of Toxicology. In Aug 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.

Marie Kosco-Vilbois, Ph.D.

CSO of Novimmune SA, Switzerland, responsible for overseeing the discovery and development of antibody-based drugs for the targeted treatment of inflammatory and rare diseases, immune-related disorders and cancer. Prior Industry experience includes GlaxoWellcome, Serono and Roche, the latter as a scientific member of the Basel Institute for Immunology. Holds a doctorate in Immunology and Human Anatomy from the Medical College of Virginia, USA, has published over 150 peer reviewed publications and is co-inventor on numerous patents.

John Lambert, Ph.D.

Dr. Lambert earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry (1976) from University of Cambridge (England, UK), under the supervision of Professor Richard N. Perham. After postdoctoral training at the University of California, Davis (1976-1980), and University of Glasgow, Scotland (1980-1982), Dr Lambert joined the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School working on the ImmunoGen-funded programs to develop antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and immunotoxins as anti-cancer therapeutics. The company established independent laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1987. Dr. Lambert served as CSO from 2008 until 2015, at which time he was appointed Distinguished Research Fellow. He served on the executive committee as Executive Vice President, Research, from 2008 until 2017, at which time he was appointed EVP Emeritus. He is the author/co-author of over 120 peer-reviewed scientific publications. In 2016, Dr Lambert was elected a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Andrew Sewell, Ph.D.

Andy Sewell’s research interests have focused around how organisms deal with environmental adversity. He began his career at the University of Liverpool by applying his training in chemistry towards phytoremediation strategies. He then moved to the University of Utah in 1990 to work on gene activation by environmental stress and was promoted to the Faculty there in 1994. Tugged heartstrings saw him return to Oxford in 1995 to work on the strategies HIV and other viruses use to subvert human T-cell immunity. That same Welsh girl was influential in his relocation to Cardiff in 2006 to take up a position as Distinguished Research Professor in the School of Medicine. He continues in Cardiff and is currently a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator. His research focuses on T-cell antigens and the receptors that recognize them. This takes the Sewell laboratory in many different directions including transplant tolerance, autoimmune disease, immunity to infection and cancer immunotherapy. Of relevance to this meeting, the Sewell laboratory uses engineered T-cell receptors and engineered T-cell ligands (peptides and synthetic compounds) to manipulate the immune system for therapeutic benefit. 

Display of Biologics

William Eldridge, Ph.D., CSO, Cyclogenix, Ltd.

Bill Eldridge is the CSO at Cyclogenix. He has extensive experience in the biotechnology and pharma industry; starting his career in research at Pfizer and moving on to be an early member at Cambridge Antibody Technology (now Medimmune) where he was a senior scientist in their antibody discovery arm. Having spent four years at CAT he joined Isogenica where he was part of the small team that invented and developed the company’s CIS display technology. He then went on to build and lead the Alliances team at Isogenica. He now leads research at Cyclogenix, developing Cyclotides for Oncology, Blood Brain Barrier delivery and Oral Delivery applications.

Stefan Ewert, Ph.D., Senior Investigator I, NIBR Biologics Center, Novartis Pharma AG, Switzerland

Stefan Ewert, Ph.D. joined Novartis in 2004 and currently holds the position of a Senior Investigator within the NIBR Biologics Center. After establishment of a process for assessment of technical developability already during the antibody selection process he is currently responsible for antibody phage display selections done in Basel. He did his Ph.D. in the group of Andreas Plückthun at the University of Zürich, Switzerland on antibody stability.

Gavin Giovannoni, MBBCh, Ph.D., FCP (Neurol., SA), FRCP, FRCPath, Professor, Neurology, Blizard Institute, Barts and The London School Medicine & Dentistry

Professor Gavin Giovannoni MBBCh, Ph.D., FCP (S.A., Neurol.), FRCP, FRCPath: Gavin Giovannoni was appointed to the Chair of Neurology, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, in November 2006. Gavin did his undergraduate medical training in South Africa. He moved to the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, in 1993 to do a Ph.D. in Neuroimmunology. His clinical interests are multiple sclerosis and other inflammatory disorders of the central nervous system. His current research is focused on Epstein Barr virus as a possible cause of multiple sclerosis.

René Hoet, Vice President, Biologics, Antibody Lead Discovery, Bayer AG, Cologne, Germany

René Hoet is Globally responsible for Antibody Lead Discovery at Bayer AG. In addition, he is Prof. Biopharmaceutics at the University of Maastricht, NL. Before joining Bayer, he headed up as Sr. Director Antibody Product Related Research at Genmab, NL (2008-2010). René received his Ph.D. (1992) from the University of Nijmegen, NL and performed post-doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge UK (1993-1994) and University of Nijmegen, NL (1994-1997). In 1997 he joined the University Hospital of Maastricht, NL (Dept. Pathology) and the company Target Quest. After acquisition of Target Quest by Dyax (1999), René joined Dyax full time. As V.P. Research at Dyax he headed up the Antibody Lead Discovery teams in Liege (Belgium) and Cambridge (USA) and from 2006-2008 was Site Manager of Dyax s.a. in Belgium.

Michael Hust, Ph.D., Group Leader, Institute for Biochemistry, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Biotechnology, Technical University of Braunschweig

Michael studied biology at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität in Oldenburg, Germany, from 1993-1999. He received his Ph.D. from the Leibniz Universität in Hannover, Germany, in 2002. Since end of 2002 he is working as group leader at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany. In 2011, he finished his professorial dissertation (Habilitation, venia legendi for Biotechnology) and was appointed as Privatdozent (PD). In 2014 he was appointed as professor for biotechnology. He published more than 100 articles (including book chapters and reviews) and filled five patents in the field of antibody engineering and phage display. He was the scientific coordinator of the EC FP7 funded project AntibotABE (www.antibotabe.com). He is working on the development of human and human-like antibodies for proteome research, diagnostics and therapy. Another field of work is the identification of biomarkers of pathogens using phage display. He co-founded two biotech companies, the mAb-Factory GmbH in 2007 and the YUMAB GmbH (www.yumab.com) in 2012.

Vera Molkenthin, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, AbCheck s.r.o.

Dr. Vera Molkenthin earned her PhD in Biology at the University of Mainz and has more than ten years of experience in antibody discovery and engineering. Dr. Molkenthin was leading the Antibody Discovery group at Affimed AG and managed the transfer of the technology to AbCheck in 2009. Since 2010 Dr. Molkenthin has been leading numerous partnered projects using AbCheck’s expanding technological capabilities.

Friedrich Koch-Nolte, M.D., Professor, Immunology and Molecular Biology, Institute of Immunology, University Medical Center Hamburg

Friedrich Koch-Nolte is professor of Immunology and Molecular Biology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg (Germany). Work in his lab focuses on extracellular ATP and NAD+ as danger signals in the immune system and on the ecto-enzymes and receptors that respond to these nucleotides. His group engineers nanobodies as tools to block or potentiate the function of enzymes and ion channels.

Geir Åge Løset, Ph.D., Researcher, Centre for Immune Regulation and Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo

Dr. Geir Åge Løset, Ph.D. is a Researcher at the Centre for Immune Regulation at the University of Oslo, Norway, and co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Nextera AS, Oslo, Norway.

Andrew E. Nixon, Ph.D.., Vice President, Biotherapeutics Molecule Discovery, Boehringer Ingelheim

Dr. Nixon currently serves as Vice President of Molecule Discovery at Boehringer Ingelheim. In this role he is responsible for supporting early biologic discovery activities. Prior to joining Boehringer Ingelheim Andy spent 17 years at Dyax including four years as Head of Research and most recently was at Magenta Therapeutics a stem cell transplant company. At Dyax he focused on biologic drug discovery including peptides, small proteins and antibodies across multiple therapeutic areas including oncology and inflammation. He was a key scientific partner for Dyax’s Licensing and Funded Research Program (LFRP) contributed to numerous antibodies in clinical studies including Avelumab, an anti-PD-L1 antibody and Opicinumab, an anti-Lingo-1 antibody and led from discovery to IND the DX-2930 program - a plasma kallikrein inhibitor currently in Phase 3 clinical trials which was the basis for Shire’s acquisition of Dyax in 2016 for $5.9.

Peter Pack, Ph.D., CEO, Crescendo Biologics Ltd.

Peter Pack, CEO of Crescendo Biologics, has 25 years of experience in the successful establishment and growth of international life science companies. For 17 years, he was CEO and Managing Director of product-oriented companies ranging from early stage up to international commercialization and profitability in Germany, the UK and Poland. He raised over € 74 mio in venture capital, worked in several Boards and headed companies with up to 400 employees. He started his career in the initial team of morphosys AG (1993-1999) as co-inventor of the commercially most successful antibody library and was co-founder and CEO of mtm laboratories (1999-2008).

Maria Pajuelo, Ph.D., CSO, Fairjourney Biologics

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.

Katarina Radošević, Ph.D., Global Head Biologics Research, Sanofi R&D, Paris, France

Katarina Radošević joined Sanofi in January 2015, where she holds the position of Global Head Biologics Research. In this role, Katarina is responsible for Sanofi biologics research activities in France, Germany and US. Before joining Sanofi, Katarina was at Johnson & Johnson in the Netherlands, where she held the positon of VP Immunology and Proof of Concept and Head Vaccine Discovery at the Crucell Vaccine Institute. Katarina started het industrial carrier at Crucell in 2002 in oncology antibody field and helped further develop company’s immunology and vaccine expertise and capabilities. Before joining the industry, Katarina was Head Phage Display Core Facility and a post-doctoral researcher in immunology at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. She holds Master degree in Molecular Biology from the University of Zagreb, Croatia and Ph.D. in immunology/ biophysics from the University of Twente, the Netherlands.

Jane Sosabowski, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, Preclinical Molecular Imaging, Centre for Molecular Oncology, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London

Jane Sosabowski is the Head of the Cancer Imaging Laboratory at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London and is a Senior Lecturer in Preclinical Molecular Imaging. Her group carries out research into the behavior of novel biomolecules in vivo using a variety of techniques such as PET/CT, SPECT/CT and MRI. She collaborates with academic groups both internal and external to QMUL as well as extensively with industrial partners. A radiochemist by training, she studied for her Ph.D. in the Joint Department of Physics, Institute of Cancer Research, Royal Marsden Hospital in London.

Novel Immunotherapy Strategies

Lisa Bamber, Ph.D., Scientist I, ADPE, Medimmune

Dr Lisa Bamber is a Research Scientist with over 9 years’ experience working in Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering (ADPE) at MedImmune, Cambridge UK. She completed her Ph.D. at Cambridge University in 2006, studying the oligomeric state of mitochondrial carrier proteins. Subsequently, she has worked in the Biopharmaceutical industry, developing novel therapeutic proteins, Immunocytokines and antibodies (including bispecifics). Lisa has led and worked on a number of early-stage projects across multiple therapy areas including Oncology and Cardiovascular disease, with a strong focus on developing non-standard antibody therapeutics. Lisa’s primary role on these projects has been to guide and develop the expression, purification and developability of these therapeutic molecules along with their targets.

Amrik Basran, CSO, Avacta Life Sciences

Amrik has over 10 years’ experience of both the biotech and pharma industries. Previously, he worked for GSK where he was Head of Topical Delivery (Biopharm Discovery Unit), supporting the development of biotherapeutics across the GSK portfolio. Amrik was Director of Protein Biosciences at Domantis, before the company was acquired by GSK in 2006 and prior to this had spent 6 years as a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Biotechnology, Cambridge University.

Michael Blank, Ph.D., CSO, AptaIT GmbH

PhD (chemistry) at Eberhard-Karls-University in Tuebingen, Germany. From 2002: Senior scientist at NascaCell (Munich, Germany): establishment biopanning strategies. From 2004: Head of the department Aptamer Technologies. From 2009 to 2011: Group leader at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich: development of bispecific aptamers for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. From 2011: CSO, co-founder at AptaIT

Onur Boyman, M.D., Professor and Chair, Immunology, University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich

After obtaining his M.D. degree from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, Onur Boyman trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. He then joined the Division of Immunology and Allergology of the University Hospital of Lausanne, Switzerland, as principle investigator and clinical fellow, before receiving in 2010 a professorship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Since 2014, Onur Boyman has been professor and chair of clinical immunology at the University of Zurich and director of the Department of Immunology at University Hospital Zurich. Research in his laboratory focuses on the modulation of immune responses using cytokine-directed approaches, such as particular IL-2 formulations to stimulate regulatory versus effector T cells for selective immunotherapy, as well as pro-inflammatory cytokines and their inhibitors in chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Mark Cragg, Ph.D., Professor, Experimental Cancer Research, Antibody & Vaccine Group, Cancer Sciences, University of Southampton

Mark Cragg is Professor of Experimental Cancer Biology in the Cancer Sciences Unit of Southampton University Faculty of Medicine. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1998 and did his postdoctoral studies in Southampton with Martin Glennie and Melbourne, Australia with Andreas Strasser before returning to the UK to start his own group in 2007. He is interested in all aspects of how therapeutics result in tumour regression and is focused on three main types of therapeutics – antibodies, chemotherapy and small molecule inhibitors with the aim of understanding how these therapeutics function to delete tumour cells, how resistance occurs and how it might be overcome. In particular, he is interested in how monoclonal antibodies interact with Fc gamma receptors to achieve their therapeutic activities.

Lindy Durrant, Ph.D., Professor of Cancer Immunotherapy Academic Scancell plc / University of Nottingham Oncology

Professor Lindy Durrant is an internationally recognised immunologist in the field of tumour therapy. She has a personal Chair in Cancer Immunotherapy at the Department of Clinical Oncology at the University of Nottingham and has worked for over 20 years in translational research, developing products for clinical trials including monoclonal antibodies and cancer vaccines. As well as running an academic antibody group at the University, she is Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of Scancell Limited which has developed, commercialised and patented the ImmunoBody® cancer vaccine technology prior to developing the Moditope® platform.

