Professor, Genetics & Immunology, Center for Molecular Medicine 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, where he is working towards the development of adoptive cell therapy of malignant diseases using engineered T cells. Dr. Abken studied medicine at Essen University, doctoral thesis at the Institute for Molecular Biology, and was post-doc at the Institute for Cell Biology (Prof. Rajewsky). He received his venia legendi in Genetics and Immunology from the Faculty of Science of the Rheinische Wilhelms Universität Bonn, where he was group leader at the Institute for Genetics. In 1993, he became C3 University Professor for Tumor Genetics at the Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne, and is member of the CMMC with an Independent Research Group. Prof. Abken's group is committed to the adoptive cell therapy and the development of novel T cell targeting strategies, in particular, by chimeric antigen receptors (CARs). Dr. Abken's group was one of the first groups working on recombinant chimeric receptors for targeting T cells since the early 1990s, and is internationally leading in pre-clinical research of adoptive therapy with T cells engineered with chimeric antigen receptors. As one of the pioneers in CAR/immunoreceptor research, the Abken group introduced a number of novel CAR modifications now in routine practice including the second-generation CAR, the modified spacers, the TRUCK strategy and others were developed by this group. 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.

Research Asst Prof, Cell Biology
Jeonghyun Ahn completed a Ph.D. degree in 2007 at the Department of Microbiology at the University of Ulsan College of Medicine in Korea. After finishing her Ph.D. thesis, she moved to the United States and joined to Dr. Glen Barber’s lab at the University of Miami in 2011 at a time when the discovery of the STING innate signaling pathway was starting to become noticed by the field. Dr. Ahn was seminal in proving that STING signaling could contribute towards auto-inflammatory disease as well as inflammation driven cancer. Currently, she is a research assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology at the same University. She has recently shown a new therapeutic strategy for the treatment of cancer to facilitate adaptive T cell responses using a STING agonist.

MS, Scientist, Protein Technologies
Rich Altman has 30 years of experience working in the pharmaceutical industry. In early 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.

Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine and Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Alves received his PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Notre Dame. The research Dr. Alves has conducted, while spanning many disciplines, is centered on the development of translational technologies, treatments, and techniques that can be utilized to have a positive impact on people’s lives. He has extensive experience in: site-specific antibody modification, oriented antibody immobilization for advanced diagnostics, nanoparticle delivery and packaging of pharmaceutical agents and enzymes to treat pulmonary embolism, and packaged enzymes for chemical warfare remediation. Currently, Dr. Alves is an Assistant Professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine with a joint appointment at Purdue in Biomedical Engineering. His multidisciplinary background affords him a unique perspective to tackle complex medical device and therapeutic development problems.

Functional Lead, Integrated Biologics Profiling
After performing his Master thesis in Molecular Biology, Philipp Amsler joined Novartis as a Scientist in protein purification. In 2010, he joined the newly founded Integrated Biologics Profiling (IBP) Unit at Novartis, supporting the setup and collaborating in the biologics production team with focus on downstream processing. In his current roles as Functional Lead Downstream Processing, he is responsible for early downstream process development and coordination of internal activities and resources re developability assessment of biologics.

Professor, Chemical and Process Engineering
Dorota Antos received a PhD in chemical engineering from Technical University of Wroclaw, Poland, in 1998. The PhD thesis was awarded by Polish Minister of Education. She conducted research at Politecnico di Milano, Italy in 1997, at Max-Planck-Institute in Magdeburg, Germany in 1999-2001 and in the frame of Fulbright Grant, at University of Virginia in 2006. She habilitated in the field of chromatography and adsorption at Otto-von-Guericke Universitaet in Magdeburg, Germany in 2003. In 2012 she was nominated as a full professor in Poland. Since 2014 she is a chair of Department of Chemical Engineering and Processing, Faculty of Chemistry, of Rzeszow University of Technology, Rzeszow. Since 2016 she is a dean of Faculty of Chemistry.

Group Leader, Translational Research
Dr. Arce Vargas obtained a medical degree in the University of Costa Rica. He then moved to the United Kingdom where he obtained a PhD working with Prof. Mary Collins in UCL, where he worked on cancer vaccines using genetically modified dendritic cells. Following his interest in cancer immunotherapy, he then joined the labs of Sergio Quezada and Karl Peggs in the UCL Cancer Institute where his work focused on immune modulatory antibodies. He has recently moved as a group leader in Translational Research in Autolus, where he is working in immunotherapy with CAR-T cells.

EMEA, Business Development Manager
Mark is responsible for growing Retrogenix’s European and non-North American business portfolio. His past experience includes 10 years in clinical & academic postdoctoral research, as well as involvement in both public and private sector scientific collaborations and consultancy projects. Mark has first-authored multiple papers and regularly presents at international conferences. Before Retrogenix, Mark was North UK Sales Account Manager for Stratech. He has a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Sheffield, UK.

Head, Cancer Immunotherapy
Marina joined Roche in 2010 and currently heads one of the Cancer Immunotherapy Departments at the Roche Innovation Center Zurich (RICZ). 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, both clinical development). 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 ex vivo cultures of fresh primary tumor explants for testing of cancer immunotherapy agents. Marina participates in building and overseeing Roche’s portfolio focused on antibody-based cancer immunotherapeutics. Marina obtained her PhD in Oncology from the University of Trieste (Italy) in 2003 working on ruthenium-based anti-cancer drugs. She was awarded by the Marie Curie Fellowship to perform part of her PhD at the University of Leiden (Netherlands). Following the PhD, Marina moved to Lausanne (Switzerland) for the post-doctoral fellowship at the University Hospital Lausanne (CHUV) working on projects in the field of tumor-host interaction.

Principal Scientist, Analytical Development
Dan Bach Kristensen holds a PhD 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 14 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 in particular oncology. Dan currently works as a Principal Scientist at Symphogen, which is specialized in the development of antibody mixtures for the treatment of cancers.

Director, Epitope Mapping, Epitope Mapping
Director epitope mapping at Pepscan Presto. Point of contact for customers and takes care to translate their questions into tangible projects, ensures deadlines will be met with quality results. Prior to that at Pepscan he was involved in pipeline projects for monoclonal antibodies to GPCR targets. In this role he designed complex peptide immunogens and was involved in assay development. He also led and/or participated in several multi-year programs run at Pepscan that were funded by the EU, TI-Pharma, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and the Gates Foundation. Prior to that, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow mass spectrometry at the University of Amsterdam.

Head, Biochemical and Analytical Research
Martin obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Konstanz in a joint program with the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. After postdoctoral training at the University of Washington in Seattle, Martin joined Mountain View-based Amunix to work on long-acting protein therapeutics. Martin then moved to Roche pRED as a group leader in the department of Downstream Processing and was subsequently promoted to Department Head of Biochemistry. In his current role as Head of Biochemical & Analytical Research, Martin leads a department with 90+ scientists involved in protein characterization and assay development from lead selection to the start of clinical studies. Under his leadership, the department has advanced multiple next generation antibodies from research into early development. As a member of the pRED Large Molecule Research leadership team, Martin is also responsible for the department’s digital and automation strategy.

Chromatography
William Barrett, Ph.D is a Product Specialist with Gore. He has over 20 years combined experience in biotechnology, chromatography and the medical device industries. Most recently, Bill’s focused on affinity purification chromatography. Previously, Bill worked at Agilent on affinity depletion devices used in biomarker discovery and proteomics. He received a Ph.D in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois and completed his fellowship in the Laboratory of Biochemistry at the NHLB Institute at the NIH.

Deputy Head, Bispecific Antibodies
Hayat Bähr-Mahmud studied biology at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt, Germany. During her PhD thesis at the Institute for tumor biology and experimental therapy Georg-Speyer-Haus in Frankfurt, she focused on the generation of humanized immunotoxin-like molecules for the elimination of HER2 expressing tumors. Since 2009, she is a member of Ugur Sahin’s group, who in the meantime funded Europe’s largest privately held biopharmaceutical company, BioNTech AG, pioneering the development of individualized therapies for cancer and other diseases. At BioNTech AG, she is focusing on the development of mRNA-encoded antibodies for the treatment of cancer.

CSO
Biography

Senior Strategy and Technology Leader, Biologics Technical Development & Manufacturing
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 Bio-Future team. Karoline is active in various associations (American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists AAPS [chair-elect for the National Biotech Conference 2015], 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.

Senior Director, Analytical Chemistry, NBEs, Centre d’Immunologie Pierre Fabre; Associate Editor, mAbs
Alain Beck is Senior Director of Analytical Chemistry, New Biological Entities, at the Center of Immunology Pierre Fabre (FR). He is associated editor of mAbs (USA) and chairman of mAbDesign advisor board (FR). He has contributed to the R&D of immuno-oncology mAbs, clinical stages mAbs and ADCs in oncology (dalotuzumab/IGF-1R licensed to Merck; telisotuzumab and telisotuzumab vedotin/cMet, licensed to AbbVie; h515H7/CXCR4 and W0101/IGF-1R ADC), peptides and vaccines (RSV, ELA/P40). He has published 200 papers and reports on mAbs, biosimilars, biobetters, ADCs, bsAbs, Fc-fusion, protein scaffolds structure/function relationships, comparability and developability (h-index: 44; +6500 citations). He was involved in more than 230 scientific meetings (AIS, ASMS, BAS, CASSS, EAC, HPLC, IBC, IMSC, PEGS, SEP, WADC, WBC) as chairperson, invited keynote speaker, panelist, moderator, advisor, and organizer as well as to meetings and workshops with regulatory agencies (ANSM, EMA, EDQM, FDA, PEI, WHO). He was ranked 6/50 global antibody industry influencers (www.antibodysociety.org).

CSO
Dr. Roger R. Beerli (CSO, NBE-Therapeutics AG) has over 16 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. Dr. Beerli was the main inventor of Cytos' eMAB mammalian cell antibody display platform, which was successfully used to develop human-derived therapeutic mAbs against numerous targets, including Nicotine, Influenza A and Interleukin-17A. Dr. Beerli has published widely in the areas of antibody development and is co-inventor on numerous patents and patent applications.

Analytical Development Lab Manager
Biography

Medical Oncology Fellow
Allison Betof Warner, MD, PhD is a Medical Oncology Fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Betof graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University and went on to graduate with her MD/PhD from the Medical Scientist Training Program at Duke University. Dr. Betof completed her PhD under the supervision of Drs. Mark Dewhirst and Lee Jones, studying the effects of exercise on tumor angiogenesis and chemotherapeutic efficacy. Dr. Betof went on to Internal Medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and it was at that time that her focus turned toward immunology and immunotherapy. That interest took her to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for her Medical Oncology Fellowship, where she is currently pursuing her post-doctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Jedd Wolchok, investigating the effects of modulations in tumor microenvironment on tumor immunobiology and immunotherapy.

Director, Technology & Information Management
Carlo Boutton obtained his PhD in 1999 at the University of Leuven (Belgium) on a subject that investigated the physico-chemical behavior of proteins under high-electromagnetic (laser) fields. After his PhD, he joined Algonomics (currently Lonza) where he contributed to the development of EpiBase: a platform to predict and identify T-cell epitopes in biologics. In 2003 he joined Tibotec (subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson) where he was involved in several anti-HIV and anti-HCV projects. He joined Ablynx in 2007 and currently holds the position of Director Technology. Together with his team, he focuses on improvements of the Nanobody platform and new therapeutic applications for Nanobodies, including bispecifics, immunotherapeutics and ADCs.

Professor and Chair, Immunology University Hospital 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.