Andrew ‘Jez’ Gerry, Ph.D., Director, Preclinical Research, Adaptimmune Ltd

Dr. Andrew Gerry (Jez) leads the Cell Pipeline and Preclinical groups at Adaptimmune, having joined the company in 2008 following positions at Medigene Ltd and at the University of Reading. Jez led the preclinical safety and potency testing of Adaptimmune’s lead programme, NYESO SPEARTM T, which has been showing promising data in clinical trials in multiple myeloma and synovial sarcoma. More recently, Jez led the preclinical development of 3 new SPEARTM T cell products targeting MAGE-A10, AFP and MAGE-A4 across multiple tumour indications in Phase I/II clinical trials. Jez was part of investigations into the cause of cardiac toxicity seen in their MAGE-A3a3a TCR programs due to cross-reactivity to a peptide derived from the contractile protein Titin, and the subsequent development of Adaptimmune’s current extensive in vitro preclinical safety screening process for new enhanced-affinity TCRs. Within Jez’s current role as Director of Preclinical Research at Adaptimmune, he leads teams generating and evaluating new TCRs for potency and specificity, the selection of optimally-engineered TCRs, and the extensive evaluation of specificity and safety of new optimal TCRs for adoptive T cell therapy.

David Gilham, Ph.D., Vice President, R&D, Celyad, S.A.

David Gilham has recently moved in September 2016 to join Celyad S.A. as Vice President Research and Development. Prior to this, he was a Reader in Cancer Immunotherapy at the Institute of Cancer Sciences, University of Manchester. Dr Gilham has been working on engineered T cell therapy for over 20 years with Professor Robert Hawkins focusing upon understanding CAR structure and function and working to deliver early phase testing of first generation CAR T cells in Clinical trials in Manchester.

Elizabeth Kingsley, Ph.D., Consultant, Retrogenix Limited

At Retrogenix, Elizabeth provides scientific support to business development activities, planning studies to identify specific cell surface receptors and off-targets using the human cell microarray technology. She also works with biotechnology companies on PR and marketing strategies. Elizabeth has a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Manchester, UK.

John Maher, M.D., Ph.D., Consultant and Senior Lecturer, Immunology, Cancer Studies, King’s College London

Dr John Maher is a clinical immunologist and immunopathologist who leads the "CAR Mechanics" research group within King's College London. His research group is focused on the development of adoptive immunotherapy using CAR engineered and gamma delta T-cells. He is also chief scientific officer of a spin-out company named Leucid Bio and is a consultant immunologist within King's Health Partners.

Christophe Quéva, Ph.D., CSO, iTeos Therapeutics

Christophe Quéva, Ph.D. joined iTeos Therapeutics after successive positions in Research at AstraZeneca, Amgen, and Gilead Sciences. He led or supported small molecule and biologics drug discovery programs in Oncology from target selection to commercial approval.

Katherine Seidl, Ph.D., Director, Immunotherapy, bluebird bio

Katherine Seidl, Ph.D., has served as Director, Immunotherapy, at bluebird bio, Cambridge, MA since June 2016. Katherine was formerly with Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research where she held several positions with increasing responsibility over a nearly 6-year tenure. Most recently Kathy served as a Senior Scientist in the department of Oncology in Cambridge, MA driving the strategy for biologics in Immuno-oncology. Prior, Kathy spent nearly five years in Novartis, Basel, Switzerland working on early drug discovery targets in autoimmune disease with a focus on Type I Diabetes, Celiac Disease and Transplantation indications. Prior experience in pre-clinical and translational research include Daiamed, Wyeth, and Pfizer. Kathy holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from Stanford University, and a B.A. in Biology from Swarthmore College.

Andrea Van Elsas, Ph.D., CSO, Aduro Biotech Europe

Andrea van Elsas became Chief Scientific Officer of Aduro Biotech Europe in November 2015. Prior to its acquisition by Aduro in 2015, Dr. Andrea van Elsas co-founded BioNovion and served as Chief Scientific Officer focusing on the development of innovative therapeutic antibodies in the field of immune oncology. From 1999 to 2011, he held numerous positions at Organon in Oss, Netherlands, and Cambridge, Massachusetts (acquired by Schering-Plough Corporation in 2007 and later by Merck & Co.), and as the Director of Tumor Immunology he ran the immune oncology portfolio including the program that later became known as pembrolizumab. As a postdoctoral researcher from 1997-1999, Andrea worked at the University of California, Berkeley, studying antibodies blocking CTLA-4 for the treatment of cancer and is a co-inventor on the original patents that formed the basis for the development of Yervoy® (ipilimumab), the first checkpoint inhibitor approved in 2011 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of melanoma.

John Wagstaff, M.D., MB, ChB, Director, South West Wales Cancer Institute & Professor, Medical Oncology, Swansea University College of Medicine

Professor Wagstaff trained in Medical Oncologist at the Christie Hospital in Manchester. In 1986 he was appointed Senior Lecturer at the Free University Hospital in Amsterdam. In 1994 he was appointed the Karl Landsteiner Professor of Medical Oncology at the Free University. In 1998 he became Professor & Head of Haematology and Oncology at the University of Maastricht. Dr Wagstaff is currently Professor of Medical Oncology within the College of Medicine at Swansea University. He is also Director of the South West Wales Cancer Institute. Professor Wagstaff has (co)-authored 180 papers in International Peer reviewed journals. He has concentrated on developing clinical trials using immunotherapy and anti-angiogenesis agents to treat patients with melanoma and renal cell carcinoma.

Optimisation & Developability

Travis W. Bainbridge, MSc, Senior Scientific Researcher, Protein Chemistry, Genentech, Inc.

Travis Bainbridge is currently a Senior Scientific Researcher within the Protein Sciences division of the Genentech Research and Early Development organization. He has more than eight years of experience supporting drug development, from target identification through preclinical validation, in the therapeutic areas of metabolic disease, neurodegeneration and oncology. He is an expert in biochemical assay development, protein-protein interactions and antibody production. Travis received his B.S. in Genetics and Microbiology, and M.S. in Molecular Virology from Purdue University. Prior to joining Genentech, he worked at the University of Florida as a Biological Scientist, where his research focused on poxvirus genetics and transcriptional regulation.

M. Jack Borrok, Ph.D., Scientist II, Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering, MedImmune (AstraZeneca)

Dr. Borrok joined MedImmune in 2010 and currently works 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 Ph.D. 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.

Thomas Duensing, CTO, IntelliCyt Corporation

No bio available

Sagit Hindi, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, Biologics Technology, Eli Lilly

Dr. Hindi is a Principal Scientist at Eli Lilly NY heading the bioanalytical team. She joined Eli Lilly in 2007, after receiving her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry, and she is currently leading the bioanalytical and biophysical characterization of antibodies, bispecific antibodies, and ADCs in support of oncology research and development. Her expertise includes mass spectrometry, chromatography, electrophoresis, light scattering, and calorimetric techniques for protein characterization.

Nicholas Joseph Martin, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Bioprocess characterization, Albumedix

Nick did his BSc at Aston University 2008-2011. From there he went on to a PhD at the University of Birmingham focusing on mass spectrometry based proteomics, working under the supervision of Helen Cooper. After his PhD, he went on to join what was Novozymes Biopharma in 2015 before becoming Albumedix in 2016. Here he has been working on the Veltis drug delivery platform, characterising albumins, albumin fusion proteins and albumin conjugates.

Matt Johnson, Ph.D., CTO, Avacta Life Sciences

Matt has a PhD in Molecular Biology and then took a Postdoctoral position in the Biochemistry Department at Cambridge University. Matt joined Abcam in 2005, his career developing as the company grew to become the leading provider of research-grade antibodies in the life sciences market. 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

Hubert Kettenberger, Ph.D., Senior Principal Scientist, Large Molecule Research, Roche Innovation Center Munich

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

Lars Linden, Ph.D., Head, Protein Biochemistry, Biologics Research, Bayer AG

Lars Linden is Head of the Protein Biochemistry group in Biologics Research at Bayer and responsible for production of research compounds and tools in biologics projects of Bayer’s early research pipeline. He is also caretaker of the iBET (Portugal) collaboration. Lars joined Bayer in 2007 during the acquisition of Schering AG where he had worked as a lab head in protein biochemistry. Previously he worked crystallization of GPCRs and ion channels in a small biotech company “m-phasys”. Lars received his Ph.D. from the Technical University in Munich for his work on structural biology of plant enzymes, being member of Robert Hubers X-ray crystallography group at the Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry

Chris Lloyd, Senior Scientist, MedImmune

Chris Lloyd is a Senior Scientist working in Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering (ADPE) at MedImmune, Cambridge UK. He responsible for leading early-stage projects across multiple therapy areas, including oncology, neuroscience and metabolic disorders. Chris also works closely with biopharmaceutical development colleagues to establish strategies in bringing the most developable molecules forward as drug candidates.

Thorsten Lorenz, Ph.D., Group Head, Developability Assessment, Integrated Biologics Profiling, Novartis Pharma AG

Thorsten Lorenz studied Biochemistry at the University of Bochum in Germany. He performed his PhD work at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research and afterwards joined the Novartis Institute for BioMedical Research as a postdoctoral fellow. In 2011, he joined the Integrated Biologics Profiling (IBP) Unit at Novartis, setting up and leading a laboratory for biophysical characterization and pre-formulation assessment, and got appointed Group Head in January 2016. In October 2017 he has been appointed Global Head Developability Assessment, responsible for the assessment of developability characteristics including molecular properties, downstream process and pre-formulation aspects, immunogenicity risk as well as in vivo fitness for all Biologics of the Novartis pipeline at the transition from Research to Development.

Chetan Patel, Ph.D., Principal Research Scientist, Biotherapeutics Discovery Research, Eli Lilly and Company

Dr. Patel received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he studied protein-protein interactions that mediate programmed cell death. He completed postdoctoral training in Biology at Stanford University where he characterized the mechanism of aggregation-induce proteasome impairment. Dr. Patel joined Eli Lilly in 2009 and has focused on the optimization of diverse biotherapeutic platforms using developability assessment and rational protein engineering strategies.

Alexey Rak, Ph.D., Head, Biostructure and Biophysics, Integrated Drug Discovery, Sanofi R&D

Alexey Rak got his MSc in Biology and Genetics, and in Biochemistry. He then completed Ph.D.s in Biochemistry and Biophysics working on protein biosynthesis machinery characterization. He did his PostDoc and then held a Group Leader position at Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology in Germany working in the field of vesicular membrane trafficking. For this work, he was awarded several honors including European Young Investigator Award in 2004. Since 2007 Alexey joined Sanofi as head of protein crystallization in Paris where he has developed new methods to characterize biophysical properties of proteins including biologics, and enabling the lead discovery of challenging protein targets. Since 2014 he is heading Bio Structure and Biophysics at Integrated Drug Discovery in Sanofi.

Dorina Saro, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Cell and Developability Sciences, Janssen R&D

I am a Senior Scientist working in the Cell and Developability Sciences group at Janssen R & D, PDMS organization since 2013. I have a lot of experience in the developability evaluation of pre-clinical candidates including bispecific molecules, protein scaffolds and antibodies. Prior to joining Janssen, I did post-doctoral training at Yale University, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry department studying the structure/function relationship of DNA repair proteins involved in Fanconi anemia and cancer. I hold a Ph.D. from Wayne State University, Chemistry department where I studied the thermodynamic and structural interactions mediated by PDZ domains.

Hiroki Shirai, Ph.D., Executive Fellow, Modality Research Laboratories, Astellas Pharma, Inc.

1990-2002; Tanabe Seiyaku Co Ltd. (1995-97; visiting scientist at Prof. Haruki Nakamura’s lab. at Biomolecular engineering Research Institute, and 2000-01; visiting scientist at Prof. Tom Blundell’s lab., department of biochemistry, Univ. of Cambridge). 2002 May- Sept.; Riken Yokohama Institute. 2002Oct-05; Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd, 2005-present; Astellas Pharma Inc. (2012-present; executive fellow.) 2014-present; board of protein science society of Japan. 2015-present; board of next gen. super computer PJ at ministry of education, culture, sports science and technology, Japan. His major is protein engineering and informatics for drug discovery. Thanks to the experiences of in silico analysis of CDR-H3 structures, he set up high resolution antibody modeling technology which proved competitive at Antibody modeling assessment II (AMA-II) (2014). He introduced a new concept of “design-ability” at PEGS-Europe (2015).

William Somers, Ph.D., Vice President, Biomedicines Design, Pfizer, Inc.

Will Somers completed Post-Doctoral research in Genentech’s Protein Engineering department before joining Genetics Institute in 1994 to set up a new X-ray crystallography group. The group set up state of the art automation and successfully used X-ray structures for molecular design in many project teams. In Wyeth he went on to lead an expanded group that also included molecular modeling and protein biochemistry. He now heads a group called Biomedicines Design that is responsible for discovering and developing biotherapeutics in collaboration with all the Research Units. The group has a diverse portfolio consisting of antibodies, antibody drug conjugates and endogenous proteins. Will created a highly collaborative environment that fostered innovation to solve problems. One of the groups strengths is the use of innovative structure based engineering techniques that have been successfully applied to improve both the potency and manufacturing properties of therapeutic leads. These methods have contributed to a diverse pipeline of optimized and differentiated biotherapeutics that have progressed to development.

Linhui Julie Su, Ph.D., Senior Research Investigator II, Molecular Discovery Technologies, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Julie received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry with concentration in biochemistry from Duke University. She did her graduate work with Anna Marie Pyle at Columbia University, focusing on the folding of large catalytic RNAs. She then moved to Boston and carried out postdoctoral work in Susan Lindquist’s lab at Whitehead Institute, using yeast as a model for characterizing the disruption of cellular pathways caused by misfolding of alpha synuclein. She joined Bristol Myers Squibb in 2009 and works in Discovery, utilizing in vitro selection methods to identify biologic leads for therapeutic targets.

Nels Thorsteinson, Scientific Services Manager, Biologics, Chemical Computing Group Inc.

Nels Thorsteinson is a Scientific Services Manager at Chemical Computing Group, responsible for providing scientific support, programming custom applications and guiding CCG's biologics applications development. Nels majored in biomedical computing at Queen's University, Canada, completing his graduate studies at the University of British Columbia focusing on bioinformatics and computational chemistry.

Alex van der Kooi, Manager, Interaction Laboratory, IBIS Technologies

Alex van der Kooi earned his degree in 1997 and has worked at institutes such as the Dutch Vaccine Institute, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Immunicon Corporation. Alex started working at Ibis in 2009. Alex can be found at IBIS customer sites and conferences giving demonstrations, presentations, workshops and training.

Dagmar Zunner, Ph.D., Field Application Scientist, BioProduction Development, Molecular Devices

Dagmar joined Molecular Devices in 2012 She is responsible for customer training for mammalian and microbial HTS colony pickers; supporting automation / integration into automated platforms at Pharma/Biotech accounts; product development collaboration and technical hands-on training for specialized cell culture (semi-solid media plating). She has 5 years prior experience working for Millipore GmbH and Merck Millipore Biosciences. She gained her PhD in Neurobiology at the Center of Neurobiology, Hamburg.

Engineering Next-Generation Antibody Drug Conjugates

Aditya Bardia, M.D., MPH, Attending Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, and Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Aditya Bardia is a board-certified medical oncologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston. Dr. Bardia received his internal medicine residency training at Mayo Clinic and medical oncology training at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. As the director of Precision Medicine at the breast center, Dr. Bardia is interested in integrating precision diagnostics and precision therapeutics to significantly improve the outcomes of patients afflicted with breast cancer. Dr. Bardia has been involved in the clinical application of tumor genotyping and liquid biopsies to facilitate therapy selection and real-time monitoring of breast cancer, as well as development of successful targeted therapies for patients with breast cancer. Dr. Bardia is the principal investigator of several clinical trials investigating the role of targeted therapy combinations for breast cancer, and led the clinical development of the breast cancer drug, sacituzumab (IMMU-132), which was awarded breakthrough designation status by FDA in Feb 2016. Dr. Bardia has received various research awards including the outstanding research award for research excellence from Mayo Clinic, Young Investigator Award from ASCO, and Douglas Family Foundation prize for excellence in oncology research. As 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, Dr. Bardia seeks to advance our understanding and clinical application of precision diagnostics and therapeutics.

Roger R. Beerli, Ph.D., CSO, NBE-Therapeutics, Ltd.

Roger Beerli serves as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at NBE Therapeutics since April 2013. Roger Beerli has over 10 years of experience in discovery, engineering and preclinical development of therapeutic antibodies. Previously he has led R&D activities related to therapeutic antibody development at Cytos, Switzerland, and later at Intercell, Austria. Roger is a renowned expert in mammalian cell based antibody expression and display for the discovery of fully human therapeutic antibodies. He was the main architect and inventor of Cytos' eMAB® mammalian cell antibody development platform, which, under Roger's leadership, was successfully used for the development of fully human therapeutic antibody candidates against numerous targets, including Nicotine and Influenza A, both at Cytos, and also later at Intercell, after the platform had been acquired by Intercell. Roger Beerli studied molecular biology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and obtained his PhD for work at the Novartis-associated Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland, for research on ErbB receptor tyrosine kinases. Afterwards he performed postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, USA, in the lab of Prof. Dr. Carlos F. Barbas III. Here he specialized in phage display for protein and antibody engineering and was among the first to demonstrate artificial regulation of endogenous genes using engineered transcription factors. Roger Beerli has published widely in the areas of protein discovery, protein engineering and antibody development, and he is co-inventor on numerous patents and patent applications.

Mahendra Deonarain, Ph.D., CSO, Antikor Biopharma, Ltd.

Dr. Deonarain studied at Imperial College and Cambridge University where he carried out PhD research into protein engineering. From 1997-2011 Dr Deonarain was a Principle Investigator and Reader in Antibody Technology at Imperial College, which led to some novel technologies being developed commercially. Dr Deonarain now retains honorary links with Imperial College. He has published over 70 papers and patents in protein/antibody engineering/conjugates. In 2001, he co-founded PhotoBiotics to develop a form of targeted photodynamic therapy using antibody fragments optimized for bio-conjugation (OptiLink technology). This is now Antikor Biopharma where he is CEO/CSO leading a team to develop the next-generation of antibody-fragment based ADCs for solid tumours based on OptiLink.

Julia Gavrilyuk, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, Discovery Chemistry, AbbVie Stemcentrx

I am Principal Scientist, Chemistry Lead at Abbvie Stemcentrx working on the discovery and development of novel linker-payloads for antibody-drug conjugate application. I obtained my PhD at the University of Toronto and completed postdoctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute under the mentorship of Prof. Carlos F. Barbas III.

Philip Howard, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, MedImmune, Inc. and CSO, Spirogen, Ltd.

Dr Howard is a Founding Scientist and Chief Scientific Officer at Spirogen. He has been conducting research into the pyrrolobenzodiazepine (PBD) family of antitumor antibiotics for twenty years in both academia and industry. Philip has worked as a part of a multi-disciplinary team, supported by Cancer Research UK and Spirogen, on the synthesis, biological evaluation and development of the PBD dimers. Since 2008 he has been working on the development of the PBDs as payloads for antibody-drug conjugate therapy with a number of leading companies including, Seattle Genetics, Stemcentrx, ADC Therapeutics, Genentech, Regeneron and Tanabe Research Laboratories USA Inc. Dr Howard designed the tesirine payload (SG3249) and the warhead SG3132 released by the talirine payload. His work at MedImmune is focused on the further development of their PBD-ADC platform. At the time of writing, more than 10 PBD-ADCs, arising from Spirogen collaborations, are the subject of Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III clinical trials.

Ronit Mazor, Ph.D., Post-Doctoral Fellow, Lab for Molecular Biology, National Cancer Institute (NIH)

Dr. Mazor is a post-doctoral fellow in the lab for Molecular Biology in NCI, working with Ira Pastan on recombinant immunotoxins. She holds a Bachelor, Master and PhD degrees from Tel Aviv University, in Israel. Ronit has been focusing on methods to reduce the immunogenicity of recombinant therapeutic proteins in cancer therapy. She is a co-inventor of US and European patents pertaining protein engineering of recombinant immunotoxins with low immunogenicity or longer half-life. Ronit is the recipient of several awards including the National Cancer Institute (NCI) outstanding post-doctoral fellow award of 2016.

Chawita (Jelly) Netirojjanakul, Ph.D., Scientist, Hybrid Modality Engineering Group, Therapeutic Discovery Research, Amgen, Inc.

I received a B.Sc. in chemistry from MIT, conducting research in the laboratory of Prof. John Essigmann (MIT) and Prof. Steve Ley (Cambridge). After graduation, I received a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue my interest in science policy and commercialization studying an M.Phil. in Technology Policy at the University of Cambridge, UK. I returned to science and conducted Ph.D. research under the supervision of Prof. Matthew Francis in the chemistry department at UC Berkeley with a focus on "development and applications of well-defined antibody and antibody fragment bioconjugates." I joined Amgen in 2014 to pursue my passion in designing and developing hybrid molecule therapeutics.

Silvia Peretti, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, Biochemistry, IRBM Science Park SpA
Silvia Peretti is a Senior Research Scientist at IRBM Science Park in Rome (Italy) since 2011 where she works on the development of a new biologics platform based on engineered target-specific CH2 domains (CH2D) called ABDURINS.
In collaboration with Research Corporation Technologies settled in Tucson (Arizona), she leads a project aiming at identifying and engineering target-specific ABDURINS carrying toxic warheads or as multifunctional molecules to relevant cancer targets.
Silvia graduated from University of Rome and conducted her PhD research at Rockefeller University in New York. She received additional postdoctoral training at the National Institute of Health in Rome.
During her PhD and postdoctoral research, she studied the biology of HIV infection and its interplay with dendritic cells during the mucosal acquisition of SIV/HIV infection in the macaque model.

Jan Pinkas, Ph.D., Executive Director, ImmunoGen, Inc.

Jan Pinkas joined ImmunoGen, Inc. in 2008 and is currently Senior Director, Translational Research. Dr. Pinkas leads a research team charged with utilizing animal model systems to understand features of ImmunoGen’s antibody-maytansinoid conjugates that impact tolerability, pharmacokinetics, metabolism and anti-tumor activity. In addition, he has responsibility for preclinical development-related pharmacology, toxicology, pharmacokinetic and IHC/biomarker activities to support molecules advancing to IND as well as molecules currently in clinical development. Prior to 2008, Dr. Pinkas was a Senior Scientist in Cancer Pharmacology at Amgen, Inc. and a Scientist II in Oncology Research at Genzyme, Corp. Dr. Pinkas was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Philip Leder in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and he received his doctorate in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1998.

William R. Strohl, Ph.D., President and Owner, BiStro Biotech Consulting, LLC

Dr. William Strohl is founder and owner of BiStro Biotech Consulting LLC, a consulting company started in 2016 to help biotechnology companies grow and expand their programs and capabilities. Prior to retiring from Johnson & Johnson in August 2016, Dr. Strohl was Vice President and Head, Janssen BioTherapeutics, Janssen R&D, where he ran biologics discovery, early development, and technology development. As part of this job, he initiated new areas of research in gene and cell therapy to augment the long-standing traditional efforts in antibodies and protein therapeutics at J&J. Prior to that, Dr. Strohl was head of Biologics Research, the discovery arm of Janssen BioTherapeutics, in which he doubled the size and output of the biologics capabilities, and significantly improved antibody engineering of the clinical development candidates. Over his time at J&J, Dr. Strohl and his teams placed more than 30 highly innovative, novel biologics into development, many of which are still in clinical development today. Before joining J&J, Dr. Strohl was at Merck and Co from 1997 to 2008, leading Natural Products Biology, initiating a Microbial Vaccines department, and then later leading the biologics discovery efforts, where he was involved in two biotechnology company acquisitions and multiple licenses to improve the discovery capabilities. From 1980 to 1997, Dr. Strohl rose from Assistant to Full Professor in the Department of Microbiology and the Program of Biochemistry at the Ohio State University. There he pursued the molecular biology and biochemistry of polyketide biosynthesis pathways, particularly doxorubicin, in actinomycetes, and the physiology of E. coli in computer-controlled high cell density fermentations. Dr. Strohl, who is a noted leader in the area of pharmaceutical biotechnology, has over 140 publications, 17 issued patents, edited two books in the area of biotechnology, and has recently written a book entitled "Therapeutic Antibody Engineering: Current and Future Advances Driving the Strongest Growth Area in the Pharma Industry", which was published in October 2012.

Engineering Antibodies

Jan Terje Andersen, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Group Leader, Department of Immunology, Centre for Immune Regulation, Department of Biosciences

Andersen is heading the Laboratory for Adaptive Immunity and Homeostasis at Oslo University Hospital, which is studying the cellular processes and molecular interplay underlying the functions of the two most abundant proteins in the blood, albumin and IgG. By combining structural and biophysical approaches with cellular and in vivo studies, they use the insights to design novel albumin and IgG molecules with improved binding properties and cellular functions.

Joanna Bereta, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Cell Biochemistry, Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology, The Jagiellonian University in Krakow

Joanna Bereta, associate professor, Head of the Department of Cell Biochemistry at the Faculty of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology, Jagiellonian University. Her professional activity comprises two areas: research and biotechnology. Her major scientific interests include cell function under pathological conditions; in particular she studies the importance of shedding of membrane proteins including cytokines and growth factors by ADAM metalloproteases in inflammation and cancer progression. She is also a co-founder of the monoclonal antibody laboratory at the Faculty of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology, in which custom monoclonal antibodies for research and diagnostics are being generated using classical and phage display methodology. During routine work her team observed unusual properties of mouse antibodies of IgG3 class, which became the subject of ongoing studies.

James Ernst, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Protein Sciences, Genentech, Inc.

James Ernst received his Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry from Yale University and took post-Doctoral Studies in Neurobiology at the Stanford University Medical School. He is currently a Senior Scientist in the Protein Sciences division of the Genentech Research and Early Development organization. He has more than 15 years of experience supporting all stages of therapeutic development from target identification to clinical validation. He is an expert in biochemical assay development, protein-protein binding, structure function relationships and antibody production. He has worked with and lead both large and small molecule therapeutic discovery teams where his work has contributed meaningfully to the development of brain penetrant antibodies and the development antibodies targeting amyloid proteins treatment of neurodegenerative disease, anti-CD20 antibodies for the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis and an FGF21 mimetic antibody for the treatment of type II diabetes. Most recently his research has focused on the interspecies translatability and stability of engineered variants of the antibody Fc-effector region.

Christoph Esslinger, Ph.D., CSO, Memo Therapeutics

Christoph Esslinger is CSO, co-founder of Memo Therapeutics AG, an ETH spin off active in antibody technology development and discovery of therapeutic antibodies. Dr. Esslinger pioneered strategies for the molecular cloning of human-derived antibodies and is a co-inventor of Aducanumab which is currently in clinical phase III for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

Mark Fogg, Ph.D., Group Leader, Immunology, Abzena

Mark Fogg, Ph.D., leads the Immunology Group at Abzena, a company that enables the development and manufacture of better biopharmaceuticals. Mark obtained his PhD in T cell immunology at the University of Reading, and carried out his postdoctoral work on the generation of T cells for cancer immunotherapy at Harvard Medical School. He then migrated to industry to lead a cell biomarker discovery group within Pfizer BioTX R&D prior to joining Abzena where he leads the effort to understand immunogenicity risk associated with biotherapeutics.

Jeremy Fry, D.Phil, Director, Sales, ProImmune

Jeremy Fry gained his DPhil. from the University of Oxford developing gene therapy strategies to induce immunological tolerance in transplant recipients. Jeremy joined ProImmune to generate a new class of MHC multimer staining reagents. For the past 16 years as ProImmune's Director of Sales, he has led the sales team in a growing business, focusing on developing and implementing innovative technologies that radically improve our understanding of immune responses.

Manuel Fuentes, Ph.D., Scientist, Medicine & Proteomics Unit, Cancer Research Center, University of Salamanca-CSIC

Manuel Fuentes graduate in Chemistry and Biochemistry by the University of Salamanca (Spain). After his Master in Biotechnology at University of Bielefeld (Germany), he joined at Biocatalysis Department at National Spanish Research Council (Madrid, Spain) for his Ph.D. Thesis, entitled “Design and development of conjugation and immobilization methods of biomolecules for diagnostic methods useful in Genomics and Proteomics”. Afterwards, he moved to Harvard Institute of Proteomics at Harvard Medical School ( Boston, EE.UU.), during almost 8 years, when he was working on biomarker and drug discovery in tumor and autoimmune pathologies by using a combination of high-throughput proteomics approaches. In 2010, he joined as a scientist at Cancer Research Center at University of Salamanca, where his research is focused on biomarker and drug discovery in hematological diseases, mainly for personalized medicine. Manuel Fuentes is co-author of 100 peer-reviewed papers ( ISI web of Knowledge) in international journals, >10 licensed international patents, >15 book chapters, and more than 50 invited lectures in national and international meetings. In 2010, Human Proteome Organization awarded Manuel Fuentes as “HUPO Young Scientist" for his highly-relevant contributions in the field.