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

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

Consulting Regulatory Scientist & Director
Christopher founded Consulting on Advanced Biologicals Ltd at the end of 2009 in order to focus his activities within the Regenerative Medicine sector. Advbiols Ltd provides EU regulatory services to the regenerative medicine industry in addition to business and regulatory research and analysis to identify and focus on the real barriers to commercialisation of regenerative medicine. Christopher has a PhD in xenotranplantation immunology and spent 8 years in biotech (Imutran Ltd, A Novartis Pharma AG Co. and Intercytex) before joining the MHRA as a quality (CMC) assessor (biologicals and biotechnology unit). During this time Christopher was involved with National implementation of the new Advanced Therapies Regulation and also involved through his participation in the CHMP’s cell products working party (CPWP) in implementation at the EMA level including drafting guidelines.

Expert Scientist, Molecular Engineering
Ulrich Brinkmann is a member of Roche’s Large Molecule Research organization within Pharma Research & Early Development at the Roche Innovation Center Munich (Penzberg, Germany). His work focuses on protein & antibody engineering, bispecifics, and on delivery platforms for targeted payload delivery. Prior to joining Roche, he served as CSO in functional genomics and pharmacogenetics companies Xantos and Epidauros. His previous work in Ira Pastans Molecular Biology Lab at the NIH/NCI in Bethesda, USA focused on antibody stabilization and engineering technologies, and on generating recombinant immunotoxins for cancer therapy. Dr. Brinkmann is author of numerous publications (2016 H-factor=55) and patents covering recombinant antibodies, pharmaco- & functional genomics, immunotoxins and protein engineering technologies and applications.

Associate Professor, School of Molecular and Cellular Biology
David Brockwell (Associate Professor) was appointed to the academic staff in Leeds in 2004 after post-doctoral work at the same institution. He obtained a first degree in Pharmacy and a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry, both at the University of Manchester, UK. Dr Brockwell’s research broadly comprises three fields: (i) using AFM to characterise and rationally modulate the mechanical strength of proteins and their complexes; (ii) the folding mechanisms of outer membrane proteins and the effects of periplasmic factors and the BAM complex on their folding; and (iii) the aggregation of biopharmaceuticals.

Scientist, Development Analytics and QC, Roche Pharma Technical Development
Alexander Buettner is a Scientist in the Extended Characterization department within the Analytical Development & Quality Control unit at Roche in Penzberg, Germany. His current work focuses on structure function analysis of NeoRecormon® and Mircera® glycan structures. He studied biotechnology at Technical University of Munich (TUM) and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining Roche in 2016, he worked on development of E. coli expression systems for production of antibody fragments at Boehringer Ingelheim and earned his PhD from TUM based on this work.

Director, Immunology
Sebastian Bunk has been active for over 15 years in the field of immunology and immunotherapy. With his educational background in immunity to infectious diseases, Sebastian served for 5 years as research group leader at Baxter Innovations GmbH in Vienna focusing on the development and optimization of antibody-based therapeutics. In 2014, Sebastian joined Immatics Biotechnologies with the exciting task to build technology platforms for discovery and engineering of T-cell receptors for immunotherapeutic application. Under his scientific leadership Immatics is currently developing a pipeline of T-cell receptor-based bispecific molecules as new therapeutic modality. Sebastian is an inventor on numerous patents and patent applications and has co-authored several publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Principal Investigator, Biotechnology, Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC)
Nicola Burgess-Brown is the Principal Investigator of the Biotechnology Group at the SGC, responsible for managing all biotech research for the Oxford site. Nicola’s team optimises the high-throughput screening processes from cloning to expression and purification of human proteins for structural and functional studies. The group collaborates and interacts closely with the other SGC teams, to develop methods for increasing protein expression, parallel processing and increasing throughput for soluble and integral membrane proteins (IMPs) involved in human disease. Nicola obtained a First Class degree in Applied Biochemical Sciences from the University of Ulster in 1997 and spent the following year working as a molecular biologist for SmithKline Beecham. She received her PhD in Molecular Microbiology at the University of Nottingham in 2001 and then moved back to industry to work on high-throughput cloning and validation of therapeutic cancer antigens for Oxford Glycosciences and subsequently Celltech R&D.

Senior Director, Protein Engineering
Javier worked for 8 years in the field of enzyme engineering and received his Ph.D. in 2003. After his postdoctoral training he joint Pfizer, where he is leading the protein engineering department. In this role, he is responsible for leading biotherapeutic discovery work, including lead generation and optimization, structural determination, structural based design, biophysical characterization, and non-GLP biotherapeutic production. Javier is interested in understanding the underlying biology of drug design and delivery and engineering solutions for challenges associated with developing the next generation of biotherapeutics.

Group Leader, Discovery, Bicycle Therapeutics Ltd
Dr Liuhong Chen leads Bicycle Therapeutics’ early phase drug discovery activities for internal oncology programs and partnered programs with AstraZeneca and Bioverativ(Sanofi) in cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory and haematological diseases. She oversees development of the company’s unique, chemically constrained bi-cyclic peptide phage display platform, first conceived by Prof. Christian Heinis and Sir Gregory Winter (recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering work on phage display)¬¬ at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. Areas of professional interests include protein-protein interactions and the structural diversity of constrained peptides. Dr Chen received her PhD in Chemistry under Professor Chris Abell at the University of Cambridge where she was the first to apply the fragment-based approach to drugging riboswitches.

Director, Cell Biology, Life Science Solutions
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.

Associate Professor, Director Centre for Targeted Therapy
Associate Professor Daniel Christ is Head of Antibody Therapeutics and the Director of the Centre for Targeted Therapy at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney. He holds degrees from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and Cambridge University, where he worked with biotechnology pioneer Sir Gregory Winter on the development of the human antibody single domain format. His work focuses on engineering and structural studies of human antibodies and on the engineering of cytokine therapeutics.

Lecturer, Chemistry
Dr. Vijay Chudasama (VC) is a Reader in the Chemistry department at University College London. He has won multiple prestigious prizes and awards (departmental, faculty, national and international) throughout his academic career such as the UCL Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences Medal (2008), Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) Chemistry Student of the Year (2008) and the Ramsay Medal (2011). Moreover, he was recently highlighted by Scientific American (2013), Forbes Magazine (2015) and CNN News (2016) to be a future leader in the field of Chemistry. He has research interests in the development and application of novel methodologies in Chemical Biology, resulting in over 50 publications and patents (http://chudasama-group.eu/). In addition, he has been highlighted as a future leader in the field of Chemical Biology by Chemical Communications in a special issue (Emerging Investigators). He is also one of the founders, and the Technical Director, of UCL spin-out ThioLogics™.

Director, Research
Dr. Cizeau is the Director of Research at Viventia Bio Inc., a subsidiary of Sesen Bio. Dr. Cizeau is responsible for the design, engineering and biological characterization of Eleven’s next generation ADC Targeted Protein Therapeutics (TPT) platform including TPTs carrying the de-immunized proprietary plant toxin payload, deBouganin. Prior to joining Viventia Bio Inc., Dr. Cizeau was a post-doctoral fellow at the Manitoba Institute of Cell Biology in Winnipeg (CANADA) and received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Orleans (France).

O'Hara Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry; Concurrent Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
Patricia L. Clark is the O’Hara Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Concurrent Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Director of the Biophysics Graduate Program at the University of Notre Dame. Her laboratory uses a broad range of biophysical, genetic and other tools to investigate protein folding mechanisms. She leads a multi-disciplinary, NIH-funded research network comprised of eight laboratories investigating the effects of protein synthesis rate on successful protein folding. Professor Clark has received multiple awards throughout her career, including an NSF CAREER Award, the Bárány Award from the Biophysical Society and the Notre Dame Joyce Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Senior Scientist, Oncology, Immunotherapy, pRED
Biography

Director, Custom Assay Services
Mei leads scientists in development of Bioassays for biologics and Target Engagement for small molecules. Recently Mei's been leading development of reporter Bioassays for measuring activities of biologic drugs. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Arizona. She completed her post-doctoral training on GPCR signal transduction pathway regulation with Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, 2012 Nobel Laureate. Prior to Promega, Mei spent time developing and delivering robust cell-based assays.

Docent, Dean, Swedish National Graduate School in Medical Bioinformatics, Biochemistry and Biophysics
Biography

Senior Research Scientist, Clinical Research
Colin Correnti, PhD is a senior scientist and director of the Molecular Design and Therapeutics Core at the Fred Hutch in Seattle Washington. His group engineers and produces mammalian proteins using a customized lentiviral expression system and supports multiple drug discovery efforts. His research is at the interface of immunology and biophysics, where he combines antibody discovery and protein design to develop new CAR-T cell and bispecific immunotherapies for rare pediatric cancers.

Professor, Experimental Cancer Biology, Antibody & Vaccine Group
Mark Cragg is Professor of Experimental Cancer Biology in the Cancer Sciences Unit of Southampton University Faculty of Medicine. He obtained his PhD 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 tumour regression can be induced and is focused on two main types of therapeutics – antibodies and small molecule inhibitors, with the aim of understanding how they elicit tumour cell destruction, how resistance occurs through changes in the microenvironment and how it might be overcome.

Senior Lecturer, Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science
Robin Curtis joined the Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science School at University of Manchester in 2003. Previously he did his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley and post-doctoral training at University of California Los Angeles and Rice University. His current research is focused on understanding the fundamentals of protein solution behaviour with an emphasis on elucidating non-specific protein-protein interactions and how they depend upon protein structural properties and the solution components including excipients. The approach relies on using a combination of light scattering methods (dynamic and static light scattering, electrophertic light scattering) as well as computational approaches based on structural informatics and molecular modelling. Current projects are focused on formulation issues such as protein phase behaviour, aggregation, and solution rheology.

Director, BioGiv Excubator & Head, Protein Expression Facility, Wolfson Centre for Applied Structural Biology, Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences
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 and training center for the development and implementation of novel technologies in molecular biology and protein production. Dr. Danieli is also the founder and director of “BioGiv Excubator”, a specialized university-based center for promoting and supporting early-stage startup companies 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 PhD in molecular virology from the Biochemistry Department at Tel Aviv University in collaboration with the University of California, San Francisco Pharmacology Department.

Senior Principal Scientist, Biomedicine Design
Fred Sheehan is a Senior Principal Scientist in the BioMedicine Design Group, at Pfizer Grange Castle, Dublin, Ireland. Fred has been in his current role for just over 11 years, he runs a group of scientists within the BMD / Pfizer responsible for the discovery and molecular engineering of novel biotherapeutics using display technologies. Prior to joining Pfizer, Fred worked as a Post-Doctoral researcher in the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute focusing on the development of portable, user-friendly, and autonomous antibody-based diagnostic systems for human and animal healthcare. He obtained his PhD from Dublin City University (DCU). Fred has attended and presented at numerous scientific workshops & conferences & has published book chapters & original research in numerous journals.

Associate Director, Discovery Biology
Rick Davies is an Associate Director in the Discovery Biology department of AstraZeneca, based in the UK. He has a long history of working on small molecule drug discovery projects across all major therapeutic areas. In particular, Rick’s work has focused on the recombinant production and characterization of a wide variety of protein targets for use in crystallography, screening and biophysical studies. In 2016 he was part of a team at AstraZeneca and KTH in Stockholm which set up the Human Secretome Project. This is an ongoing project aiming to understand the biological function and disease relevance of secreted proteins.

Scientist, Analytical Sciences Biologicals
I performed my master thesis in the Laboratory of mass spectrometry of Pr De Pauw in the University of Liege in collaboration with the drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics department of Janssen pharmaceutica. My task was to identify different modification sites on a model protein of different reactive metabolites by mass spectrometry. The quantitation of this modification was also achieved by mass spectrometry and radioactivity labelling. After this first insight in the pharmaceutical world, I started a PhD thesis, granted thanks to an European funding, in the same mass spectrometry laboratory to characterize bioactive proteins and peptides coming from animal venoms. I am presently concluding my PhD manuscript and in parallel, am starting my professional career at UCB as a physico-chemical method development scientist (mass spec specialist).