Fernando Garces, Ph.D., Scientist, Molecular Engineering, Therapeutic Discovery, Amgen

Fernando is a recipient of the 2015 Scripps CHAVI-ID Young Investigator Award for outstanding contributions to the development of an anti-HIV-1 vaccine to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies against this virus. His research career started when he was awarded an international Ph.D. fellowship to join the University of Barcelona, Spain, in 2004. After finishing his Ph.D., he moved to the Institute of Cancer Research in London, UK, where he started his postdoctoral research to work on proteins involved in the DNA Repair and how to use them as potential targets for small molecules. In 2012, he joined the Professor Ian Wilson’s lab at The Scripps Research Institute, where he became an expert in understanding the molecular details that mediate the antibody-protein interactions such as the glycoprotein-gp160 located on the surface of the HIV-1 trimer. In 2016, Fernando joined Amgen, where he is currently working on the engineering of therapeutic antibodies aimed at the treatment cardiovascular and oncologic diseases.

Guy Hermans, Ph.D., CSO, Isogenica Limited

Guy Hermans is CSO at Isogenica. He has over a decade of experience in antibody fragment discovery and early development, as well as antibody discovery technology development. Dr. Hermans gained a PhD from University of Hasselt and performed postdoctoral research at Stanford University Medical School in target discovery and validation.

Greta Hultqvist, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Pharmaceutical Biosciences, Uppsala University

Greta Hultqvist is an Assistant Professor in the department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences at Uppsala University. She received her Ph.D. 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.

Hyoki Kim, President and CEO, Celemics, Inc.

Hyoki Kim is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Celemics, a biotech company providing high-throughput antibody sequencing, gene synthesis and NGS target enrichment solutions. Previously, he was a process researcher of ion implantation at inter-university semiconductor center. His current research focuses on developing high-throughput in vitro cloning, multiplexed clonal analysis, de novo gene synthesis, and assay automation. He obtained his Ph.D. at Seoul National University, College of Engineering.

Patrick Koenig, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Antibody Discovery, AbbVie Stemcentrx

I obtained my Ph.D. in Biology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and joined Genentech as a postdoctoral research fellow in 2010. Since 2015, I am a Senior Scientist working in Antibody Engineering with AbbVie Stemcentrx in South San Francisco USA.

Emily Leproust, CEO, Twist Bioscience

Emily LeProust is a pioneer in ultralong DNA synthesis with over 20 patents and 40 publications in top journals. As Director of Genomics Applications and Chemistry R&D at Agilent Technologies, she developed the Oligo Library Synthesis technology, a platform that enabled the emergence of new applications. In 2013, she then cofounded Twist Bioscience and serves as CEO and President.

Jeanette Leusen, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Laboratory for Translational Immunology, University Medical Hospital Utrecht

Dr. Jeanette Leusen, received her Ph.D. in 1995 at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her entry into the field of therapeutic antibodies and their modes of action began when she was awarded a prestigious fellowship from the Netherlands Scientific Organization (NWO). She is actively involved in the in vivo studies of therapeutic antibodies using several mouse models. Within the immunotherapy group, a unique panel of Fc receptor knock-out and transgenic animals has been developed and obtained over the past decades (e.g. Immunity, 2001; Cancer Research 2006, J.Immunol, 2014). Supported by grants from KWF and AICR, Dr Leusen’s lab has generated and characterized a new transgenic mouse reconstituting FcR expression but incapable of ADCC. Interestingly, in both lymphoid and solid tumor models, therapy with several mAbs was completely abrogated in our ADCC-deficient model (Cancer Research, 2010, J. Immunol 2014). Last but not least, Dr. Leusen strongly believes in IgA as a novel class of antibody for treatment of both malignant as infectious disease. Recently we published for the first time in vivo efficacy of these antibodies (EMBO MM, 2013), but also Cancer Immunol Res 2015, MABs 2015, Cancer res 2015, and review in Mol Imm 2015.

Yvonne McGrath, Ph.D., CSO, Complix NV

Dr McGrath joined Complix as CSO in May 2014. Prior to joining the Complix team, she held the post of Head of Development at Immunocore, UK. In this position, she developed and executed the late preclinical and early clinical strategy for a novel platform technology. Dr McGrath’s previous experience includes Project Management at the UK subsidiary of the German biotech company MediGene AG, and Senior Scientist at BioVex (now part of Amgen). She has a Ph.D. from the University of Wales, College of Medicine.

Sai Reddy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Biosystems Science & Engineering, ETH Zurich

Sai Reddy is a tenure-track Assistant Professor (since 02.2012) in the Dept. 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).

Jonas Schaefer, Ph.D., Head, High-Throughput Binder Selection Facility, Dept of Biochemistry, University of Zurich

For more than six years, Dr. Schaefer has been heading the High-Throughput Binder Selection Facility of the Department of Biochemistry, using automated Ribosome Display and various High-Throughput screenings to develop specific alternative affinity reagents (called DARPins). With his team, he develops new methodologies enabling the generation, screening and validation of several thousand binders per target which are used in numerous international collaborations for a diversity of applications, ranging from basic research to diagnostic usage and medical applications.

Dale Starkie, BSc., Senior Scientist, Antibody Discovery, UCB Celltech

Dale is currently working as a senior scientist within the Antibody Discovery group at UCB Celltech utilising UCB's proprietary CORE antibody discovery platform. Dale is actively involved in single B cell-based antibody discovery technology development using flow cytometry and microfluidics. This lead to a recent publication on a novel technique for antibody discovery using single B-cell sorting via FACS. He is also currently pursuing a PhD in molecular neuroscience & antibody engineering with University College London Institute of Neurology utilising multiple antibody technologies and engineering approaches in the context of dementia. 

Mathias Uhlen, Ph.D., Professor, Science for Life Laboratory, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Dr Uhlen research is focused on protein science, antibody engineering and precision medicine and range from basic research in human and microbial biology to more applied research, including clinical applications. The research has resulted in 650 publications with a current h-index of 100 (Google Scholar). His group was the first to describe a number of innovations in science including:

• Engineered protein A and protein G for purification of antibodies
• Affinity tags for purification of recombinant fusion proteins3
• Solid phase methods for DNA handling using the biotin-streptavidin system
• Pyrosequencing leading to the first next generation DNA sequencing instrument
• Affibodies – protein binders aimed for therapeutic applications

Since 2003, he has led an international effort to systematically map the human proteome with antibodies and to create an open source knowledge-based resource called the Human Protein Atlas.

Marc van Dijk, Ph.D., Executive Director, Platform Technology, Agenus

Marc van Dijk obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Utrecht. He worked as post-doctoral scientist at the University of California at San Diego and held a tenure track position in the department of immunology at the University Medical Center in Utrecht. He was principle scientist at Medarex from 1997-1999, and served as Vice President antibody technology at Genmab between 2000-2005. Marc served as Chief Technology Officer of 4-Antibody AG prior to its acquisition by Agenus.

Advancing Bispecifics and Combination Therapy to the Clinic

Julian Andreev, Ph.D., Senior Staff Scientist, Oncology and Angiogenesis Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

Julian Andreev is a Ph.D. scientist with 16 years of experience in the Biopharmaceutical Industry. Right after his dissertation research in Dr. Joseph Schlessinger’s lab, he joined newly-formed Molecular Oncology group at EMD Serono Research Institute as Principal Investigator. At Serono, Julian played a major role into expansion of research activities into oncology drug discovery. Following his tenure at Sanofi Cambridge Research Center, Julian joined New York-based Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, where he established a research group studying mechanisms of intracellular trafficking of therapeutic antibodies and their targets. Julian Andreev received his B.Sc. in Biology and M.Sc. in Biotechnology from Hebrew University, Jerusalem. After training at Max-Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Tuebingen, Germany, he received his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from New York University, NY in 2000.

Marina Bacac, Ph.D., Head, Cancer Immunotherapy Department 2 (CIT-2), Roche Pharmaceutical Research & Early Development, pRED, Roche Innovation Center Zurich

Marina joined Roche in 2010 and currently heads one of the Cancer Immunotherapy Departments at the Roche Innovation Center Zurich. Marina and her team are dedicated to the characterization of the activity of different anti-cancer therapeutic agents including Gazyva, T-cell bispecific antibodies (TCBs), immunocytokines and checkpoint immunomodulators. Marina also coordinates the discovery teams involved in the development of TCB programs in pre-clinical and clinical stage of development (CEA TCB and CD20 TCB currently in Ph I clinical trials). She is also actively involved in the coordination of the tumor immunology network established between Roche and several academic institutions and pioneers efforts focused on establishment of superior models for testing of cancer immunotherapy drugs, based on patient-derived tumor material. Marina participates in building and overseeing Roche’s portfolio focused on antibody-based cancer immunotherapeutics.

H. Kaspar Binz, Ph.D., VP & Co-founder, Molecular Partners

Dr. H. Kaspar Binz is Vice President and co-founder of Molecular Partners (SIX: MOLN), a Swiss clinical stage biotech company developing DARPin® drugs for therapeutic applications. He invented and developed the designed repeat protein technology including the DARPin® technology during his post-doctoral training and Ph.D. studies with Prof. Andreas Plückthun at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. Dr. Binz has published widely in the areas of protein engineering and drug development and is inventor on numerous patents and patent applications. His research has been awarded with several prizes including the Swiss Technology Award 2005. Together with Molecular Partners, he won the Swiss Venture 2004 business plan competition, and the De Vigier Foundation award 2005. Dr. Binz serves as scientific advisor to several protein engineering conferences and has presented his work at numerous international science conferences. Dr. Binz was educated at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden (Prof. Mathias Uhlén) and holds a M.Sc. in biotechnology from the European school of biotechnology in Strasbourg, France.

Xiaoying Chen, Ph.D., Senior Manager, Early Oncology Development & Clinical Research, Pfizer

Xiaoying Chen is currently a clinical pharmacology lead in the Early Oncology Development & Clinical Research Department at Pfizer. Xiaoying received her Ph.D. degree (Pharmaceutical Sciences) from the University of Southern California, in 2011. She started her career at Pfizer PDM since 2011, working on mathematical modeling and simulation approaches to immunogenicity prediction for therapeutic proteins. She currently works on modeling and simulation supporting early Oncology clinical projects. Her research interests include mathematical modeling, such as empirical PK/PD modeling and system pharmacology modeling, immunogenicity prediction, drug delivery, bio-analysis, and design of recombinant fusion proteins.

Jey Cheng, Senior Research Scientist, Research & Development, Promega Corporation

No bio available

Rob N. de Jong, Ph.D., Associate Director, CMC Research & Protein Chemistry, Genmab BV

Rob has an academic background in molecular biology, structural biology and protein engineering. Since joining Genmab in 2007, he has served in different roles focused on the development of innovative antibody therapeutics. Currently, he leads research supporting the transition of lead products and novel antibody formats into manufacturing, covering e.g. protein characterization, protein stability, and cell line development.

Christina Furebring, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, R&D, Alligator Bioscience

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

Tariq Ghayur, Ph.D., Distinguished Research Fellow, Immunology Discovery, AbbVie Bioresearch Center

Tariq Ghayur received his Ph.D. (1987) in Immunology from Department of Physiology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He did his post-doctoral training at McGill (1987-’88) and Dana Farber Cancer Institute (1988-’90). Prior to AbbVie, Tariq worked at BASF Pharma (1990 – 2001) and Abbott Laboratories (2001 – 2012). He has worked on both small molecule and therapeutic antibody discovery programs, mainly defining the biology/pathology of selected targets (target validation) and developing assays for high throughput screening and/or candidate selection. From 1998-2004, he led two therapeutic antibody discovery project teams and delivered 2 drug development candidates. In 1999, Tariq initiated the dual – / multi – targeting biologics program that resulted in the discovery of dual-variable-domain (DVD) – Ig molecules and other multi – targeting biologics. Four DVD-Ig molecules entered clinical development. From 2011 – 2016, Tariq led the DVD – Ig and Novel Biologics team at AbbVie and defined some novel aspects of TNF biology. Currently, Tariq is the Head of Foundational Immunology Department at AbbVie. Tariq holds several patents and is the author of many peer-reviewed scientific publications. In addition to therapeutic antibodies and antibody generation technologies, his areas of interest are antibody engineering, inflammation, lymphocyte / cytokine biology, antigen processing and presentation and intracellular trafficking of proteins.

Patrik Kehler, Associate Director, Immuno-Oncology, Preclinical & Immunological Research, Glycotope GmbH

Patrik Kehler is a leading scientist at Glycotope GmbH since 2012. His initial work focused on the engineering of bispecific antibody constructs and lead discovery. As specialist in immunology he was subsequently responsible for the establishment of the Immuno-Oncology group at Glycotope with its broad pipeline on bispecific constructs. Before the appointment at Glycotope he studied Biology at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg and gained experience in the field of biochemistry, cell biology and biotechnology with focus on cancer-related signaling pathways.

Christian Klein, Ph.D., Distinguished Scientist, Head, Oncology Programs, Cancer Immunotherapy Discovery, Roche Pharmaceutical Research and Early Development, Roche Innovation Center Zurich

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.

Matthias Klinger, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, BiTE Technology, Amgen Research (Munich) GmbH

Matthias Klinger, Ph.D. is a Principal Scientist at Amgen Research (Munich). After studying biochemistry at the University of Regensburg and immunology at Washington University in St. Louis he obtained his doctoral degree in cell biology from the Eberhard-Karls University in Tübingen. Matthias has more than 10 years of experience with BiTE® antibody constructs, both in the successful advancement of early-stage projects, and in the translational research and clinical development of blinatumomab.

Marie Kosco-Vilbois, Ph.D., CSO, Novimmune SA

Dr Kosco-Vilbois is the CSO of Novimmune, Geneva, Switzerland, responsible for developing a pipeline of therapeutic mAbs and bispecific antibodies, five of which have entered clinical trials and two out licensed (Genentech/Roche & Tiziana). Currently, oversees the departments of Research, Translational Medicine and Bioprocess R&D. Prior Industry experience includes GlaxoWellcome, Serono and Roche, the latter as a scientific member of the Basel Institute for Immunology. Holds a doctorate in Immunology and Human Anatomy& Histology from the Medical College of Virginia, USA, and has published over 140 peer reviewed publications and is a co-inventor on numerous patents.

David Szymkowski, Ph.D., Vice President, Cell Biology, Xencor, Inc.

David Szymkowski leads the immunology / cell biology group and is a vice president at Xencor, Inc. Xencor is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing Fc-engineered and bispecific antibodies for the treatment of autoimmune diseases, asthma and allergic diseases, and cancer. Currently, 11 candidates engineered with Xencor's XmAb® technology are in clinical development internally and with partners including Novartis, Merck, Morphosys, Janssen, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Alexion. Prior to joining Xencor in 2002, Dr. Szymkowski was a principal scientist in the respiratory/inflammation group at Roche in Palo Alto, CA. Previously, he was a virology program leader at Roche in the U.K. He received his B.A. at Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology from Penn State, and completed a postdoc at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (U.K.).

Michael Tesar, Ph.D., Head, R&D, Affimed GmbH

Michael joined Affimed as Research Program Head in 2016. He is responsible for the development of novel antibody therapeutics based on Affimed’s proprietary NK-cell-engaging antibody platform. Prior to Affimed, he held positions at MorphoSys and Pierre Fabre as group leader in antibody discovery and preclinical development. He graduated from the University of Stuttgart in 1990 and conducted his Ph.D. research at the former Federal Research Center for Virus Diseases of Animals in Tübingen. After several years of post-doctoral training at the University of Utah and California he joined the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Braunschweig. Over the course of his career, Michael has developed a deep expertise in antibody discovery up to clinical development.

Mark Throsby Ph.D., CSO, Merus NV

Dr. Mark Throsby is Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Merus with responsibility for internal and external research and strategy. Prior to joining Merus, Dr. Throsby was 8 years at Crucell in various R&D capacities culminating in the role Director of Antibody R&D from 2006 to 2008. Before joining Crucell Dr. Throsby was an associate investigator with CNRS at Hôpital Necker in Paris for 4 years and prior to that held an MRC of Canada Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto. Dr. Throsby graduated in immunology from Monash University, Melbourne Australia and received his Ph.D. in 1994 from the Department of Medicine, Monash University, Australia.

Mihriban Tuna, Ph.D., Vice President, Drug Discovery, F-star

Mihriban has been with F-star since 2008 and currently holds the position of VP Drug Discovery, leading all internal and collaborative mAb2 discovery programmes. Prior to F-star she spent 6 years at Domantis/GSK Biopharm where she was involved in selection and optimization of domain antibodies, as well as technology development. Mihriban made the transition from academic research to industry after completing her Ph.D. and a short post-doctoral research post with Professor Dek Woolfson at the University of Sussex where she focused on the structure/stability engineering and design of small globular proteins.

Maria Wendt, Ph.D., Head, Science, Biologics, Genedata

Maria Wendt, Ph.D. is Head of Science at Genedata A.G. Dr. Wendt develops data management solutions for biopharma and biotech companies to support their biologics drug discovery and development programs. This includes biologics registration and workflow support solutions covering antibody and protein screening and engineering, protein expression and purification, and assays and analytics. She earned her Ph.D. at Iowa State University in chemical engineering.

Analytical Characterisation of Biotherapeutics

John Gebler, Director, Waters Corporation

No bio available

Christian Graf, Ph.D., Scientist, Technical Development, Biosimilars, Novartis Pharma AG

Christian Graf holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from University of Heidelberg/Germany where he worked on conformational changes of cellular chaperones using HDX-MS at the Zentrum für Molekulare Biologie Heidelberg (ZMBH, supervisors: Prof. M. Mayer/Prof. Bukau). In 2009, he joined Novartis Pharma AG in Basel, Switzerland, as a Senior Scientist for protein characterization in the Biologics Analytical Research & Development organization, mainly responsible for the early and late-phase MS characterization of therapeutic antibodies. From 2011 till 2016, he was Lab head and Principal Scientist in the Integrated Biologics Profiling unit within the Novartis Biologics Technical Development NBE organization in Basel, supporting early characterization and developability assessment of numerous innovative biologics pipeline projects. In 2017, he joined the Novartis BTDM-Technical Development Biosimilars characterization team in Oberhaching near Munich/Germany as Scientist where he is expert for the analytical characterization of biosimilar projects with focus on mass spectrometry and HDX-MS. His areas of expertise include physicochemical characterization of monoclonal antibodies, antibody fragments, antibody-drug-conjugates and other therapeutic glycoproteins, and their post-translational modifications and impurities, with special focus on diverse LC-MS applications and software solutions.

Roger Grau, Ph.D., Head, Research & Development, BU Confarma, Solvias AG

Dr. Roger Grau joined Solvias in 2016 as Head R&D BU Confarma in Hombourg (F). Having more than 20 years of experience in development of cell based disease models and assays, he is responsible for cell based bioassays (development and routine). He holds a PhD from the University of Tübingen (Germany) in Immunology/Clinical Research, studying self-tolerance of Natural Killer-cells towards autologous and allogeneic stem cells and their applicability to cell therapy for transplantation.

Daniel Higazi, Ph.D., Director, Analytical Development, Biologics Development, Ipsen Biopharm

Daniel has >14 years of experience in biopharmaceutical R&D supporting many pre-clinical and clinical development programs for therapeutic proteins. Daniel joined Ipsen in 2016 where he leads the Biologics Analytical Development group, formerly working at MedImmune/AstraZeneca, Eisai Pharmaceuticals and small biotechs. Daniel’s analytical responsibilities and interests span from protein engineering (developability by design) to bioprocess/formulation development and manufacturing. Daniel gained his BSc in Biochemistry from Imperial College, London and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.

Dan Bach Kristensen, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, Analytical Development, Symphogen

Dan Bach Kristensen holds a Ph.D. in biology and B.Sc. degree in chemistry. Dan is specialized in protein chemistry and mass spectrometry, which he initially applied in the field of proteome research in Japan and later in Denmark. For the last 13 years Dan has been working with analytical development in the biopharmaceutical industry, on projects ranging from early discovery through to product registration. Clinical indications include bleeding disorders, neutropenia, autoimmune diseases and oncology. Dan currently works as a Principal Scientist at Symphogen, which is specialized in the development of antibody mixtures for the treatment of cancers.

Elaine Mai, MSc, Senior Scientific Researcher, Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology, Genentech, Inc.

Elaine Mai received her Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from University of California, Davis. Then she received her M.S. in Biomedical Laboratory Science, with emphasis in Clinical Chemistry from San Francisco State University. Following her interests in biotechnology industry, she worked at Genentech in the department of Biochemical and Cellular Pharmacology where she developed PK, PD biomarker, immunogenicity and functional assays for antibody screening and characterization, candidate selection, and pre-clinical animal studies to evaluate PK/PD, efficacy and toxicity. Working in a cross-functional team environment, Elaine has successfully evaluated multiple molecular candidates that enabled the movement of several oncology and cancer immunology therapeutic programs from Research to Early Development.

Natalia Markova, Ph.D., Principal Scientist - MicroCal BioScience, Malvern Panalytical

Natalia Markova holds PhDs from the University of Chemical Technology, Ivanovo, Russia & the University of Lund, Sweden. She has extensive experience in DSC and ITC, thermal analysis, DLS, AUC and SPR, and has worked as Senior Scientist in the Structural Chemistry department of Biovitrum AB, Head of Biophysics at the Structural Genomics Consortium, Karolinska Institute, and Associate Director of the biophysical facility at iNovacia AB, Stockholm. Natalia is Principal Scientist, MicroCal, at Malvern Panalytical.

Christoph Roesli, Ph.D., Analytical Project Leader, Biologics Technical Development and Manufacturing, Novartis Pharma AG

Following studies in molecular biology and biochemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, Dr. Roesli performed his Ph.D. thesis in the lab of Prof. Dario Neri at the same university. After the subsequent PostDoc period, he led his own research group on biomarker identification and antibody-based therapeutics at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany. Finally, he moved to industry where he worked as analytical project leader both on the late stage development of biosimilars and new biological entities.

Michael Siedler, Ph.D., Head, NBE Formulation Development, NBE Formulation Sciences & Process Development, AbbVie Deutschland GmbH & Co KG

Michael started his career in 2002 at Scil Technology GmbH in Martinsried, Germany. In 2007, he joined AbbVie (previously Abbott) in Germany till 2010 when he was appointed Head of the Preformulation and Discovery Support Group at the AbbVie Bioresearch Center in Worcester, MA, USA. In 2014, he became a Section Head in the NBE Drug Product Development at AbbVie GmbH & Co KG, Germany and in 2016 he was assigned Head of NBE High-Throughput and Advanced Formulation Sciences.

Anubhav Tripathi, Ph.D., Professor, Bioengineering and Medical Science, Brown University

Dr. Tripathi is Professor of Engineering and Medical school at Brown University. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).Dr. Tripathi is one of leaders in developing new diagnostic and bioanalytical methods by combining engineering, biology and clinical science. He is a true multidisciplinary scientist who is driving an emergent Biomedical Engineering towards clinical demonstration and validation. His work has been widely publishedvin over 100 peer-reviewed publications.

Li Zang, Ph.D., Associate Director, Analytical Development, Biogen

Dr. Li Zang is an associate director overseeing the Protein Analytical Development department of Biogen. Her Ph.D. focused on development and application of highly sensitive liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry technology for breast cancer biomarker discovery. After joining Biogen in 2005, Li developed her expertise in biopharmaceutical development especially in detailed protein structure characterization using separation and mass spectrometry. She has participated in the development of a large category of biopharmaceutical programs at Biogen over the last 12 years, including monoclonal antibodies, receptor-Fc fusion proteins; blood coagulation factors, bi-specific antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates, biosimilar programs and small endogenous proteins.

Optimising Expression Platforms

Richard Altman, MS, Scientist V, Protein Technologies, Amgen

Rich Altman has 29 years of experience working in the pharmaceutical industry. In 2016, he joined the Protein Technologies Mammalian Expression group at Amgen San Francisco, supporting biologics drug development. Prior to Amgen, he worked for several pharmaceutical companies on the cloning, expression, purification and characterization of recombinant proteins. This work supported both small-molecule high-throughput screening and protein therapeutic efforts. He received his MS degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry.

Dennis Breitsprecher, Ph.D., Product Manager, Product Development, NanoTemper Technologies GmbH

Dr. Dennis Breitsprecher joined NanoTemper Technologies in 2013 and was in charge of all scientific development projects as R&D team leader. He became Product Manager in 2017, and is now responsible for guiding the development and positioning of novel breakthrough analytical instruments for applications from drug discovery to final product.

Marco Cacciuttolo, Ph.D., Director, Operations, Batavia Biosciences

Dr. Cacciuttolo is Head of Operation at Batavia Biosciences. He has over 20 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, including contributing to, or directing the development of several blockbusters like Synagis®, Cervarix® (MedImmune), and Yervoy® (Medarex). Dr. Cacciuttolo’s expertise is in bioprocess development, pharmaceutical development, regulatory submissions, and operations.

Henry C. Chiou, Ph.D., Associate Director, Cell Biology, Life Science Solutions, Thermo Fisher Scientific

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

Tsafi Danieli, Ph.D., Director, BioGiv Excubator & Head, Protein Expression Facility, Wolfson Centre for Applied Structural Biology, Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Tsafi Danieli is the head of the Protein Expression Core Facility at the Wolfson Centre for Applied Structural Biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. The core facility functions as a biotechnology research center for the development and implementation of novel technologies in recombinant DNA, molecular biology and protein production. It also operates as a training centre supporting individual research projects and conducting workshops and courses for scientists from academic institutes and from the biomed & biotech industry. Dr. Danieli is also the founder and director of “BioGiv”, a specialised university-based center for promoting and supporting entrepreneurs and inventors to translate ideas into new products and bring new technologies to market, while using the infrastructure of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Dr. Danieli holds a BSc in biology and MSc in human genetics from Tel Aviv University, and a Ph.D. in molecular virology from the University of California, San Francisco Pharmacology Department, in collaboration with the Biochemistry Department at Tel Aviv University.

Dominic Esposito, Ph.D., Director, Protein Expression Laboratory, Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research

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

Alexander Frey, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Molecular Biotechnology, Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems, School of Chemical Engineering, Aalto University

Alexander Frey received his D.Sc. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) in the field of Biotechnology in 2002. After a postdoctoral position at the University of Zürich at the Institute of Medical Virology, he returned to ETHZ, where he started to develop his research interest in engineering of cellular production systems. Since joining Aalto University as Associate Professor in 2012, Prof. Frey has been responsible for the research in Molecular Biotechnology. His research focuses on the development of cellular systems for production of high-value compounds such as antibodies. One of his key areas of interest is protein N-glycosylation, in particular glycoengineering of yeast and plants. In addition, his research group is developing novel approaches for biosynthesis of biologically active oligosaccharides. He has authored many articles in the leading journals of the field. In addition, his research has led to several patent applications.

Pierre-Alain Girod, CSO, Selexis

Dr. Girod, CSO of Selexis since 2006, has led Selexis’ on-going scientific and technological innovations for optimizing expression and production of a wide range of protein products in the commercial setting. Prior to Selexis, Dr. Girod worked the University of Lausanne, where he discovered a family of genetic sequences involved in the epigenetic gene regulation that became the founding technology for Selexis’ SUREtechnology Platform™ and revolutionized the field of recombinant protein expression in mammalian cells.

Holger Laux, Ph.D., Fellow, Cell Line Development, Novartis

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 publicly available Chinese hamster genome. He is additionally involved in enabling and improving the production of difficult-to-express therapeutic recombinant proteins.

Isabelle Legastelois, Ph.D., Research Unit Head, Virology and Expression Systems, Sanofi Pasteur

Isabelle Legastelois joined Sanofi Pasteur in June 1999. Dr. Legastelois is presently a Research unit head in the Research and Non Clinical Safety department of Sanofi Pasteur, France. Her main activities are the development and improvement of influenza vaccines, assessment of different expression systems for the production of viral antigens and development of new techniques to quantify viral antigens. Prior to her present position, she worked in public-sector laboratories on HIV and visna-maedi lentiviruses, for Schering-Plough in immunology and Mérial on the development of veterinary vaccines. Dr. Legastelois received her Ph.D. degree from Lyon I University, France.

Giovanni Magistrelli, Head, Protein Engineering, Novimmune SA

Giovanni Magistrelli is currently Head of Protein Engineering at Novimmune in Geneva. He has over 20 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry in different companies Pharmacia-Upjohn, Pierre Fabre Médicaments and Novimmune. More recently, G. Magistrelli has focused on the generation and production of recombinant antibodies. He has a strong scientific and technical expertise in different domains, including expression vector generation, gene cloning, protein expression and purification of proteins produced in both prokaryote and eukaryote insect and mammalian cells. As an illustration of his expertise, he recently contributed to the development of next generation antibody formats, including full human bispecific antibodies called κλ-body. He is author of 50 scientific articles and several patents.