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

Assistant Director, Protein Chemistry & CMC
Biography

Chief Executive and Science Officer, Antikor Biopharma, Ltd.
Dr. Deonarain studied at Imperial College and Cambridge University where he carried out PhD research into protein engineering. From 1997 to 2011, Dr Deonarain was a Principle Investigator and Reader in Antibody Technology at Imperial College London, 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 at 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.

Director, Biology
Erik Depla is holding a PhD in Biochemistry of the Catholic University Leuven (Belgium) and did post-doctoral research on viral hepatitis at the faculty of Medicine in Leuven. Key roles in more than 20 years in biotech included project management for the development of both prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines for viral infections (Innogenetics), therapeutic Nanobodies® predominantly within the field of infectious diseases and oncology (Ablynx) and, early lead biologics discovery and target validation (Flemish Institute for Biotechnology). Recently he joined Orionis Biosciences as Director Biology to lead the further development of the AcTakine platform.

Director, Head of Lead Discovery at Biopharm
Dr. Ruud de Wildt has more than 15 years of experience within the Biotech and Biopharmaceutical industry. He currently is Director, heading up Lead Discovery in Biopharm in GSK. In this role, he is responsible for the lead discovery processes for Biopharmaceuticals including mAbs and alternative scaffolds such as dAbs and bi-specifics, using Adimab’s yeast based platform, in vivo Ab discovery platforms and phage display for dAbs. Previously, he held a position as Associate Director in Domantis Limited, the domain antibody company. He was responsible for the generation of new domain antibody libraries and a number of therapeutic programs. Prior to Domantis, he did a post-doc at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge UK, with Dr. Greg Winter and Dr. Ian Tomlinson to develop high density antibody arrays. During his PhD in The Netherlands, he performed studies on antibody repertoires from autoimmune patients.

Vice President, Safety Assessment
Rakesh is a Vice President, R&D and the Global Head of the Biologics Safety Assessment comprising of Toxicology, Pathology and Laboratory Animal Resources functions where he is responsible for overseeing the biologics safety assessment of the entire MedImmune biologics portfolio in all therapeutics areas (2006-todate). Prior to joining MedImmune in 2006, Rakesh served as Senior Director of Toxicology in Johnson and Johnson and Associate Director-Research Fellow in Toxicology in Merck and Co., Inc. (1992-2005). Rakesh has over 25 years of experience in developing pharmaceutical and biotechnology-derived drugs and is the author of over 60 peer-reviewed scientific publications and has been invited to deliver Rakesh is regarded as a Key Opinion Leader in Toxicology community. Rakesh is the Editor-in-chief of Toxicology Mechanisms and Methods and an Associate Editor of Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology and Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health- all key major toxicology journals.

Vice President, Technology, R&D
Surjit Dixit, PhD has been with Zymeworks Inc. since 2007 and currently functions as its Vice President, Technology. As the field of drug discovery has expanded from small molecules to protein therapeutics, Zymeworks has been at the forefront employing rational protein engineering to complement other technologies for biologics optimization. Surjit has a PhD in the area of computational molecular biophysics from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi.

Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Genetics, Institute for Integrative Systems Biology
Pilar Domingo-Calap obtained her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from University of Valencia with Extraordinary Award in 2012. Her thesis was focused in mutational effects, evolution and adaptation of bacteriophages. She did two internships in 2011 and 2012 at the Strasbourg University where she studied viral evolution in absence of selection. She then enchained with a Postdoc position at the Laboratory of Excellence Transplantex if the Strasbourg University where she started a new line of investigation to determine viral reactivation and viral evolution in vivo in transplant patients. In 2016, she was awarded with a highly competitive Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación contract at the University of Valencia, where she moved to study viral social evolution and bacteriophage-bacteria co-evolution. Her research interest is mainly involved in variability, evolution and adaptation of viruses.

Staff Physician and Scientist, Medical Oncology
Marco Donia (MDO), MD, PhD, is a Clinician-Scientist at the Center for Cancer Immune Therapy (CCIT) and Department of Oncology, Herlev Hospital, Denmark. He is Associate Professor in Clinical Oncology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and currently Chairman of the Danish Medicines Council, Melanoma scientific Committee. In his clinical appointment, MDO serves as Staff Specialist with primary focus area in Cancer Immunotherapy and Metastatic Melanoma (direct responsibility of about 100 new diagnosed patients/year). MDO heads the tumor-infiltrate lymphocyte (TIL) group at CCIT, to study the interaction of T cells with autologous tumor cells. MDO received his MD at the University of Catania, Italy in 2008, and completed a sub-specialty training in Medical Oncology through a partnership between the University of Catania and the Department of Oncology, Herlev Hospital (June 2014). MDO obtained one additional board certification in Clinical Oncology in Denmark in 2017. In addition, MDO obtained a PhD in Cancer Immunotherapy (Methods to Improve Adoptive T cell therapy with Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes) at the University of Copenhagen. MDO has authored over 70 articles including original manuscripts published in leading journals such as Science, Nature Biotechnology, Annals of Oncology, Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research and European Journal of Cancer. His major interests are in the development of novel immune therapeutic strategies for the treatment of cancer. He has extensive experience in research, development, manufacturing including GMP regulatory aspects, and treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma with adoptive transfer of T-cells. He has been clinical investigator in several Phase I, II and III trials in solid tumors and in particularmetastatic melanoma, both involving cellular therapies and immune checkpoint inhibitors. He is co-founder of OncoNOx

Senior Scientist and Group Leader HT-BSF, Plückthun Lab
Dr. Birgit Dreier has been Senior Scientist in the group of Prof. Dr. A. Plückthun at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Zurich, for more than 10 years and is responsible for the organization, optimization and selection of DARPin (Designed Ankyrin Repeat Proteins) and other scaffold binders and their validation. Here she recently expanded her focus and is leading the High Throughput-Binder Selection Facility (HT-BSF). Prior to this engagement she acquired a strong background in Phage Display using different protein scaffolds (e.g. Fab fragments and zinc finger domains) during her PhD at the Department of Genetics, University of Erlangen, and her postdoctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute, San Diego.

Project Leader & Head, in vivo Pharmacology
Gregory Driessens is project Leader for TIGIT program and group Leader of the in vivo pharmacology team at iTeos Therapeutics. He joined the company in 2013 with 12 years’ experience in immunology, immunotherapy and cancer biology. Grégory holds a MSc and PhD in Biomedicals Sciences from ULB (Brussels). He was a post-doctoral fellow for three years in the lab of Thomas Gajewski (UChicago) before coming back to the lab of Cédric Blanpain (Brussels) to study cancer and cancer stem-cell biology. Grégory has authored 19 peer-reviewed publications and is the inventor of six patent applications.

Fellow AppScie
PhD at Karolinska Institute in Sweden studying protein-DNA interactions. Been with Schrödinger for almost 10 years. Currently Principal Applications Scientist and Director of Scientific Support.

Full Professor and Managing Director, Institute of Biochemistry, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biotechnology
Dr. Stefan Dübel is full Professor of Biotechnology and Director of the respective department at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany. He further serves as director of the technology transfer unit "Centre for Molecular Engineering" of iTUBSmbH and as consultant to biotech / pharma companies and US/EU goverment institutions. He is editor of the four volume "Handbook of Therapeutic Antibodies" and other antibody engineering books, and co-founder of several biotech companies, most recently of the human antibody discovery and antibody engineering company Yumab GmbH (www.yumab.com). After obtaining his PhD from the Universitiy of Heidelberg, in 1989 he joined the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) where he co-pioneered in vitro antibody selection technologies, resulting in several key inventions including antibody phage display (e.g. US Patent 5849500), human antibody libraries (e.g. US6319690) and antibody libraries with randomised CDRs (e.g. US Patent 5840479). His lab continued to contribute to multiple topics related to human antibody engineering, phage display and in vitro evolution, e.g. Hyperphage technology (2001), ORFeome display (2006), and targeted RNases for cancer therapy (1995/2008). Other achievements include the developed the world's first protein knock down mouse using intrabodies (2014), and a universal allosteric switch module for antibody affinity (2017). His work resulted in >200 publications and >25 patent applications.

CTO and Co-Founder
Mike Dyson, PhD, is Chief Technology Officer and co-founder at IONTAS Ltd., a therapeutic antibody discovery company. He is a co-inventor of the IONTAS mammalian cell antibody display platform and has acted as the project leader for several successful therapeutic antibody discovery projects in immuno-oncology and inflammatory disease areas close to IND filing. Mike was previously Head of Protein Engineering at Acambis plc (acquired by Sanofi) and Project Leader at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. He holds a PhD in organic synthetic chemistry and post-docs at MIT and the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge. He has published 31 papers and book chapters (cited over 1300 times, h-index 19) and is inventor on 8 US patent and patent applications.

Scientist, Technical R&D, Technical Development Biosimilars
Dr. David Eisen studied Biochemistry at University of Tuebingen, Germany. He did his PhD at the Natural and Medical Sciences Institute (NMI) at the University of Tuebingen in the department of Biochemistry, focusing on immune-affinity enrichment of proteins/peptides and quantitative MS-based proteomics. During that time, he also worked as guest scientist at Proteome Centre at the University of Victoria, Canada. He did his Postdoc at the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy (Center for Integrated Protein Science Munich) at LMU University in Munich. In 2015, he joined as Scientist the Phys.Chem Characterization group at Novartis /Sandoz in Oberhaching, Germany. In his function as Characterization Project Analyst, he supports and coordinates the analytical characterization of biosimilar and NBE development projects. His main field of expertise is protein/peptide separation and mass spectrometry.

Senior Vice President, Research
Daniel Emerling is Senior Vice President of Research and a founder of Atreca. He received a BA in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in neurobiology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he performed postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor, Protein Science, Engineering Sciences in Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health
Amelie Eriksson Karlström is Professor of Molecular Biotechnology at the Department of Protein Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where her research group is working on protein engineering, affinity technologies and bioconjugation chemistry for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. She received her PhD in 1997 at the Stockholm University, Department of Neurochemistry and Neurotoxicology, after graduate studies on solid phase peptide synthesis methodology. This was followed by postdoctoral studies in 1997-1999 at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, where she was working on catalytic antibodies and display technologies.

Group Leader, Institute of Clinical Pharmacology
Andreas Ernst studied chemistry at the TU Darmstadt and after graduation did his PhD in the lab of Dr. Andreas Plückthun at the University of Zurich. In 2007, he joined the laboratory of Dev Sidhu at the Protein Engineering Department at Genentech and moved with him in 2008 to the University of Toronto. There he began the design and engineering of intracellular inhibitors based on ubiquitin. In 2013, Andreas Ernst became Junior Group Leader at the Institute of Biochemistry II at the Goethe University of Frankfurt and established himself as independent researcher. Since 2015, he is affiliated with the Fraunhofer Institute of Molecular Biology and applied Ecology - Project Group Translation Medicine and Pharmacology (Fraunhofer-IME-TMP) and responsible for the development of early discovery biologics. In February 2018, he joined the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology at the Goethe University.

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

Director, Immunobiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Associate Professor, Medicine
Denise Faustman MD, PhD is Director of the Immunobiology Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School Her research objective is to introduce new therapeutic concepts to treat transplant rejection, autoimmune diseases and, more recently, cancer. She has been working in the fields of autoimmunity and immunology for nearly three decades, with a particular interest in identifying new biological processes that may be related to human disease and most frequently on the TNFR2 signaling pathway. In the Immunobiology Lab, I lead teams that work to uncover the basic molecular and immunological mechanisms behind human and murine immune pathogenesis as it relates to TNF and translate these new innovations to the clinic.

Senior Principal Scientist, BioMedicine Design (BMD)
Brian Fennell is a Senior Principal Scientist in the BioMedicine Design Group, at Pfizer Grange Castle, Dublin, Ireland. Brian is coming up on 11 years in the BMD group/Pfizer & his group is responsible for the discovery and molecular engineering of novel protein therapeutics to treat a wide spectrum of human diseases. Prior to joining Pfizer, Brian was awarded an IRCSET fellowship & worked as a Post-Doctoral researcher focusing on tubulin as a potential drug target in the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum at the Moyne Institute of Preventive Medicine, Trinity College Dublin. He obtained his Degree from University College Dublin (UCD) and PhD from the Trinity College Dublin (TCD). Brian has attended and presented at numerous scientific workshops & conferences & has published book chapters & original research in numerous journals such as The Journals of Molecular Biology, PNAS, Immunology, Molecular Biochemical Parasitology, Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and in mAbs.

Professor, Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital
Dr. S. Ferrone received his MD and PhD degree from the Medical School of the University of Milan, Milan, Italy. He has held faculty positions at many Academic Institutions in the States. Since 2012 he holds the position of Professor in the Department of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. Over the years, he has developed and implemented programs in the areas of immunotherapy of solid tumors and of immune escape mechanisms.

CEO
Biography

Head, Research
Nicolas Fischer obtained a PhD 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.

Research Assistant; Biosystems Science and Engineering
Simon Friedensohn is a PhD 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.

Director, Sales
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 17 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.

Senior Manager, Product Marketing, Marketing
Biography

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

Associate Director, Early Stage Bioprocess Development
2015 – Today: Associate Director Cell Biology (Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG, Germany) – Leading cell line development and new technology implementations for Early Stage Bioprocess Developments.
2010 – 2015: Group Leader Protein Production and Analytics (Protagen AG, Germany) – Development of companion diagnostics for autoimmune indications.
2008 – 2010: Scientist Industrial Biotechnology (c-LEcta GmbH/University of Leipzig, Germany) – Optimization of bacterial strains for Industrial Biotechnology applications.

Scientist, Molecular Engineering, Therapeutic Discovery
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 PhD fellowship to join the University of Barcelona, Spain, in 2004. After finishing his PhD, 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.

Senior Director, Research and Development
I joined Innate Pharma (IPH) in 2002, currently as Senior Director in IPH Research laboratory. I received my doctorate degree in immunology from the Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy (CIML-Aix-Marseille University - France) in 1998. I did my post-doctoral research at Laboratoire Architecture et Fonction des Macromolécules Biologiques (AFMB), a center of structural biology, in Dr Herman VanTilbeurgh’s team. Subsequently, I was a CNRS scientist at the CIML in Dr. Claudine Schiff’s team. I started at IPH as a team leader and project manager, concentrating on protein chemistry and antibody engineering. I participated to the development of all IPH assets including NK checkpoint inhibitor antibodies Lirilumab and Monalizumab. Since 2009, I have worked specifically as a director of the Antibody Department and head of NK cell engager program. I currently oversee a group of about 30 researchers. I have been an inventor on more than 25 patent publications.

Director, Biopharma Business Development, Pharmaceutical Business
Biography

Scientist II
Dr. Rémy Gébleux (Scientist II, NBE-Therapeutics AG) has over 5 years of experience in the field of ADCs. He obtained his diploma degree in Chemistry in 2012 from the Chemistry school of Montpellier followed by a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences in the Group of Pr. Dario Neri from ETH Zurich with the focus on Non-Internalizing ADCs targeting the tumor vasculature of solid cancer. At NBE-Therapeutics, his role consists in developing the company’s core Sortase-mediated conjugation technology and to produce and characterize novel ADCs to support their preclinical development.

Distinguished Research Fellow, Foundational Immunology
Tariq Ghayur received his PhD (1987) in Immunology from McGill University, Montreal, Canada and did his post-doctoral training at McGill (1987-’88) and Dana Farber Cancer Institute (1988-’90). He joined AbbVie Inc. in 1990. Tariq has worked on both small molecule and therapeutic antibody discovery programs and from 1998-2004 led two therapeutic antibody discovery project teams and delivered 2 drug development candidates. From 2011-2016, Tariq led the dual variable domain Ig (DVD – Ig™) Initiative and the Novel Biologics group at AbbVie. Currently, he leads the Foundational Immunology group. In addition to therapeutic antibodies, novel biologic formats and antibody generation technologies, his areas of interest are inflammation, intracellular trafficking, antigen processing and presentation, lymphocyte biology, cytokine biology and glyco-biology.

Vice President, R&D
David Gilham obtained his PhD from the University of Dundee, UK under the supervision of Professor Roland Wolf OBE. In 1996, David was recruited to work with Professor Robert Hawkins at the University of Bristol, UK to work on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells. In 1998, the group moved to the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research, University of Manchester. The group maintained a strong translational focus delivering several clinical trials of CAR T (including the first such trial to be initiated in the UK) while developing a strong basic research core activity including leading the ATTACK European Union funding program that drew together colleagues working in T cell therapy across Europe.

Founder & President & CEO
Dr. Gillies has focused his work on engineered antibodies, including cytokine fusion proteins, for more than 25 years. He has developed several such molecules that have entered clinical trials and two that are now marketed drugs for the treatment of solid tumors including colon cancer and neuroblastoma. The results obtained from these human trials has informed the re-engineering of next-generation molecules with improved efficacy and better tolerability. Dr. Gillies’ education includes a B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as an M.S. and PhD in Microbiology from the College of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. During his postdoctoral work at MIT, he pioneered the expression of recombinant antibodies and later, after joining Damon Biotech, developed the concept of immunocytokines. Recently he has developed a novel immunocytokine platform that makes it possible to dial in the bioactivity of cytokines like IL2 so they can be adapted for the particular therapeutic approach they are intended for. In addition, he currently collaborates with academic groups to test how these molecules can be combined with other treatment modalities such as checkpoint inhibitors, targeted therapeutics and adoptive cell therapies such as NK and CAR-T cells.

Manager and Senior Scientist, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center; Scientific Consultant, Department of Immunology, Weizmann Institute of Science
Dr. Anat Globerson Levin was born in Israel (1978), married with 3 children. Dr. Globerson Levin earned a BSc (2002) in Biology and an MSc (2006) in Cell Biology, both from Tel Aviv University. Her doctoral research (2011) was undertaken in the Department of Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she studied under Prof. Zelig Eshhar’s supervision. Her PhD focused on developing the CAR T cell therapy towards solid tumor and specifically towards breast cancer. After earning a PhD, Globerson Levin continued her post-doctoral fellowship at Eshhars lab. and continued as a senior intern and consultant at the immunology department at the Weizmann Institute. From 2013-Today, she is a senior scientist and managing the Immunology Research lab. of Prof. Eshhar at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. Dr. Globerson Levin research has been focused on developing immunotherapy treatment using the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) concept. Her main focus today is overcoming the immunosuppressive environment and choosing the precise antigen, thus overcome the toxicity that might occur towards normal cells. She developed a Double CAR T cell treatment towards multiple myeloma, which gained a patent and now is moving ahead to treat patients. She is leading together with the guidance committee the opening of the immunotherapy center at TASMC, which will be treating patients using cell therapy. She is aiming to lead the CAR T cell treatment at the center. Dr. Globerson Levin is a key person at the lab. She received with Eshhar several grants including the ROI/NIH, CRBC, ISF and Persol foundation grant that was selectively given to her.

Head, Peptide Discovery
YMichael Goldflam obtained his PhD in 2013 at the University of Barcelona working on small-molecule drug discovery. During his postdoc in Cambridge he used cell-free display systems to developed peptides and VHH as therapeutics for an international consortium working on stem-cell and cancer related pathways. Currently he is leading the peptide discovery lab at Pepscan, serves as point of contact for customers, translates their questions into tangible projects and ensures deadlines will be met with quality results.

Associate Director, Preclinical Pharmacology & Cancer Immunology
Christoph Goletz studied biology at the University of Konstanz and received his PhD at the “Freie Universität Berlin”. Since 2012 he is a leading scientist at Glycotope GmbH. As specialist in immunology he is currently responsible for the preclinical development of a bispecific immune checkpoint inhibitor.

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

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

Deputy Head, Analytical Development, BioAnalytics
Pierre Guibal is a deputy unit head in analytical development at Sanofi. He holds an engineer degree from ESPCI Paris and obtained a PhD in analytical chemistry form Paris Sud University in 2014. His thesis focused on analytical methods for diagnosis of inborn errors of metabolism associated with neurological disorders especially in children. He joined Sanofi in 2015 where he works on analytical development related to polysorbate in biotherapeutics formulation.

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

CMO and Executive Vice President
Biography

Professor and Department Head, Chemical Biology II
Christian P. R. Hackenberger completed his graduate studies at the universities of Freiburg and UW Madison and his doctoral studies in 2003 at the RWTH Aachen. After a postdoctoral position at MIT with Barbara Imperiali, he started his own group at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2005 funded by the German Science Foundation in the Emmy Noether Program and the Boehringer-Ingelheim Foundation within the Plus 3 award. In 2012, he was appointed Leibniz-Humboldt Professor for Chemical Biology at the Leibniz-Research Institute for Molecular Pharmacology and the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. His group works on the development of new chemoselective and biorthogonal reactions and novel approaches to functional protein synthesis and delivery, in particular for the labeling and modification of different antibody formats. Since 2018, he is co-founder of the planned start-up 'Tubulis Technologies'. This newly established company ventures into developing better tolerable cancer drugs based on antibody-drug conjugates. In March 2018, 'Tubulis Technologies' received the Leibniz Gründerpreis (New Enterprise Foundation Award) of the Leibniz Association.

Scientist, Physico Chemical Analytics, Protein Sciences
02/2017-today: Scientist - Physico Chemical Analytics, Morphosys AG
05/2015-02/2017: Associate Scientist – Physico Chemical Characterization, Novartis BTDM
02/2011-07/2014: PhD - Department of Chemistry, research group of Prof. Dr. Thomas. Carell

Associate Professor, Department of Pathology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine
Following a BSc in biochemistry at Kings College London, Oliver Hartley joined Sir Gregory Winter’s group for his PhD, which he obtained in 1997. After a brief period working as a visiting research fellow at the Glaxo Institute for Molecular Biology in Geneva, Switzerland, he joined Robin Offord’s group at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva to work on the engineering of chemokine proteins as HIV entry inhibitors. He took charge of his own group in 2005, becoming assistant professor in 2008 and associate professor in 2017. His main area of research has been in the discovery, optimization and development of chemokine analogs as agents for HIV prevention. This led to creation of a non-profit spin-off, the Mintaka Foundation for Medical Research, where, as CSO, he has taken responsibility bringing the most promising molecule into clinical development. At the same time, he has continued to work on other aspects of protein and peptide engineering related to drug discovery, developing and applying a range of innovative new techniques based on a combination of recombinant and chemical synthesis approaches.

Vice President, ADC Research
Torsten Hechler is group leader at Cell Biology & Assay Development at Heidelberg Pharma GmbH, a pharma company located near Heidelberg, mainly conducting research and development of anti-cancer drugs. He obtained his diploma degree in biology in 2007 followed by a PhD in microbiology at the Technical University of Darmstadt, with focus on the influence of environmental conditions on gene regulation in halophilic Archaea. For his postdoctoral studies at the DKFZ in Heidelberg he switched the field towards virology and focused on animal retroviruses and the risk of zoonotic infections of humans. He is currently working on the development of new ADCs based on the RNA polymerase II inhibitor alpha-Amanitin at Heidelberg Pharma.

Head, Bioanalysis Group, Division of Biotechnology, Lund University
Dr. Martin Hedström holds an associate professorship at Lund University. He obtained his PhD in biotechnology in year 2006, specializing in bioanalytical chemistry and biosensor technologies. He is active at Lund University as head of the bioanalysis group at the Division of Biotechnology, where he gives courses and supervises PhD students. Martin is also a founding partner in the research company CapSenze Biosystems AB, which is built around his main research topic, i.e. flow-based bioanalytical technologies and bioprocess monitoring.