Kinjal Mehta, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, Protein Sciences, Jounce Therapeutics

I am a Protein Biochemist by background and was trained in Dr. Jin Montclare’s laboratory at NYU, where I studied various histone acetylatransferases and with collaboration with machine learning experts, was able to create a library of enzymes with altered specificity or promiscuity as desired. Currently, I am a Principal Scientist in the Protein Sciences Department at Jounce Therapeutics. Jounce is dedicated to developing cancer immunotherapies using its Translational Science Platform to prioritize targets and identify related biomarkers to match the right therapy to the right patients. My group here at Jounce is responsible for recombinant production and preliminary characterization of antibodies and target proteins. We conduct transient mammalian expressions at various scales with a considerable amount of automation from transfection through storage of purified antibodies and target proteins. With the support of automation available in our labs, my team achieves an impressive throughput to produce large number of high-quality proteins routinely.

Dennis Niermeier, MSc, IBA Lifesciences

Dennis Niermeier 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 Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine he worked on the development of protein purification platforms and in cell line development. Since 2012 he is responsible for the mammalian custom protein expression & purification service and the product development in this field.

Abdelmajid Noubhani, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Microbiology, Institute of Chemistry and Biology of Membrane & Nano-Objects (ENSTBB), Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux

In 1990, Dr. Noubhani’s thesis defense in life sciences (biology and health) took place at the Bordeaux University. From 1991 to 2000, he held different postdoctoral positions. At CNRS-Poitiers University, his topic was the characterization of sucrose and amino acids carriers into plasmalemma membrane. At Catholic University of Leuven, Laboratorium voor Moleculaire Celbiologie - Belgium, his topic was the study of the glycolysis and ethanolic fermentation control via the trehalose pathway in S. cerevisiae. At IBGC CNRS Bordeaux, his topic was the Bio-productivity and the yeast response to the nutrients starvation). From 2000 to 2002, he was Assistant Professor at ENSTBB - University of Bordeaux. Since 2002, he’s been Associate Professor at ENSTBB - Bordeaux-INP. His research takes place into the (CBMN - CNRS) Institute of Chemistry & Biology of Membrane & Nano-objects, department: Structure and Activity of Biological Macromolecules at Bordeaux. His work focuses on the production and purification of recombinant proteins involved in human health, especially the cardiovascular diseases.

Lisa Alexandra Pieper, Postdoctoral Researcher, Early Stage Bioprocess Development, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG

After having studied Biotechnology at the RWTH Aachen, Lisa A. Pieper performed her Ph.D. at the Institute of Cell Biology and Immunology (University of Stuttgart) in cooperation with Boehringer Ingelheim. Lisa joined Boehringer Ingelheim in 2017 as postdoctoral researcher in the group of Early Stage Bioprocess Development. Her main focus is on the upstream development of cell culture processes within the context of an integrated state-of-the art process platform for the production of high-quality biologics.

Arnaud Poterszman, Ph.D., Research Director (CNRS), Integrated Structural Biology, Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (CNRS/INSERM/UdS)

After studying at ENS Cachan, Arnaud Poterszman completed his Ph.D. at the age of 28 years from Strasbourg University and joint the CNRS one year later. He holds a CNRS Research Director position and performs his studies in the Department of Integrated Structural Biology at IGBMC, Illkirch France. He has a dual expertise in Structural and Molecular biology with insights on expression technologies and sample preparation. His research is focused on eukaryotic multi-protein complexes involved in transcription regulation and DNA repair by nucleotide excision, particularly, the 10 subunits transcription/DNA repair factor TFIIH and its partners.

Antonio Roldao, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Animal Cell Technology Unit, Instituto de Biologia Experimental e Tecnológica (iBET)

Antonio Roldao is a Chemical Engineer with a Ph.D. in Engineering and Technology Sciences - Systems Biology (2010) from ITQB-UNL (Portugal), and from 2010 to 2014 he was a senior researcher and director of fermentation technology at SysBio group headed by Dr. Jens Nielsen at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden). Since 2014 he is a senior researcher at the Animal Cell Technology Unit headed by Prof. Paula Alves and Prof. Manuel Carrondo at at iBET / ITQB-NOVA (Portugal) and since 2015 he is “Investigador FCT” at iBET / ITQB-NOVA, Portugal. Antonio Roldao has been awarded with several research grants, including the AForsk research grant (2012), the J. Gust. Richert Foundation research grant (2013), the FCT “Investigador” grant (2014) and the FCT exploratory research project (2014). Author of 18 scientific manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals, author/co-author of 7 book chapters/conference proceedings; over 25 oral and poster communications. Antonio Roldao has been involved in many Portuguese and EU funded research projects, including "TRANSVAC2" (2017 – 2021), "EDUFLUVAC" (2013 – 2017), iNOVA4Health (since 2015), "Renewable Energy: an advanced Bio-Platform for 1-Butanol Production in Yeast" (2013 – 2015), "Integrated Bio-process Engineering Platform for Biobutanol Production" (2012 – 2014), "BACULOGENES – Baculovirus Vectors for Gene Therapy" (2006 – 2009), “Novel strategies for a safe rotavirus vaccine” (2003 – 2005), and "Genetics, Stoicheometry and Kinetics of Multiple Protein Assembly: the case for a Rotavirus Like Particle" (2005 - 2007). Current research focuses on the development of novel complex biologics with impact in Human Health, e.g., VLP-based vaccines against infectious diseases such as Influenza and Dengue. To accomplish such objectives, bioprocess engineering and bottom-up systems biology approaches are combined with process monitoring and product characterization, thus undoubtedly fastening the generation of such products.

Marlitt Stech, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Cell-Free and Cell-Based Bioproduction, Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology

Marlitt Stech studied Biotechnology at the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. She received her degree as MSc in 2010 and moved on to the University of Potsdam where she obtained her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 2015 in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering Potsdam-Golm. During that time she contributed to the development of novel cell-free protein synthesis systems for the synthesis and modification of antibodies. After her Ph.D., Marlitt continued to work as a postdoctoral scientist in the Department Cell-free and Cell-based Bioproduction at the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology in Potsdam-Golm.

Gerald Striedner, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Biotechnology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences

Dr. Striedner is Associate Professor at the Department of Biotechnology (BOKU), head of the working group microbial fermentation and principal investigator in the Austrian Center of Industrial Biotechnology (ACIB). The working group has established an integrated systems approach for bioprocess development and is focused on the implementation of PAT and QbD concepts in bioprocessing and rational host cell design. CHO, E. coli, insect cells and vero cell lines are used as expression systems for production of a representative set of biopharmaceuticals (mABs, Fabs, scFvs, VLPs, viruses, DNA).

Tamir Tuller, Ph.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor and Head, Laboratory of Computational Systems and Synthetic Biology, Tel Aviv University

Tamir Tuller is an Associate Professor, the head of the Laboratory of Computational Systems and Synthetic Biology at Tel Aviv University. He has a multidisciplinary academic background in engineering, life science, computer science, and medical science (four BSc, two MSc studies, and two Ph.D. titles). Prof. Tuller is the author of more than 110 peer reviewed scientific articles and received various awards and fellowships. He performs multidisciplinary research focusing on various aspects of gene expression and specifically mRNA translation. Among others, he aims at developing novel approaches for modeling and engineering gene expression, and employs synthetic biology tools for understanding the way gene expression is encoded in the genetic material. Website: Laboratory of Computational Systems and Synthetic Biology

Bjørn Voldborg, MSc, Director, CHO Cell Line Development, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark

Bjørn Voldborg is a veteran within the field of recombinant protein expression, with more than 20 years of experience from both academic and industrial settings, working with recombinant protein expression, both as part of the development of cell-based assays, as well as producing recombinant proteins for drug discovery for academic and industrial research. At the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Copenhagen Bjørn developed cell based assays to measure activity of drosophila receptors. At the Danish biotech company Pharmexa A/S, Bjørn was teamleader in the molecular biology group, responsible for molecular cloning and initial expression test of potential 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.

David Johannes Wurm, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Chemical, Environmental and Biological Engineering, Integrated Bioprocess Development, TU Vienna

David J. Wurm finished his Ph.D. on “Novel Methods to facilitate Escherichia coli bioprocess development” focusing on process development, process monitoring and process control at TU Wien in 2016. He is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the TU Wien in the working group of Prof. Oliver Spadiut. His main focus is on Integrated Bioprocess Development of Industrial Production Processes using Microbial Hosts. Furthermore, he works on establishing a new hybrid bioprocess which utilizes the advantages of the combination of whole cells with enzymatic and chemical catalysts using extremophiles for the production of value-added products from hemicellulose in a one-pot process. 

Hadas Zur, Ph.D., Researcher, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tel Aviv University

Engineering Bispecifics

Itai Benhar, Ph.D., Professor, Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, Tel-Aviv University

Itai Benhar—Full Professor, Vice Dean for research at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences at Tel-Aviv University Israel. Prof. Benhar received in 1992 a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Between 1992-1995 he was a post-doc the National Cancer Institute, NIH, working with Dr. Ira Pastan on recombinant immunotoxins. In 1995, Prof. Benhar joined Tel-Aviv University as a tenure-track assistant professor, received tenure in 2002, became an associate professor in 2005 and a full professor in 2008. Prof. Benhar is an expert in the field of antibody engineering with over 25 years of being active in that field. He published 89 peer-reviewed articles, 11 book chapters and 16 patent applications. Current research in Prof. Benhar’s group if focused on three major topics: 1) evaluation of novel formats of bispecific antibodies. 2) Antibodies and antibody-drug combinations for allergy, inflammation and fibrosis. 3) Targeted nanomedicines.

Stylianos Bournazos, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor, Molecular Genetics and Immunology, The Rockefeller University

Stylianos Bournazos, Ph.D. is a Research Assistant Professor at the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics and Immunology of the Rockefeller University, New York. He received his doctorate degree in 2010 from the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, and upon completion of the graduate studies, Stylianos moved to the US for postdoctoral training at the Rockefeller University under the mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey V. Ravetch. His research interests are focused on the study of the function of Fcγ receptors and the role of Fc effector activity of antibodies during infection.

Mathieu Cinier, Ph.D., CSO, Affilogic

Affilogic is a privately-owned biotech company specialized in discovery and development of a novel class of protein therapeutics called Nanofitins. Since He has since joined Affilogic in 2011, Dr. Mathieu Cinier and successfully led 60+ Nanofitin generation programs for a wide range of applications, and Nanofitin-based biotherapeutics are currently being developed in collaboration with Sanofi, Takeda Pharmaceutical and other undisclosed international pharmaceutical companies. He also applied its extensive protein engineering knowledge to expand the potential of the Nanofitin technology, and is now assuming the position of Scientific Director.

Jianxin Duan, Ph.D., Bavaria Application Scientist, Applications Science, Structure-based Applications, Schrödinger GmbH

No bio available

Diego Ellerman, Scientist, Protein Chemistry, Genentech

Diego Ellerman received his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Buenos Aires. Then he moved to the University of California at Davis to do a postdoc on protein-protein interactions relevant in gametes interaction. He began his experience in the industry working for NeoBiomarkers, a company developing mAbs for diagnostics. He joined Genentech in 2009 where he has been devoted to the production and characterization of bispecific antibodies. Particular areas of interest are T-cell recruiting bispecific Abs and novel formats.

Nicolas Fischer, Ph.D., Head, Research, NovImmune SA

Nicolas Fischer obtained a Ph.D. in Biology from the Department of Molecular Biology University of Geneva on the structure and function of photosynthetic complexes. As a postdoctoral fellow he joined the Group of Sir Greg Winter at the MRC Department of Molecular Biology in Cambridge UK to study protein folding and Antibody engineering using phage display. In 2001 he joined NovImmune and led several therapeutic antibody discovery programs that have reached clinical development stage. He is now heading the Research Department and developing next generation bispecific therapeutic antibodies.

Stephen Harper, Ph.D., Group Leader, Protein Engineering Research, Protein Science, Immunocore Ltd.

Dr Stephen Harper is the Group Leader of Protein Engineering Research at Immunocore Ltd. He has been with the company since September 2013. The group incorporates structural biology and using a combination of structure guided mutagenesis and display approaches aims to provide tools/ scaffolds to engineer ImmTAC potency, specificity and stability. Stephen received his Ph.D. at the University of Sheffield and Postdoc at the University of Nottingham both studying protein-protein interactions.

Mark Howarth, DPhil, Associate Professor, Protein Nanotechnology, Biochemistry, University of Oxford

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

Laura Lin, Ph.D., Senior Director, BioMedicine Design, Worldwide Research & Development, Pfizer, Inc.

Dr. Laura Lin is a Senior Director in the BioMedicine Design Unit, Pfizer’s Biotherapeutic Discovery organization. She leads the Molecular Design, Profiling, and Production group responsible for biotherapeutic discovery and optimization using structure and computational-based design approach, early stage developability assessment, bioinformatics, and non-GMP biotherapeutic production. Laura is a member of the BioMedicine Design Leadership Team, providing strategic input and directions on antibody discovery and optimization across Pfizer’s large molecule portfolio. Laura has been with Pfizer since 2009 when the company acquired Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, where she had been a group leader in Structural Biology and Computational Chemistry supporting both biologics and small molecule programs within Wyeth Discovery.

Yariv Mazor, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Antibody Discovery & Protein Engineering, Medimmune, Inc.

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 preclinical development. Yariv received his Ph.D. 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.

Wolfgang Paul, Ph.D., Senior Scientist & Group Leader, Cell Culture Research Pharma Research and Early Development, Large Molecule Research, Roche

After studying biology at RWTH Aachen and a Ph.D. thesis at the Research Center Jülich, I started in Bioprocess Development of Cell Culture at Aventis, Frankfurt-Höchst where I was promoted to the position of head of the cell culture research pilot plant fermentation and purification. In 2007, I started as group leader for cell culture fermentation, Pharma Research Roche, Penzberg, then in 2009 I became Senior Scientist and pilot plant manager for cell culture research fermentation, building up a single use bioreactor based pilot plant, and set-up an innovative data and digitalization management system. Since 2013 I have been technical project leader for several portfolio projects including international project transfers.