Professor, Laboratory of Therapeutic Peptides and Proteins
Prof. Christian Heinis studied biochemistry at the ETHZ. After a PhD in the research group of Prof. Dr. Dario Neri at the ETHZ, he did two post-docs, the first one with Prof. Dr. Kai Johnsson at the EPFL, and the second one with Sir Gregory Winter at the LMB in Cambridge, UK. In 2008, he started as an Assistant Professor at EPFL and was promoted in 2015 to Associate Professor. He is a scientific co-founder of the start-up company Bicycle Therapeutics. Since 2016, he is co-director of the Swiss research network NCCR Chemical Biology.

CSO
Guy joined Isogenica as CSO in January 2016. He brings in over a decade of experience in antibody fragment discovery and early development, as well as antibody discovery technology development. During his academic training, Guy did research in the pathogenesis and immunotherapy of autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, ranging from cell-based immunotherapy clinical trials in Multiple Sclerosis to preclinical in vitro/in vivo target discovery and validation work at Stanford University Medical School.

Assistant Director, Protein Production and Chemistry
Rick earned his D.Phil. in Biochemistry from Oxford University and an MBA from the Amsterdam Business School. He performed a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. He joined Genmab in 2013 and works as Assistant Director, responsible for the Protein Production & Chemistry department, CMC research and for projects related to Genmab’s proprietary DuoBody® bispecific antibody platform.

Lead Scientist, Translational Research
Ida Hiemstra is an immunologist and infectious biologist by training. She studied at the Utrecht University, with internships at the Immunotherapy laboratory of the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital in Utrecht and the microbiology department at the San Diego State University in California. She continued her PhD at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam investigating mucosal immunology. She worked as a postdoc for three years at the Dutch Blood Supply foundation in Amsterdam investigating myeloid-derived suppressor cells, after which she joined Genmab as a translational research scientist in September 2016. Ida is the Lead Translational Research Scientist on Genmab’s DuoBody-CD3xCD20 program.

Vice President, Molecular Biology/Protein Engineering
Oliver Hill joined Apogenix in March 2006. He is an expert for protein engineering and expression. Prior to his position at Apogenix, he headed the protein expression and purification group at Graffinity Pharmaceutical Design GmbH (Heidelberg, Germany) from 1999 to 2006. At Graffinity, Oliver Hill was responsible for delivering a broad spectrum of target proteins for screening on a chemical microarray platform. His work in former, academic R&D positions at the Lower Saxony Institute for Peptide Research (Hannover, Germany; 1992-1996) and the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology (Jena, Germany; 1997-1998) included gene hunting, protein engineering and the development of recombinant phage display technologies. Mr. Hill studied biology at the University of Hannover where he also received his PhD from the Department of Chemistry in 1997.

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

NDA Associate, Clinical Consultant
Specialises in translational medicine (First-into-Man) and accelerated development to Clinical Proof-of-Concept of NBEs and NCEs.

Co-Founder and CSO
Dr. R. P. Iyer, (Kris) is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals. He has more than 25 years’ experience in drug discovery and development in diverse fields including antivirals, inflammation, and immune-oncology. Kris is internationally recognized as an innovator in the fields of nucleic acid chemistry, bioorganic chemistry, and pharmaceutical sciences with over 100 publications and 200 issued and filed US and international patents. Prior to Spring Bank, Kris was the co-founder and VP of Discovery at Origenix Technologies.

Scientist, Early Stage Pharmaceutical Development
Saeed Izadi is a Scientist in the department of Early Stage Pharmaceutical Development at Genentech Inc. His research interest lies in using and developing theoretical models and computational tools to understand how protein structural dynamics and physicochemical features shapes protein behaviors, ranging from self-association propensities and macroscopic colloidal behavior to binding, catalysis, and side-chain chemical degradation. His group uses a variety of molecular simulation techniques, from fully atomistic Molecular Dynamics to multi-scale implicit solvent simulations to coarse grained modeling. He received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering and Science at Virginia Tech where he worked on the development of force field models of the solvent environment in biomolecular simulations as well as multi-scale methods to speed-up atomistic simulation of large systems.

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

CSO
Dr. Bent Jakobsen co-founded Immunocore in 2008, and has served as Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Board Member since that time. He is also scientific co-founder of Adaptimmune Ltd, where he provides strategic and advisory input as well as oversight of research programmes. He was previously Chief Scientific Officer of Avidex, a company he founded in 1999, as a spin-out from the University of Oxford, to develop novel T cell receptor-based drugs. Dr. Jakobsen was head of the Immune Receptor Group at the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM) in Oxford from 1993 to July 2000. Prior to this, he was a Senior Research Fellow of the Danish Natural Research Council, Aarhus, Denmark, and undertook post-doctoral research at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of the Medical Research Council in Cambridge. Dr. Jakobsen has authored numerous scientific papers and is considered a world expert in the field of T cell receptor immunology.

Principal Consultant, CMC
Dr. Jia has 18 years of combined experience in biologic drug development in biopharmaceutical companies and regulatory review for CMC of biological products in FDA. During her time in US FDA from year 2009 to 2015, Dr. Jia was a full time CMC reviewer for IND/BLA review of biological products including antibody fragments, fusion proteins, antibody drug conjugate, combination products, and radiolabeled antibodies. She performed numerous IND reviews, several BLAs (including post approval reviews), and several US and international cGMP pre-approval inspections (PAIs). She is specialized in both novel proteins/antibodies and biosimilar products reviews. Dr. Jia left FDA in 2015 and established a regulatory consulting company DataRevive LLC to perform regulatory consulting works including US IND/BLA/NDA filing, and consulting for early stage development. She is an internationally well-known regulatory expert. Dr. Jia holds a Master degree in Bioscience Regulatory Affairs from Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD degree in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Emory University. Prior to that, Dr. Jia obtained her Bachelor degree of Medicine from Peking University.

Founder and CEO
Dr. David S. Johnson is an inventor, entrepreneur, and expert in genomics. He filed one of the earliest patents in single cell droplet microfluidics. At GigaGen, Dr. Johnson has raised >$63 million from Grifols, Novartis, Sequoia Capital, NSF, and NIH. Dr. Johnson was formerly on the founding team and COO of Natera (NASDAQ: NTRA), which had its IPO in July 2015, and sold >$250 million worth of diagnostic tests in 2017.

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

Group Leader, Department of Cellular and Molecular Biophysics
2015-present: Group Leader: Cell Free Protein Synthesis, Group of Petra Schwille, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany. 2012-2015: PostDoc, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany. 2008-2012: PhD in Biology, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt/Main, Germany. 2005-2008: Master in Microbiology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, P.R. China. 2001-2005: Bachelor in Bioengineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, P.R. China. Research interest focused on cell-free protein synthesis technique and its multi-disciplinary applications, ranging from structural and functional characterization of membrane proteins to “bottom up” synthetic biology and construction of minimal cells.

FLabhead AL1, Global Drug Development / Technical Research & Development
Urs Lohrig studied biochemistry at the Ruhr-University Bochum before concluding a doctoral thesis at the University Wuerzburg, Germany, in 2007. His main studies were in the fields of proteomics and glycoproteomics focusing on nHPLC and mass spectrometric approaches. After joining Sandoz in 2012, he gathered experience as labhead and project analyst for late stage biosimilar products (drug product). He moved on to work as labhead in the biosimilar analytical characterization department in 2015.

Reader, Translational Cancer Immunology, St. John’s Institute of Dermatology, School of Basic & Medical Biosciences
Dr. Sophia Karagiannis is a Reader in Translational Cancer Immunology at King’s College London. She heads a cancer antibody discovery team focused on designing novel agents for skin, ovarian and breast cancers and striving to understand the cross-talk between patient immune cells and cancer. Major research streams in the Karagiannis laboratory include: a) dissecting B cell and antibody responses and understanding how these are modulated by the tumor microenvironment; b) interrogating patient humoral responses for potential biomarkers to aid stratification and to inform patient-focused treatments; c) designing Fc-modified antibodies with enhanced effector functions; d) elucidating the mechanisms of action of antibodies engineered with modified Fc regions and of different isotypes, namely IgG1, IgG4 and IgE, in disease-relevant models. The group are the first to design and translate an IgE class antibody recognizing a cancer antigen to a Phase I clinical trial in patients with solid tumours.

Project Leader, Antibody Engineering
Dr. Aneesh Karatt-Vellatt is a Group Leader at IONTAS Ltd. Aneesh joined IONTAS after completing a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge. At IONTAS, Aneesh directed a team that developed a novel platform technology that facilitates antibody generation against traditionally difficult therapeutic targets such as ion channels and GPCRs.

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

Head, Cell Line Development, Biology
Biography

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

Professor, Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit
Professor, Rizwan Hasan Khan has received his PhD in Biotechnology from Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India in 1996. His research focus is centered on protein biophysics, protein folding, misfolding and amyloid fibrils. He has published paper in journals like Scientific Reports, Biomacromolecules, Langmuir, Biochemistry, BBA, BBRC etc. He has worked with Prof. I.J.Goldstein at University of Michigan USA as BOYSCAST Fellow and with Prof. Steve Perkins at University of London as Commonwealth Fellow. He had published around 280 papers in the journals of international repute. He is fellow of Biotech Research Society, India and also serving as Bentham Ambassador. He recently received “Mid-Career Award” from UGC, India. He is recognized as “Most outstanding researcher of India Award by Careers360” in the field of Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology.

Associate Professor, Donnelly Centre
Biography

Senior Director, Global Product Management, Clinical Solutions, Product Management
Kurt R. Klimpel received his PhD (1989) in Molecular Biology from Washington University in St. Louis, where his research was focused on mechanisms of bacterial pathogenesis. As a National Research Fellow, he conducted his postdoctoral work at the National Institutes of Health (NIDR) working with various bacterial pathogens including anthrax. Since 1996, Dr. Klimpel has worked in the biotechnology industry as Director of Research and Chief Scientific Officer (Aquabounty Technologies), Senior Program Manager and General Manager (L-3 Communications, BIT Technology) and Sr. Field Application Scientist Senior Director (SGI-DNA).

Head of Fraunhofer Institute of Cellular Therapeutics and Immunology (IZI); Director, Institute of Clinical Immunology, University and University hospital of Leipzig; and Director, Institute of Cellular Therapeutics, GMP Development Unit and Cellular Therapy Centre, Hannover Medical School (MHH)
Ulrike Köhl is a full Professor for Immune Oncology at the University of Leipzig and head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology since December 2017. In 2012, she became a Professor at Medical School Hannover (MHH) and is currently the director of the Institute of Cellular Therapeutics at MHH. She has studied both, medicine and biology, worked previously at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, USA and at the University Hospital, Frankfurt, Germany. All her goals are focused on the development and manufacturing of cell-based therapies for cell and gene therapy trials. She has a specific focus on primary human NK cells including chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) expressing effector cells. She is a member of numerous national and international societies, is serving as a reviewer for the authorities and she is currently as well as previously speaker of various EU consortia.

Professor and Head, Applied Biochemistryt
Harald Kolmar is full professor of Biochemistry at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. His current scientific interests mainly focus on protein engineering and design, nanobiotechnology, antibody engineering, chemical biology and development of tailor-made peptides and miniproteins for applications in diagnostics and therapy. Dr. Kolmar is a biochemist and has a doctorate from Tübingen and Munich University.

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

Associate Professor, Biosystems Engineering, Chemical Engineering
Cleo Kontoravdi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. She holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the same Department. She leads a multidisciplinary team working on the application of process systems engineering tools to cell culture and fermentation systems in collaboration with several industrial partners, including MedImmune, GSK and Lonza Biologics.

Chief Scientific Officer
CSO of Novimmune SA, 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. Inventor on numerous patents and author of >150 publications in the fields of immunology and biopharmaceutical research.

Head, Drug Product Analytical Development and Quality Control, Drug Product Services
Biography

Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry and Bioscience
Peter Kristensen obtained his PhD from Aarhus University, Denmark, in 1995. He joined the group of Sir Gregory Winter at the MRC-LMB in Cambridge as a Post. Doc. In 1998, he returned to Denmark where he joined Aarhus University as Associate Professor. In December 2017, he moved his research group from Aarhus University to Aalborg University in Denmark. The research of Peter Kristensen is centered on the technical development and application of methods that allow Darwinian evolution of proteins using directed evolution technologies. The main scientific contributions have more specifically been in the area of recombinant antibodies and methods of isolating such antibodies from large libraries. In addition, Peter Kristensen was the first to develop technologies which allow isolation of proteins with improved stabilities from large libraries of mutants.

Associate Professor, Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
Andrew Kruse completed a PhD in Structural Biology at Stanford University, where he studied structure and function of the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors under the supervision of Brian Kobilka. Following the completion of his doctoral work at Stanford, he joined the faculty of the department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, where he is now an Associate Professor. Research in the Kruse lab centers on studies of transmembrane signaling receptors, and involves the use of combinatorial biology, structural biology, and cell biological methods to investigate signaling by therapeutically important proteins.

Professor Emeritus, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Director, Biomolecular Interaction Technologies Center (BITC)
Tom Laue is the Carpenter Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Biomedical Sciences, and professor of Material Sciences at the University of New Hampshire. He is the Director of both the Center to Advance Molecular Interaction Science and the Biomolecular Interaction Technologies Center. He received his bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences from the Johns Hopkins University in 1971 and his PhD in Biophysics and Biochemistry from the University of Connecticut in 1981. His post-doctoral studies were conducted at the University of Oklahoma. Between 1969 and 1975, he worked as a technician in the deep space program of NASA. He joined the University of New Hampshire in 1984 as an Assistant Professor, and teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in biochemistry and biophysics. His research focuses on the development of instrumentation and methods that use the fundamental properties of mass and charge for examining macromolecular interactions. These instruments provide unique insights into these interactions, and have resulted in extensive collaborations with both academic and industrial labs. Tom has over 120 publications, serves on several editorial boards, and gives over one hundred lectures, seminars and workshops a year.

Head, Protein Purification Facility, Wolfson Centre for Applied Structural Biology, Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences
Dr. Mario Lebendiker is in charge of the Protein Purification Facility 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, other 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, knowhow and materials between core facility labs in the field of protein expression and purification.

Scientist, Protein Technologies
Jonas is a scientist at Amgen Department of Therapeutics Discovery purifying membrane proteins. Jonas got PhD in University of California in Berkeley under a protein X-ray crystallographer Prof. Sung-Hou Kim studying properties of bacterial chemotaxis receptors, and he completed a postdoc in California Institute of Technology under a membrane protein X-ray crystallographer Prof. Doug Rees, delineating the structure and function of a heavy metal ABC transporter.

Senior Cancer Research Fellow and Training Lead for the Birmingham CRUK Cancer Centre, Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy
Steven Lee qualified with a BSc in Microbiology from the University of Bristol and went on to study for a PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine researching immune responses in leprosy patients. He then joined the Institute of Cancer Studies at the University of Birmingham working with Professor Alan Rickinson, where he received a MRC Career Development Award and spent a year working with Professors Phil Greenberg and Stan Riddell at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Upon returning to Birmingham, Steven obtained a Senior Cancer Research Fellowship from Cancer Research UK to study immune responses to the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and EBV-associated human cancers. He is now focusing on genetic engineering of T cells to target both virus- and non-virus-associated cancers with a particular interest in targeting the tumour vasculature.

Vice President, Research and Development
James Legg is currently Vice President of Research and Development at Crescendo Biologics in Cambridge UK where he is responsible for Crescendo's building portfolio of Immuno Oncology Humabody Biologics. Prior to joining Crescendo, James completed a PhD in Molecular Cell Biology from Imperial College London and a Post Doc at Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now CRUK) before moving into the Biotechnology industry with a role at Cambridge Antibody Technology and then a number of positions within MedImmune, the Biologics arm of AstraZeneca.

Director, Molecular Biology
Dr. Leighton is Director of Molecular Biology at Ligand Pharmaceuticals in Emeryville, CA. He received his PhD in Molecular Biology from Princeton University, followed by post-doctoral studies at the University of California, San Francisco. At Ligand, he has been responsible for the development and validation of the OmniChickenTM portion of the OmniAbTM platform for the production of human antibodies in transgenic chickens.

Associate Professor, Translational Immunology
Dr. Jeanette Leusen, received her PhD in 1995 at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Since then she investigates therapeutic antibodies and their modes of action, both in vitro and in vivo 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. 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, the so-called NOTAM mouse. New insights were obtained for both antibody therapy, and also FcR-induced antigen presentation. Last but not least, Dr. Leusen strongly believes in IgA as a novel class of antibody for treatment of both malignant and infectious diseases. In 2013 she published for the first-time in vivo efficacy of IgA antibodies, and more will follow soon.

University Research Lecturer, Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield Division of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, Radcliffe Department of Medicine
Dr. Li studied medicine in the Fourth Military Medical University, China and went on to do an MSc followed by PhD in immunology in the same institute. He moved to Oxford University in 2000 and worked on MHC-I related antigen presentation and T cell immunity against viral infection including HIV and influenza. He then shifted his research interest to cancer immunotherapy, working on developing tumour therapeutic antibodies targeting tumour vasculature and intracellular antigens. He is also interested in moving some of the antibodies further into novel immunotherapy formats such as CAR T-cells.

Head, Protein Biochemistry, Biologics, Cell and Protein Sciences
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 PhD 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.

Professor, Genetics and Evolutionary Biology, Biosciences
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.

Associate Professor, Engineering Sciences in Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health
John Lofblom is an associate professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. His current research focus is on method development for directed evolution of affinity proteins, proteases and aggregation inhibitors as well as engineering of small affinity proteins into multimeric formats for new modes of action.

ARAID Tenured Scientist, Institute of Synthetic Chemistry
Fernando López-Gallego is ARAID Professor at the University of Zaragoza. After obtaining his PhD at the University Autonoma of Madrid, he did a postdoc in the laboratory of Prof. Schmidt-Danner at University of Minnesota about metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. After working in industry for 1 year as technologist at its REPSOL Technolgy Center in Madrid, in 2014 he was awarded with an IKERBASQUE fellow grant to start his independent career at CIC biomaGUNE in Donostia-San Sebastian. Finally, in 2017 he moved to his current position at the University of Zaragoza as group leader of the heterogeneous biocatalysis laboratory within the Synthetic Chemistry Institute. His main research falls in the emerging field of in vitro synthetic biology adapting biological machineries such as multi-enzyme system to improve their performance in different biotechnological applications. He is currently exploiting the power of enzymes in chemical manufacturing, energy production and bioremediation.

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

Associate Director, Analytical Development
Declan Lowney is the Associate Director of the Late development and Stability sciences in Analytical Development within Janssen R&D, leading analytical teams to deliver on the stability programs for late development molecules in the Janssen Large Molecule Portfolio by ensuring delivery of required stability data and associated statistical analysis/interpretation for products that are progressing to regulatory approval. The team provides technical leadership in stability science and enhance expertise in stability related ICH and Regulatory guidance and contribute to and advise on the control strategy for late stage molecules based on statistical analysis of available stability data. Declan joined Janssen in 2006. Prior to joining Janssen, Declan has over 10 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry covering broad number of areas including R&D, QC, QA, Regulatory Affairs and Pharmacovigilance. Declan has an MSc in Organic Chemistry from University College Cork and a Postgraduate Diploma in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Technology (Qualified Person qualification) from Trinity College, Dublin.

Clinical Training Fellow/BRC Clinical Lecturer in Haematology, Research Department of Haematology, Faculty of Medical Sciences
Dr. Paul Maciocia is an Academic Clinical Lecturer in Haematology at University College London Cancer Institute. Dr Maciocia completed undergraduate degrees in medicine and pharmacology at the University of Edinburgh, and postgraduate clinical training in Edinburgh, Bristol and London. He obtained his PhD in Cancer Immunotherapy in the laboratory of Dr Martin Pule at UCL, where he developed a new approach for the treatment of T-cell lymphomas using chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells. This strategy will shortly enter Phase I clinical trials. His research interests are in the use of synthetic biology to redirect T-cell function and basic T-cell immunology, and his clinical interest is in lymphoma. He is currently working as a clinician-scientist developing novel engineering approaches for allogeneic ‘universal’ CAR T-cells, as well as new strategies to treat haematological malignancies.

Consultant & Senior Lecturer, Immunology, Cancer Studies
Biography

Head, Drug Product Services
Biography

Research Associate
Joana is a member of the High-Throughput Binder Selection Facility in the Group of Prof. Plückthun at the University of Zurich, working as Research Associate since July 2016. Previously, she did an internship as Research Associate at Covagen AG in Zurich, Switzerland. Joana received a MSc Degree in Microbiology and Immunology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. She performed her master thesis in the Becher Lab at the Institute of Experimental Immunology, where she focused on the localization and regulation of Natural Killer Cells in metastatic Lungs in Breast Cancer.

Executive Director, Head of I-O Biotherapeutics
Patrick Mayes, PhD, is the Executive Director, Head of I-O Biotherapeutics at Incyte. Dr. Mayes was most recently Director of Biology and was an Early Development Leader for the Immuno-Oncology and Combinations discovery performance unit at GlaxoSmithKline. Dr. Mayes previously managed antibody discovery efforts within the Immuno-Oncology and Combinations (IOC) Unit of GlaxoSmithKline where he developed novel therapeutic antibodies which modulate innate and adaptive immune responses. These programs utilized a variety of different antibody platform technologies including Fc-engineered monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), bi-specific mAbs and domain antibodies (dAbs). Dr. Mayes was involved in projects combining multiple immune targeted therapies as well as others combining immunotherapies with tumor targeted agents. He received his PhD in pharmacology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

CSO
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, managed meetings with European and US regulatory authorities and led manufacturing and CMC strategy for a new biological entity targeting cancer. Dr McGrath’s previous experience includes being a Project Manager at the UK subsidiary of the German biotech company MediGene AG, and Senior Scientist at BioVex (now part of Amgen). She has a PhD from the University of Wales, College of Medicine.

Senior Director, Pharmacology and Cell Sciences Research and Non-Clinical Development
Biography

Scientist, Molecular Internal Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine II, University Hospital Würzburg
I studied Biology at the University of Gießen. For PhD thesis I changed to the lab of Prof. Wajant at University Hospital Würzburg where I started to work at the field of antibody development. Last year in April I finished my PhD thesis.

Vice President, R&D
Pascal Merchiers is Vice President of R&D at Tusk Therapeutics. He has over 15 years’ drug development experience and antibody expertise across a wide range of therapeutic areas and has held senior positions at IntroGene BV, Galapagos NV, Ablynx NV and Thrombogenics NV. Pascal has a PhD in Medical sciences from the University of Leuven (Belgium).

CMO
Biography

R&D Associate
I performed a Master in biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology at University of Namur (Namur, BE) and my PhD thesis in the lab of Prof. Benoit Van den Eynde at the Ludwig Cancer Research of Brussels (BE). My work was interested in the understanding of tumor antigens processing by the proteasome. I’m now R&D associate at Celyad implicated in the development of an allogeneic platform for CAR T cells.