Shirley Peters, Ph.D., Senior Scientist Protein Sciences UCB

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

Anke Steinmetz, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Integrated Drug Discovery / Structure, Design & Infomatics, Sanofi R&D

Senior Researcher in Structure, Design & Informatics providing scientific project support for drug discovery on a broad range of target proteins in the fields of small molecules and biotherapeutics. Dr. Steinmetz obtained her Ph.D. in Biophysics from Brandeis University, Boston, MA and her diploma in Pharmacy from Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

Lars Toleikis, Ph.D., Director, Protein Engineering & Antibody Technologies, Merck KGaA

Lars Toleikis is Head of Protein Engineering & Antibody Technologies Darmstadt (PEAT-DA) within Research & Development / NBE Technologies. Lars is a biologist by training and studied at the Universities of Kaiserslautern and Heidelberg. In 2004 he finished his Ph.D. work in the field of recombinant antibodies at the University of Heidelberg under the supervision of Prof. Stefan Dübel. From 2004 to 2005 he worked as Postdoc at the Universities of Tübingen and Braunschweig. From 2005 to 2007 he worked as scientist and project leader at the German Resource Center for Genome Research (RZPD) in Heidelberg. He joined Merck KGaA in 2008 as lab head within NBE Technologies. Since 2012 he is Head of Protein Engineering & Antibody Technologies Darmstadt (PEAT-DA) within NBE Technologies and responsible for the discovery of therapeutic antibodies at the Darmstadt site.

Frank S. Walsh, Ph.D., CEO, Ossianix

Frank S Walsh is the founder and CEO of Ossianix. Formerly, Frank was head of Discovery Research Worldwide at Wyeth in Collegeville, PA,USA (2002-2009). Prior to joining Wyeth, he was SVP at GlaxoSmithKline UK and Head of the Neurology CEDD from 2000. From 1997-2000 he was VP of Neuroscience Research at SmithKline Beecham UK. Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, Frank had a distinguished academic career as the Sir William Dunn Professor of Experimental Pathology at London’s UMDS, Guy’s Hospital. Frank received his Ph.D. in 1977 from University College London and his BSc from University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

Chengbin Wu, Ph.D., CEO, EpimAb Biotherapeutics

Dr. Chengbin Wu is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of EpimAb Biotherapeutics Inc., an innovative biologics company focusing on developing next generation antibody-based therapies. Dr. Wu has over 15 years of experience in discovery, development, and technological innovation in the antibody field, and he is a world renowned expert in bi-specific antibody technologies and therapeutic development. Dr. Wu has built a distinguished career in the biopharmaceutical industry, taking on different leadership responsibilities in different parts of the world. Previously he was Chief Scientific Officer and President of R&D at Shanghai CP Guojian Pharmaceutical Co., a leading China-based biopharmaceutical company. Before that he was the Senior Vice President Biologics at Shanghai ChemPartner, where he established a comprehensive antibody R&D platform. Dr. Wu was a Volwiler Associate Fellow at Abbott Laboratories, where he invented the DVD-Ig technology and led several antibody projects from concept to regulatory filing.

Novel Therapies for Cancer and Emerging Targets

Hinrich Abken, Ph.D., Professor, Genetics & Immunology, Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne, University of Cologne

Dr. Hinrich Abken is Professor for Genetics & Immunology at CMMC (Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne) at the University of Cologne and Dept I Internal Medicine, Oncology-Hematology at the University Hospital Cologne. Dr. Abken studied medicine, was post-doc at the Institute for Cell Biology (Prof Rajewsky) at Essen University, was group leader at the University of Bonn, Faculty of Sciences, and in 1993 he became University Professor for Tumor Genetics at the Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne. Dr. Abken's group is internationally leading in pre-clinical research of adoptive therapy with T cells engineered with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs). Current research is aimed at improving T cell targeting of cancer, at developing novel strategies in modulating an immune response and at translating the T cell strategy into clinical trials.

Juan Carlos Almagro, Ph.D., Founder and Director, GlobalBio, Inc.

Dr. Juan C. Almagro is an expert in engineering and development of antibody-based therapeutics, with ten years of experience in academic settings and over ten years of experience in the Pharma/Biotech industry. In the latter occupied positions of Sr. Director at Pfizer and Scientific Director and Head of Antibody Design at Johnson & Johnson. In academia, Dr. Almagro was Visiting Scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Invited Professor at Simon Fraser University and Associate Professor at The National University of Mexico. Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) founded GlobalBio, Inc. to develop and apply novel antibody engineering methods. Based on these methods, has signed and executed numerous contracts to optimize and develop antibody-based therapeutics for use in Immuno-Oncology, Oncology and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Almagro is author of over seventy publications, including forty-two peer-reviewed scientific articles, six book chapters, three conference reports and eighteen patents.

Michael P. Bachmann, Ph.D., Director, Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Cancer Research; Head, Radioimmunology, Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf HZDR

M.B. studied Pharmacy at the University of Mainz and defended his Ph.D. in 1981 with s.c.l. In 1989 he finished his Habilitation in Physiological Chemistry at the University of Mainz where he stayed as Professor in Physiological Chemistry until 1999 when he followed an invitation to the OMRF (Immunology and Arthritis Program) OK, U.S.A. In 2003 he became a Professor of Immunology (Tumor immunology) at the University of Dresden. Since 2013 he is Director of the Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Cancer Research at the Helmholtz-Zentrum-Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and in parallel heading the tumor immunology at the University Cancer Center (UCC) at the university hospital Dresden. Since 2014 he also one of the Directors of the NCT. His work was awarded with a series of prizes including e.g. Boehriger Ingelheim Prize, Bruno-Schuler Prize, Robert-Feulgen Award. Aside of numerous publications, he holds a series of patents including for the UniCAR system.

Hans Hammers, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor, Internal Medicine, UT Southwestern Medical Center

Hans Hammers, M.D., Ph.D., is a nationally and internationally recognized medical oncologist who focuses primarily on treating kidney cancer. Dr. Hammers’s expertise results in direct benefits for his patients, who receive access to the most advanced and promising treatment options.Dr. Hammers trained as a fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2009; he led the medical oncology efforts in kidney cancer there through mid-2016. During his time at Johns Hopkins, the kidney cancer program grew significantly in size and made important contributions to practice-changing research – in particular in immunotherapy.

Ralph Minter, Ph.D., Director, Fellow, Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering, MedImmune

Following a Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Durham in 1999, Ralph has been working in Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering (ADPE) at MedImmune, developing candidate therapies in the areas of oncology, autoimmune disease, asthma and infection. Several of these candidate drug molecules are now progressing through clinical trials (including the antibody Benlysta®, approved in 2011 for SLE). As Director, Fellow at MedImmune, Ralph actively pursues novel scientific and collaborative opportunities within the biologics field and has published 31 papers to date, covering diverse areas such as phenotypic drug discovery, antibody and protein engineering and novel target biology. His current focus is on the delivery of biological macromolecules into cells.

Rathi Pillai, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Hematology and Oncology, Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University

Dr. Rathi Pillai is an assistant professor in the division of medical oncology at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. She joined the faculty after graduating from the Emory Hematology/Oncology fellowship program in 2013 and serving as chief fellow from 2012-2013. Dr. Pillai earned her medical degree at the University of Texas at Southwestern Medical School and completed her residency in internal medicine at Emory University. She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Association for Cancer Research, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group, International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, and the American College of Physicians. Dr. Pillai’s research interests are in novel therapies in lung cancer, including PD-1 targeted agents.

Adel Samson, MBChB, Ph.D., NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer (Medical Oncology), Leeds Institute of Cancer & Pathology, University of Leeds

My interest is in translational immunotherapy research for the benefit of patients with cancer. I am currently completing an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship at the Leeds Institute of Cancer and Pathology, ahead of a University Academic Fellowship commencing in 2018. My research is focused on the delivery of early phase clinical trials, which are conceived from a laboratory practice that combines immunology, virology and cancer biology. My Ph.D. was in hepatocellular carcinoma, and concluded that unlike many immunosuppressive cytotoxic agents, immunotherapies suppress hepatitis virus infections, rendering them safe to use in this group of patients. In other work, we have shown that large immunotherapeutic drugs (Oncolytic viruses) can successfully access brain tumours in patients following IV administration, dispelling the previously held view that these drugs cannot cross the blood-brain-barrier.

Christopher J. Tape, Ph.D., Junior Group Leader, Cell Communication Team, The Institute of Cancer Research

Chris received his Ph.D. from Prof. Gillian Murphy's lab at the CRUK Cambridge Institute (University of Cambridge) in 2011. He was then awarded a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship between The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) (with Dr. Claus Jorgensen and Prof. Chris Marshall) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) (with Prof. Doug Lauffenburger) in 2012 to study how oncogenes signal across multiple cell types in cancer. Chris founded The Heterocellular Signalling Lab at UCL CI in 2017.

Juan Fernando Vera Valdes, M.D., Associate Professor, Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine

Dr. Juan Vera is an Associate Professor at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine. His research interests include genetic modification of T cells with CARs, clinical trials for solid tumors and culture optimization of cell therapies for clinical use.

Protein Aggregates & Particles

Paolo Arosio, Ph.D., Professor, Institute of Chemical and Bioengineering, ETH Zurich

Paolo Arosio obtained his Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Politecnico di Milano in 2007, and his Ph.D. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich in 2011. After a period as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, UK, he returned to ETH as Assistant Professor in Biochemical Engineering in 2016. His research interests focus on understanding and controlling protein self-assembly and protein interaction processes that underlie problems of key fundamental and practical importance in biology and biotechnology.

Karoline Bechtold-Peters, Ph.D., Senior Strategy & Technology Leader, Pharmaceutics, Biologics Technical Development and Manufacturing, Novartis

Karoline Bechtold-Peters is pharmacist and holds a Doctor’s degree from the University of Munich as well as a degree as “Fachapotheker” for Pharmaceutical Technology. She began her industrial career in 1994 at Boehringer Ingelheim in Ingelheim developing solid dosage forms with the focus on powders for inhalation (e.g. Spiriva Inhalet). In 2000 she changed from the small molecule world to biopharmaceuticals building up Formulation Development at Boehringer Ingelheim’s Biberach site. In 2003 Karoline took over the responsibility for global clinical supplies, aseptic process development and process transfer within Boehringer Ingelheim Biopharmaceuticals. Beginning of 2011, Karoline joined F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG in Basel, Switzerland, where she was appointed Head of Clinical Manufacturing, Process Science and Business Excellence. In September 2016, she moved finally to Novartis in Basel, Switzerland, as Senior Strategy & Technology Leader Pharmaceutics, Biologics Technical Development & Manufacturing (BTDM), and is part of the BioFuture team. Karoline is active in various associations (American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists AAPS, Parenteral Drug Association PDA and International Association for Pharmaceutical Technology APV) and contributes frequently to conferences in the EU as well as in the US.

Eleonora Cerasoli, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, Bioprocess Characterisation, Albumedix

Eleonora current focus is to study the stabilisation properties of recombinant human albumin on an array of model systems. Previously she worked at the National Physical Laboratory with protein aggregation, peptides biophysical characterisation and interaction with membranes. Her background is biophysical chemistry (Chemistry degree, university of Rome), a PhD in Biochemistry on protein folding (Glasgow University) and post-doctoral experience in peptide design (Prof. Woolfson Lab, now Bristol University).

Paul Dalby, MA, Ph.D., FRSC, AMIChemE, Deputy Head of Department (Research), Biochemical Engineering, University College London

Prof Paul Dalby is Co-Director of the EPSRC-funded Future Targeted Healthcare Manufacturing Hub, Director of the associated EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training, and Chairman of the Royal Society of Chemistry Biotechnology Group Committee. His research focuses on routes to improve therapeutic proteins for ease of manufacture, formulation and delivery to patients. His work combines protein engineering and formulation, with biophysical characterisations, to understand the factors that influence protein stability, and to guide protein engineering for improved properties.

Andreas Evers, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Integrated Drug Discovery, Sanofi

Dr. Andreas Evers obtained his Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry with Prof. Gerhard Klebe at Philipps University of Marburg in 2000. He joined Sanofi in 2003, initially as Postdoc in the field of molecular modeling and drug design for G-protein coupled receptors, later working on “small molecule” projects addressing different target classes. Since 2010, he is responsible for the rational design and multi-dimensional optimization of therapeutic peptides and proteins. His research activities include planning and coordination of early physico-chemical characterization studies, continuous update and application of different in silico models to design new molecules with the desired target activity and physico-chemical properties.

Tim Eyes, Ph.D., Post-Doctoral Research Associate, University of Manchester.

Tim has over 10 years’ experience working in the field of therapeutic protein immunogenicity. He started his career in the biopharmaceutical industry, working in antibody discovery and immunogenicity assessment. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester broadening his interests in protein immunogenicity. Tim is currently a post-doctoral researcher and a member of an expanding research group at Manchester with a focus on how product related factors such as aggregation influence immunogenicity to biopharmaceuticals.

Vasco Filipe, Ph.D., Unit Head, Formulation Development of Biopharmaceuticals, Sanofi

Vasco Filipe is a Biological Engineer and obtained a Ph.D. degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Utrecht University (The Netherlands) in 2011. His thesis focused on the physicochemical characteristics, stability in biological fluids and immunogenicity of monoclonal antibody aggregates. After a post-doc in 2012 on a similar topic, he then joined Adocia the year after in Lyon (France), where he worked as the Project Leader for monoclonal antibodies. In 2015 he joined Sanofi in Paris (France), where he works as a Unit Head in the Formulation Development of Biopharmaceuticals department.

Mark T. Fisher, Ph.D., Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Kansas Medical Center

Dr. Mark Fisher received his BS degree in Chemistry from Purdue in 1982 and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois in 1987 under Dr. Stephen Sligar where he examined how cytochrome P450s biophysically controlled drug clearance rates by modulating electron transfer rates. He subsequently became a Postdoctoral fellow at NIH under Dr. Earl Stadtman until 1992 where he was among the pioneers in research to understand how molecular chaperones control protein folding and protein homeostasis in the cell. He is currently a full Professor in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department at the University of Kansas Medical Center. His current research is focused on capturing or reversing protein misfolding/unfolding intermediates that can detected using various platforms of a chaperonin detection based biolayer interferometry. Applications include accelerating drug discovery pipelines that combines in silico drug design with validation of protein stability. In addition, Dr. Fisher has demonstrated that one can recapitulate endosomal environments to visualize real time pH-induced kinetics of toxin transitions using BLI technologies. In all cases, the overreaching goal of the laboratory is to identify methods to prevent; 1) protein unfolding events prior to aggregation, 2) protein misfolding that result in protein folding diseases and 3) protein toxin unfolding transitions that result in cell entry.

Christoph Grapentin, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Pharmaceutical Development & Supplies, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd.

Christoph Grapentin studied Pharmaceutical Sciences in Kiel, Germany (2006-2011), and obtained a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Technology from the University of Freiburg, Germany (2012-2016). Since July 2016 Christoph works as a postdoctoral fellow for F. Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel, Switzerland. In his research, he explores the complex interplay of proteins, surfactants and interfaces, with a focus on poloxamer as an alternative to polysorbates.