Assistant Professor, Biothermodynamics, Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan
The research of Professor Minceva (b. 1973) focuses on the development of efficient separation processes in the downstream processing of biomolecules and in their integration with the upstream processing steps, in particular bioreactors. The research methodology involves model-based process design for the path “from molecule to process” and bridges the gap between molecular understanding and process implementation. The concept is general and hence applicable to diverse bioproducts of industrial relevance. Professor Minceva studied food science and biotechnology (BSc) and process engineering (MSc) at the University Ss. Ciryl and Methodius, Macedonia. In 2004 she completed her PhD at the University of Porto, Portugal (Prof. Rodrigues). Subsequently she worked as an associate scientist in the same group and after that as NATO postdoctoral fellow in Macedonia. Between 2007 and 2014 she led the chromatography group at the Chair of Separation Science and Technology (Prof. Arlt) at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, where she acquired her postdoctoral teaching qualification (habilitation) in 2013. She has been an assistant professor at TUM since July 2014.

Head, Protein Engineering, Large Molecules Research
Graduated in chemistry, PhD in Molecular Biology; Postdoc in Antibody Engineering. Joined Glycart Biotechnology in 2003, which was acquired by Roche in 2005. Since then involvement in several projects of protein design, engineering and selection.

Chief Scientist
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.

Director, Analytical and Characterisation, BioPharm Process Research
Mike has over 30 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry including five years on small molecules within medicinal chemistry. He has experience in GMP production, analytical quality control and downstream process development. Mike has had several roles within Biopharm CMC leading analytical teams in support of characterisation and comparability studies and Investigational New Drug (IND) applications. Mike is currently Director of analytical and characterisation within BioPharm Process Research at GSK, Stevenage, UK. His group plays a key role in the Quality by Design of new protein therapeutics supporting developability screening, Cell line development, platform derisking and the tech transfer of lead molecules to the CMC organisation.

Group Leader, Institute of Cell Biology and Immunology
Dafne Müller received her doctoral degree from the University of Stuttgart in Germany. At the present she holds a group leader position at the department of Biomedical Engineering at the Institute of Cell Biology and Immunology of the University of Stuttgart. Working in the field of recombinant antibodies for over 15 years, her current research focuses on the development of recombinant antibody-fusion proteins with immune stimulatory or costimulatory properties for targeted cancer immunotherapy.

Principal Scientist, Cancer Immunology & Immune Modulation
Dr. Philipp Müller received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Basel in 2009 (Biozentrum, Prof. Jean Pieters), with a major focus on the immunology of infectious diseases, immune cell signaling and in vivo models of immune cell function as well as development. During the last 9 years his research has been dedicated to cancer immunology and immunotherapy. He has worked on and published in high ranking journals on the immune-promoting properties of Antibody-Drug-Conjugates, bispecific antibody formats as well as agonistic antibodies, such as anti-CD40, and their therapeutic combination with immune-checkpoint blockade. Dr. Philipp Müller is currently leading a research/project team as Principal Scientist within the Cancer Immunology & Immune Modulation Department of Boehringer Ingelheim (Biberach an der Riß, Germany) with a major focus on next generation oncolytic viruses and novel cancer vaccine concepts.

Principal Scientist, Drug Discovery
Dr. Munoz-Olaya joined F-star in 2013 and currently holds the position of Principal Scientist within the Drug Discovery department, where he’s lead a number of internal and partnered projects. Prior to joining F-star, Dr Munoz-Olaya earned his PhD at the University of Barcelona where he studied novel therapies for the treatment of HIV-1.

Senior Scientist BiTE Technology
Virginie Naegele, PhD, is a Senior Scientist at Amgen Research (Munich) GmbH. After studying biology at the Technical University of Munich she received her doctoral degree in the field of medical microbiology from the Technical University of Munich. Virginie has more than 6 years of experience in various fields of the BiTE® technology, focusing on the development of BiTE® antibody constructs from early stages to clinical development.

Professor, Haematology
Biography

Professor, Biomacromolecules, Chemistry and Applied Biosciences
Dario Neri studied Chemistry at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and earned a PhD in Chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich), under the supervision of Professor Kurt Wüthrich. He then performed post-doctoral research at the Medical Research Council Centre in Cambridge (UK), under the supervision of Sir Gregory Winter. He has now been a Professor at the ETH Zürich since 1996. The research of the group Neri focuses on the engineering of therapeutic antibodies for the therapy of cancer and other angiogenesis-related disorders. Other research activities include the chemical proteomic discovery of novel vascular markers of pathology and the development of DNA-encoded chemical libraries. Dario Neri is a co-founder of Philogen (www.philogen.com), a Swiss-Italian biotech company which has brought five antibody-based products into multicenter clinical trials for the therapy of cancer and of rheumatoid arthritis. Dario Neri has published over 300 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. He is the recipient of the ISOBM Abbott Prize 2000, of the Amgen-Dompe’ Biotec Award 2000, of the Mangia d’Oro 2001, of the Prous Award 2006 of the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry, of the Robert-Wenner-Prize 2007 of the Swiss Cancer League, of the SWISS BRIDGE Award 2008, of the Prix Mentzer of the French Medicinal Chemistry Society in 2011, of the Phoenix Prize 2014 and of an ERC Advanced Grant in 2015.

Head, Cell Culture Research, Pharma Research & Development
Markus Neubauer has been leading Cell Culture Research (Upstream processing department) in Pharma Research & Early Development, Large Molecule Research, since 2015, based in Roche Innovation Center Munich, Germany. Markus is accountable for preclinical and clinical upstream processing up to Phase I for Roche Pharma research in Europe. This research unit is focusing on development of complex antibody molecules as highly innovative biotherapeutics. With 10+ years’ experience in medical device and pharmaceutical industry, Markus has expertise in various fields of cell culture technologies ranging from tissue engineering, stem cell expansion to mammalian cell systems for protein production. He is pharmacist by training, educated at the University of Regensburg, Germany, where he also obtained his PhD at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Technology in collaboration with Kyoto University, Japan.

Director
Dr. Julia Neugebauer currently holds the position of Director and Leader Discovery Programs at the MorphoSys AG, where she heads a team responsible for antibody discovery projects including target validation, antibody selections, and functional in vitro and in vivo characterization up to lead selection. Prior to that position Julia Neugebauer worked at MorphoSys as Project Team Leader for Customer Collaboration Projects. Altogether she has more than 12 years of experience in the field of antibody discovery and engineering. Julia Neugebauer studied biochemistry at the University of Regensburg and at the New York University and earned a PhD from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

Senior Research Investigator, Large Molecule Purification Development
Dr. Sanjay Nilapwar currently works as Senior Research Investigator and looks after purification process development and related CMC aspects of biological portfolio of Incyte Corporation. He is part of platform large molecule CMC development team and is responsible for transitioning of mAb and novel molecules from candidate drug to development and manufacturing stage, encompassing cycle 1/2 process and purification development, technology transfer and related CMC aspects including filing IND/IMPDs. Prior to working with Incyte, he has worked in Medimmune LLC, where he was involved with process development novel biological, such as bispecific mAbs and site-specific conjugates, stability and analytical assay development and was instrumental in setting up large scale conjugate purification lab within Medimmune. He started working on protein purification at Piramal Lifescience by process development for range of therapeutic biologics such as mAbs, conjugates and radiolabeled chelates for Targeted therapies. He has more than 14 years of experience in mAbs/conjugates purification development and has published 9 papers and written couple of book chapters. He regularly speaks at bioprocessing conferences and chairs conference session. Dr. Nilapwar has earned his PhD in Molecular Biology and Biophysics from UCL, London on an Astra-Zeneca sponsored studentship and M. Pharm in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from Mumbai University on Government of India sponsored Junior Research Fellowship. He currently serves as reviewer for half a dozen journals and is on editorial/review board for Journals, ADC Review, British Journal of Pharmaceutical Research and Bioprocess International.

Vice President, Biotherapeutics Molecule Discovery
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.

CSO, Monoclonal Antibody Manufacturing Center
Yannick Nizet received a PhD in Immunology at the University of Louvain (Belgium) . Working with the professor Hervé Bazin (inventor of the rat monoclonal antibodies) he has developed new immunization methods as well as many monoclonal antibodies (including therapeutic) in mouse and in rat. Cofounder and CSO of Synabs since 2015, he is developing now a guinea pig monoclonal antibody technology.

Associate Professor, Medical School, Chair of Pharmacology, Member EASA (Eur Academy Sciences Arts) and EAACI (Eur Academy Allergy Clin Immunol), Department of Medicine
Giuseppe Nocentini is a professor of Pharmacology at the University of Perugia. After graduation in Medicine in 1987, he got his PhD in Experimental Medicine (1993) and Specialization in Clinical Pathology (1997). After a brief period working as a visiting research fellow in the Department of Biochemical and Biophysical Medicine, University of Umeä, Sweden, he became Assistant Professor in 2000 and Associate Professor in 2006 at the University of Perugia. His first studies concerned the mechanism of action of glucocorticoids, during which he cloned and characterized Glucocorticoid-induced Tumor Necrosis Factor Receptor family related gene (GITR). GITR, which belongs to the TNFR superfamily, was shown, by his group, to be involved in the activation and survival of conventional and regulatory T lymphocytes (Treg) during the immune/inflammatory response. He first described a new Treg subset (GITRsp pTregs) in humans and its role in autoimmune diseases. He is presently studying the role of Tregs in human autoimmune diseases and tumors. In particular, he is evaluating the antitumoral and toxic effects of targeting Treg markers to elicit antibody-dependent cell cytotoxicity (ADCC).

Principal Investigator & Senior Scientist, The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability
I am Senior Scientist and Research Group Leader at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability. My research group focuses on fundamental aspects of molecular evolution, developing molecular tools for synthetic biology, and on optimizing gene expression in microbial cell factories.

Lecturer, Biotherapeutics, Biomolecular & Biomedical Science
As a member of faculty at the School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science at University College Dublin I have developed and now direct the MSc in Biotherapeutics and MSc in Biotherapeutics & Business taught masters programmes and I teach undergraduate biochemistry and pharmacology. My funded research has led to the development of a spin out company to commercialise a novel patented affinity technology. My research laboratory concentrates on the development and application of new methodologies in the study of protein:protein interactions with a particular focus on calcium binding proteins signalling inside the cell, to GPCR membrane receptors receiving signals from outside the cell. My lab employs a range of biophysical and proteomics-based approaches to identify interactions between signalling proteins and their target proteins to resolve functional networks. In applied research I am developing novel technologies centering on patented EF hand based affinity tags to purify and stabilize proteins from expression milieu and development of new approaches for their biophysical characterisation, chiefly high throughput Surface Plasmon Resonance (HTSPR) and single step purification methodologies for improved production of biotherapeutics. We are commercialising a novel affinity resin for bioprocessing applications.

Head, Product Development, Cell Analytics
Dr. John O’Rourke received his BS in chemistry from Northern Illinois University. He completed his PhD in Biochemistry from The Ohio State University where he studied cancer biology and gene regulation. During his postdoctoral training at Nationwide’s Children’s Research Institute in Columbus Oh and the University of New Mexico, he continued his studies in cancer biology along with the development of viral and nanoparticle-based therapeutics. He joined Intellicyt in 2017 and is currently head of product development.

Professor, Biotechnology
Kerstin Otte is a trained biologist and obtained her PhD at the SL-University Uppsala, Sweden. After a postdoctoral fellowhip at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, UK, she joined the biotech industry in Heidelberg, Germany for preclinical drug development. Kerstin Otte now holds a professorship at the Biberach University, Germany, focusing her research on biopharmaceutical cell line development.

Professor, Molecular Biology and Head, Oxford Protein Production Facility
Ray Owens has extensive experience of the production of recombinant proteins including engineered antibodies both in industry and academia. He obtained his PhD in biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, UK, and has a long- standing interest in protein structure and function. He is currently a Professor of Molecular biology at the University of Oxford and Head of the Protein Production Facility in the Research Complex at Harwell (RCaH). RCaH is a multi-disciplinary Research Institute, based at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Oxford.