Friedemann Hesse, Ph.D., Professor, Institute for Applied Biotechnology, Biberach University of Applied Sciences

After his studies in Chemistry and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Tübingen, Germany, Friedemann Hesse moved as a post-doc to the German Research Centre of Biotechnology (GBF, Braunschweig, Germany). There he contributed to various projects dealing with the optimization of bioprocesses with mammalian cells as scientist and project manager. In 2002 he moved to Vienna, Austria, where he took over the management of the competence centre “Austrian Center of Biopharmaceutical Technology” as coordinator. In 2010 he was appointed professor for cell culture technology at Biberach University of Applied Sciences (HBC). Since 2014, Friedemann Hesse is also head of the Institute of Applied Biotechnology at HBC. His research interests focus on the exploitation of micro-RNA for the optimization of production processes for the manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals and the investigation of protein aggregation phenomena in mammalian cell cultures.

Vibha Jawa, Ph.D., Director, Biologics & Vaccines Bioanalytics, MSD

Dr. Vibha Jawa is currently a Director, Biologics and Vaccine Bioanalytics 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 company evaluating viral vectors for hemophilia therapy in the Bay area followed by City of Hope Cancer Centre Stem Cell and Gene Therapy group and at Amgen from 2003-2016. Her current research interests include evaluating immune response biomarkers for early drug development and efficacy, immunogenicity prediction using in silico, in vitro and in vivo technologies, modeling impact of immunogenicity on PK and PD and their application to a systems-based approach, antigen processing and presentation and the role of T cells in immune response to drug products. Vibha is a member of 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.

Peng Ke, Ph.D., Formulation Sciences, MedImmune/AstraZeneca

Dr. Ke joined Medimmune (AstraZeneca) in 2014 and his scientific interests focus on formulation development for antibody molecules, protein aggregation/shelf-association, protein-protein interaction and viscosity reduction for concentrated protein solutions. Prior to joining Medimmune, Dr. Ke was a Senior Scientist at Merck Sharp & Dohme, UK, focusing on the design of tablets, capsules and controlled release technologies for formulation development and clinical trials. He also worked as a Senior Formulation Scientist at Pharmaterials Ltd, a spin-out company from the School of Pharmacy, University of London, as well as a Formulation Development Scientist at Emergent BioSolutions, where he gained experience around the design and development of live-attenuated vaccine formulations. Dr. Ke obtained his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics in 2009 at the School of Pharmacy, University of London.

Sofie Pattijn, Chief Technology Office, ImmunXperts

Sofie Pattijn (CTO and founder, ImmunXperts) has over 20 years of experience in the field of immunogenicity assessment and in vitro assay development. She has extensive hands-on lab experience and has managed several In Vitro teams over the last decade. From 2008 till 2013 she was Head of the In Vitro Immunogenicity group at AlgoNomics (Ghent, Belgium) and Lonza Applied Protein Services (Cambridge, UK). Prior to that, she worked at Innogenetics, Belgium for 15 years.

Christopher J. Roberts, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Center for Biomanufacturing Science and Technology, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Delaware

Dr. Roberts is a Professor and the Director of the Center for Biomanufacturing Science and Technology in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware (UD). He is also the Director of the Biomolecular Interaction Technology Center, and the Site Director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Development at UD. He received a Bachelors of Chemical Engineering degree from UD, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University. Prior to joining UD in 2002, he worked in the pharmaceutical industry as a formulation scientist for protein and small-molecule based drugs. The Roberts laboratory focuses on fundamentals and applications of protein physical and chemical stability, (mis)folding, aggregation, kinetics, statistical mechanics, molecular modeling, and thermodynamics to address questions of biopharmaceutical product design, stability, and manufacturing.

Salvador Ventura, Ph.D., Director, Institute of Biotechnology & Biomedicine, Autonomous University of Barcelona

Salvador Ventura is Chair Prof. at the Dep. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Director of the Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). He has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed research and review papers on protein folding and aggregation, apart from several book chapters and patents. He got his Ph. D. in Biology at the UAB in 1998 and worked as postdoctoral fellow (1999-2001) at EMBL-Heidelberg. He has been researcher at Harvard Medical School (USA) and Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) among other centres. He rejoined UAB as a Ramon y Cajal researcher in 2003. Dr. Ventura received the UAB 2008 Excellence Research Award. In 2009 and 2016 he received the ICREA-Academia Award for excellence in Biological and Medical Sciences.

Protein Purification Technologies

M. Raquel Aires-Barros, Ph.D., Professor, Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (IBB), Bioengineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa

Raquel Aires-Barros graduated in Chemical Engineering, obtained the degree of Master of Biotechnology and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), and since 2011 is a Full Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at IST. At the moment, she is also President of the Pedagogical Council of IST, University of Lisbon. She is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (IBB), leading a research group on Bioprocess Engineering. Current research interests include the development of new separation processes with high performance and efficiency for purification biopharmaceuticals, with special emphasis on the purification of antibodies and the development of devices- "Lab-on-a-Chip" - for protein purification / separation of cells in the microscale.

Ciarán N. Cronin, Ph.D., Associate Research Fellow, Head, Parallel Protein Production Group, and Group Leader, Gene-to-Structure, Pfizer Global R&D

Dr. Ciarán N. Cronin heads the Parallel Protein Production Group (PPPG) at Pfizer’s La Jolla campus in San Diego, California. The Group is part of Pfizer’s Global Chemistry line and is responsible for protein expression construct screening and scale-up for all proteins required to support Pfizer’s small molecule oncology drug discovery pipeline. The Group also has responsibilities for gene-to-protein crystal efforts on a number of in-house structure-based drug design (SBDD) targets. Dr Cronin joined Pfizer in 2004 from Syrrx Inc., where he was Associate Director of Molecular Biology and Protein Chemistry. Prior to Syrrx, Dr Cronin was an Assistant Research Biochemist at the University of California San Francisco (1995-2001) and held Senior Scientist positions with Bioresearch Ireland (1992-1994), Biotrin Research, Ireland (1990-1992), and Qlone Ltd., Australia (1988-1989). Dr Cronin received both his Ph.D. and his primary honors degree in Biochemistry from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

Michael Fairhead, Ph.D., PDRA, Structural Genomics Consortium, University of Oxford

Following a PhD at Imperial College London, I have worked in the field of protein engineering at various institutes. I am currently working on using a surface mutation strategy to improve protein crystallization success rates as well as methods to increase throughput in protein production for crystallography.

Karin Felderer, Ph.D., Associate Director, Protein Production, Protein Sciences & CMC, MorphoSys AG

Dr. Karin Felderer currently holds the position of Associate Director and Laboratory Leader in the department of Protein Sciences & CMC at the MorphoSys AG. She studied Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich and earned a PhD from the Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry in Munich. Subsequently she carried out her postdoctoral research at the University of California Berkeley. Karin Felderer joined MorphoSys in 2010 and heads a team responsible for downstream processing of antibodies and antibody fragments from high-throughput small scale up to material supply for in vivo animal studies and process development of therapeutic antibodies as well as downstream processing of antigens and other tool proteins.

Christopher H. Gray, Team Leader, Structural Biology, Drug Discovery Program, Cancer Research UK, The Beatson Institute

Dr. Chris Gray obtained his B.Sc (Hons) and Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow, examining the biochemical basis of multidrug resistance in pathogenic fungi. He then moved to the Institute of Cancer Research in London to gain experience as an x-ray crystallographer where he was trained in a diverse range of protein production techniques. Following this he took up a position at the CRUK Beatson Institute becoming a early member of staff in the Institute’s Drug Discovery Program. As the Structural Biology Team Leader he has day to day responsibility for the protein production, NMR, biophysics and x-ray crystallography in the Program.

Svend Kjær, Ph.D., Deputy Head, Structural Biology Science Technology Platform, Francis Crick Institute

Dr Svend Kjær earned his PhD from the University of Aarhus, Denmark working on phage displayed antibodies, did two post-docs at the Karolinska Institute and CRUK’s London Research Institute, where he later became head of the Protein Expression and Purification Facility. Currently, he is running the protein expression/purification facility in the Structural Biology Science Tech Platform at the newly opened Francis Crick Institute in London.

Stefan Kol, Ph.D., Protein Biochemist, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark

Stefan Kol, Ph.D., was educated as a molecular microbiologist in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands. After a brief period in 2009 at the Structural Genomics Consortium at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm exploring high-throughput expression and purification of human proteins, he moved to Copenhagen to focus on hard-to-express human membrane proteins at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research. Currently, he is employed as a protein biochemist at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability (NNF CfB), where Chinese Hamster Ovary cell lines are engineered to create the next generation of human protein biopharmaceuticals. In addition, he manages the Protein Purification core facility at NNF CfB.

Mario Lebendiker, Ph.D., Head, Protein Purification Facility, Wolfson Center for Applied Structural Biology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Dr. Mario Lebendiker is in charge of the Protein Purification Facilities at the Wolfson Centre for Applied Structural Biology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is actively involved in many collaborations for structural and biochemical studies within the Hebrew University, others Universities in Israel, as well as with biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Lebendiker received a PhD in Biochemistry in 1982 from the Animal Virology Center (CEVAN), in Buenos Aires University, Argentina. Together with many other laboratories, he found the Protein Production and Purification Partnership in Europe (P4EU) network; a platform for the exchange of information, know-how and materials between core facility labs in the field of protein expression and purification.

Karolina Les, Ph.D., Scientist II, Purification Process Sciences, Biopharmaceutical Development, MedImmune, Ltd.

Karolina Alicja Les is a Scientist in Purification Process Sciences group in biopharmaceutical development department at MedImmune, which she has joined in 2013. Her prime focus area is design and optimisation of purification process and their transfer into manufacturing to support early clinical trials. Prior to this, she has worked on half-life modulations of biopharmaceuticals and characterisation of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) at PolyTherics Ltd. (Abzena Company). Karolina obtained her PhD from School of Pharmacy of University College London.

Dirk Linke, Ph.D., Professor, Molecular Microbiology, Biosciences, University of Oslo

Dirk Linke graduated at the Technical University Berlin and was a PostDoc and Group Leader in the Max Planck Society in Tübingen, Germany before moving to Oslo, Norway where he now is a Full Professor in Molecular Microbiology.

Rosalie Matico, Associate Fellow, Investigator, Protein Cellular and Structural Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline plc

I am an Investigator and GSK Associate Fellow in the Protein Cellular and Structural Sciences Department at GlaxoSmithKline that specializes in Protein Biochemistry and Advanced Protein Engineering. I have >25years experience in Drug Discovery, designing, generating, and developing protocols for reagent generation of enzymes, cell surface receptors, cytokines, and monoclonal antibodies to support of high through-put screening, hit qualification assays, biophysical and structural studies, as well as animal models.

José Paulo Mota, Ph.D., Professor, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, LAQV-REQUIMTE, Chemistry, Science and Technology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

José Paulo Mota is full professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at University NOVA de Lisboa (Portugal). He has authored over one hundred papers in the areas of separation science and transport phenomena. He has received 8 international awards, is member of the Scientific Council of Sciences and Engineering (CCCE) of the Portuguese National Science Foundation (FCT/MCTES), Board of Directors of the International Adsorption Society (IAS), and scientific committees of international conferences on separation science including Fundamentals of Adsorption and International Symposium on Preparative and Industrial Chromatography and Allied Techniques.

Katrin Schweinitzer, Head, Downstream Processing Development, BioProcess Development, Wacker Biotech GmbH

Katrin studied biotechnology at the University of Applied Science in Jena, Germany. After the diploma she gained over 10 years industrial experience in the field of protein purification and downstream process development at Wacker Biotech GmbH. After 6 years as engineer she became Head of Downstream Process Development at Jena site. She is responsible for development and optimization of downstream process, transfer to the GMP units, and downstream process characterization.

Anja Trapp, M.Sc., Scientist, Bioprocessing Technology & Innovation, Rentschler Biopharma SE 
Anja Trapp obtained her master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology from the University of Ulm, Germany. In 2013, she joined Rentschler Biopharma SE, where she is a scientist in the Bioprocessing Technology & Innovation Department. The group focuses on all aspects of modern bioprocess development, including novel technologies and approaches to streamline downstream processes.

Training Seminar 2: Introduction to Protein Engineering

David Bramhill, Ph.D., Founder, Bramhill Biological Consulting, LLC

Dr. Bramhill has over 20 years’ experience in biologics, both in large biopharma and startup biotech companies. He has experience in isolating and improving antibodies using phage display and is an inventor on library design techniques for small scaffolds. He also has experience in diverse expression systems for producing antibodies, antibody fragments and different scaffolds. He has taught numerous technical courses for over 10 years at international conferences.

Training Seminar 4: Next-Generation Sequencing for Antibody Discovery and Engineering

Sai Reddy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland

Sai Reddy is a tenure-track Assistant Professor (since 02.2012) 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 a BS (2003) and MS (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).

Simon Friedensohn, MSc, Ph.D. Student in Biotechnology; Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

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.

Enkelejda Miho, Research Assistant, Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

Enkelejda Miho is a research assistant at the Laboratory for Systems and Synthetic Immunology. Her current research focuses on large-scale network analysis and machine learning to uncover the architecture of complex immune repertoires and to mine their sequence space features for basic and applied systems immunology. Enkelejda graduated with a Master in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology at the University of Bologna in 2011. She worked as a researcher for Novartis (NIBR, Switzerland) and as a business developer reporting to the CEOs of start-up companies in life sciences (Germany, Israel, Switzerland). In 2016, Enkelejda graduated with a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Pharmaceutical Medicine at the European Center of Pharmaceutical Medicine and from 2014 she is conducting her doctorate in Biotechnology at ETH Zurich. Her education and experience cover comprehensively the aspects of drug discovery and development.

Conference Programs

• Display of Biologics
• Engineering Antibodies
• Machine Learning - Part 2

• Antibody-Based Therapies
• Emerging Targets & Approaches
• Membrane Protein Targets

• Safety & Efficacy
• Advancing Bispecifics
• Engineering Bispecifics

• Modulating the TME
• Innovative CAR T Therapy
• Next-Gen Immunotherapies

• Optimisation & Developability
• Analytical Characterisation
• Protein Stability & Formulation

• Data Science & Engineering
• Optimising Expression
• Process Development

• Intro to Machine Learning
• Machine Learning - Part 1
• Machine Learning - Part 2

• Antibody-based Therapies
• Engineering Conjugates
• Next-Gen Immunotherapies