Department of Experimental Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine (DIMES)
Arianna Palladini is a PhD researcher at the University of Bologna, Italy. Born in Bologna, Italy, in 1978, she graduated in Biotechnology in 2002 and obtained a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biotechnology in 2009. Her research interests include cancer vaccines against mammary carcinoma, tumor progression process of breast cancers and sarcomas.

Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Medical Oncologist
Sophie Papa is a Senior Lecturer and Consultant Medical Oncologist at King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Sophie undertook her medical training at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. She completed a PhD in cancer immunotherapy from King’s College London in 2011. She is a clinical academic with research interests in the field of immune-oncology. Here group study strategies to enhance CAR T-cell clinical translation. Sophie is a medical oncologist with expertise in the design and delivery of first in man studies including cell therapy trials. She has a practice in malignant melanoma and Merkle cell carcinoma and is the lead for skin cancer research at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

Assistant Professor, Biotechnology Engineering
As a molecular biologist focusing on protein engineering and cancer imaging and therapy, I joined the BGU faculty in 2011, and my research focuses on the development of new mono- and multi-specific proteins and protein-small molecule conjugates that promise to aid in both the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. My areas of expertise include protein engineering, angiogenesis, metastasis, cancer biology, targeted cancer therapy, in vivo imaging, directed evolution, ligand-receptor interactions, molecular recognition, protein sequence-structure-function relationships, and synthetic biology. More generally, me and my research team are developing methods that allow us to design mono- and multi-functional proteins with optimized and targeted pharmaceutical properties, such as the protein’s distribution in the body and how long it remains, resulting in enhanced alternatives to antibodies that will benefit both cancer therapy and diagnostics.

Project Leader, Discovery
Marina Pavlidou serves as a Project leader Discovery at Pieris Pharmaceuticals, GmbH. In this position she manages projects in the field of immuno-oncology from early discovery to IND. Marina joined Pieris in 2015 as group leader of the Selection Technologies group, being responsible for Anticalin® selection campaigns. Marina studied biology at the University of Tübingen and completed her PhD studies at the Research Center Jülich in the area of protein biochemistry. During her PhD and postdoctoral studies at the Research Center Jülich, Marina worked on the phage display selection and biophysical characterization of protein-based therapeutic agents.

Product Manager, Marketing
Sarah Payne is Product Manager for TTP Labtech’s Detection Instruments. After having gained a Ph.D. in Receptor Pharmacology she has spent the last 18 years working in assay development for HTS within the fields of high content screening, flow cytometry, and cell therapy.

Principal Expert USP Development, BioProcess Development
Nicole Peuker is the provisional Head of the USP in the Bioprocess Development department at WACKER Biotech, Jena, Germany. Her expertise includes cell line development, feasibility studies, process development, characterization and the process transfer in the GMP environment. Furthermore, she is involved in the development of new technologies at WACKER.

Lab Head, Mass Spectrometry, Bioanalytics/Biopharmaceutical Development
Anja Pfenninger started her scientific carrier at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Germany with the diploma thesis “Mass Spectrometric Investigations of Laser-Induced-Liquid-Beam-Ion-Desorption” (1995), from where she also gained her PhD in the year 2000 with her thesis titled “Mass Spectrometric Investigations of Human Milk Oligosaccharides” in the group of Prof. Michael Karas. Until 2001 she further investigated the Ionization/Desorption Process of MALDI, before she joined Sanofi to become a Research Scientist. In her first position she was responsible for a Mass Spectrometry laboratory in the Proteomics Group, before she moved to the Mass Spec Lab of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, where she built up a MS-based laboratory for Targeted and Untargeted Metabolomics and Peptide Analysis. Since 2017 she moved from Research to Development, where she is currently dealing with the multi-attribute monitoring of quality attributes of antibodies by mass spectrometry.

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

Vice President, Translational Research & Development
Jan Pinkas earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology in 1998. His dissertation was titled “Alternative Splicing of Mdm2 During Breast Tumorigenesis and Mammary Gland Development.” Dr. Pinkas was a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Philip Leder’s laboratory in the Genetics Department at Harvard Medical School. He has been employed as a research scientist at Genzyme and Amgen and is currently the Senior Director of Translational Research at ImmunoGen, Inc. There he 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 is responsible for preclinical development-related pharmacology, toxicology, pharmacokinetic, IHC/biomarker activities to support molecules advancing to IND as well as molecules currently in clinical development.

Director and Professor, Biochemistry
Andreas Plückthun, a renowned antibody expert and co-founder of the German stock-market listed company MorphoSys. Prior to his studies in Zürich he was educated at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden (Prof. Mathias Uhlén). Dr. Binz holds a M.Sc. in biotechnology from the European school of biotechnology in Strasbourg, France. Dr. Binz is co-author of more than 20 peer reviewed publications and patent families. His seminal research on repeat proteins 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.

Lecturer, Director, BSc Pharma Science, Division of Pharmacy and Optometry, School of Health Sciences
Biography

Senior Scientist, Bioproduction
Mathieu Porte is Bioproduction Project Leader at Polyplus-transfection®. After obtaining his Biotechnology Engineering Degree with Honors from the renowned European School of ESBS (Strasbourg, France), he worked as Research Assistant at New England Biolabs and UCSF. He joined Polyplus-transfection® R&D department in 2009. During 7 years as Bioproduction Project Leader, he carried out the development of several innovative transfection solutions for high yields protein production.

Research Director, Integrated Structural Biology
After studying at ENS Cachan (now Paris-Saclay), Arnaud Poterszman completed his PhD 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, TFIIH and its partners.

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

Senior Principal Scientist
Biography

Chief Scientific Officer
Christophe Quéva, Oncorus’ Chief Scientific Officer, is responsible for directing and advancing the company’s development programs of next-generation immunotherapy platform of oncolytic viruses. An industry veteran, Christophe has nearly two decades’ immuno-oncology experience and successful portfolio-building track record from target identification and development through regulatory approval. Prior to joining Oncorus, Christophe was Chief Scientific Officer at iTeos Therapeutics where his responsibilities included leading the generation of an innovative immuno-oncology portfolio of small molecule and antibody programs and overseeing the company’s translational medicine strategy. He previously held successive senior positions at AstraZeneca, Amgen and Gilead Sciences where he led or supported drug discovery programs for oncology and inflammatory diseases, from target selection to commercial approval for small molecules and biologics. A holder of five patents and widely published, Christophe trained as a post-doctoral fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle after receiving his PhD in Life and Health Sciences from the University of Lille, France.

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

Scientist II, Antibody Discovery & Protein Engineering
Dr. Sarav Rajan received his PhD from McGill University working in functional genomics and trained in antibody phage display in the lab of Dr. Sachdev Sidhu at the University of Toronto. At MedImmune, he has led and participated in multiple antibody discovery efforts and is developing an ultrahigh-throughput method to recover and screen natively-paired antibody repertoires from millions of human B cells.

Downstream Process Scientist
I have been a process scientist of the Purification Process Sciences group at MedImmune for 9 years. My goal is to develop a scalable purification process for biologics applying the latest technology aiming for good product quality and a robust process performance. I've been leading cross functional discussions and participating in activities that are related to both early and late-stage development. I received my PhD from the University of Maryland.

Kenneth and Genevieve Gillespie Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering
Ted Randolph is the Kenneth and Genevieve Gillespie Endowed Professor of bioengineering in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and co-director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at CU Boulder. Randolph’s research focuses on stabilization of protein-based pharmaceuticals and led to the creation of spinoff companies RxKinetix, VitriVax and BaroFold Inc. He is a recipient of several distinguished awards including the Dale E. Wurster Research Award from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, which recognizes individuals who have made significant research contributions to the pharmaceutics field. Randolph joined the CU Boulder faculty in 1993 after several years at Yale University. He earned his PhD from UC Berkeley.

CEO
Uli is a co-founder and CEO of Dynamic Biosensors, a biotech company, which pioneered a novel chip technology for the analysis of biophysical binding properties of proteins, nucleic acids, and small molecules (switchSENSE®). Uli’s scientific background is physics and nanotechnology, where he authored more than 70 papers and patents in the fields of biomolecular analysis. His current research interests revolve around the development of novel methods for the analysis of bio-molecular interactions with electro-switchable biosurfaces.

Assistant Professor, Biosystems Science and Engineering
Sai Reddy is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich in the Dept. of Biosystems Science & Engineering (since 01.02.2012). His research group focuses on immunogenomics by next-generation sequencing and bioinformatic analysis of immune repertoires and reprogramming of immune cells by genome engineering for applications in biotechnology, vaccination, and immunotherapy.

Senior Scientist Lead Generation, Protein Engineering
Dr. Christian Reichen works as senior scientist at Molecular Partners (SIX: MOLN), a Swiss clinical stage biotech company developing DARPin® drugs for therapeutic applications. In his role he is responsible for lead generation as well as lead optimization of drug candidates during the early R&D phase, including e.g. MP0310 amongst others. He completed his post-doctoral training and PhD studies with Prof. Andreas Plückthun at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, and worked on the development of a modular peptide binding scaffold based on Armadillo Repeat Proteins. He obtained his master degree in microbiology at the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland.

Head Laboratory of Molecular Immunology
Yoram Reiter is a Professor and the Sebba chair in Sciences at the faculty of Biology Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He heads the Laboratory of Molecular immunology and is also the director of the Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering at the Technion. Reiter’s lab develops new approaches for cancer immunotherapy and other molecular engineering approaches for autoimmunity using recombinant antibodies and MHC molecules. Reiter published >100 scientific papers and reviews as well as >30 patents in the fields of antibody engineering, immunotherapy, and molecular immunology. He is the co-founder of AIT - Applied Immune Technologies which develops T cell receptor like antibodies for clinical applications. AIT was acquired by Adicet Bio (CA, USA) and merged company raised >$million50 from Orbimed and Novartis VCs.

Senior Vice President, Pharmaceutical Development – Peptides, R&D
Dr Joël Richard is currently Senior Vice President, Pharmaceutical Development - Peptides in IPSEN (France). He is globally leading all the IPSEN pharmaceutical development activities, including APIs and drug products, with major franchises in Oncology, Neurosciences and Rare Diseases. Dr Richard has more than 30 years of experience in chemistry and biopharmaceutical R&D, including several global senior positions in various Biotech and Pharma companies, such as IPSEN, MerckSerono, Serono, Ethypharm, Rhône-Poulenc. In the last 20 years Dr Richard has focused his research activity on new formulation technologies and drug delivery systems, especially for injectable peptide and protein formulations. Dr Richard has got a PhD in Materials Science (University of Paris VI, 1987). He has published 68 peer-reviewed scientific papers, 8 book chapters and 2 review editorials in various fields (protein formulations, nanoparticles, sustained-release formulations, colloids and interfaces, supercritical fluids, . . .). He is the author of more than 140 international communications and 53 patent families.

Post-Doc, Biomedical Engineering, Cell Biology and Immunology
Fabian Richter holds a Post-Doc position in the Biomedical Engineering Group at the Institute of Cell Biology and Immunology based at the University of Stuttgart (USTUTT), Germany. He studied Technical Biology at USTUTT and YALE University, CT, US and finished his PhD in 2015 back at the USTUTT. His current research focuses on the design and development of novel Immunoglobulin-based proteins with potential for therapeutic application.

Senior Scientist
Kevin studied Genetics at Cardiff University, before completing a PhD in the department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, in the laboratory of Professor George Salmond. In 2011, Kevin joined VHsquared as Senior Scientist and has overseen multiple drug programs that employ engineered llama domain antibodies, stabilised for oral delivery, against targets in IBD.

Professor, Co-Founder
Biography

Professor, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Natural and Medical Sciences Institute
Dr. Rothbauer has studied biology at the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU), Munich. He received his PhD in Biochemistry in 2003 in the group of Prof. Walter Neupert revealing the pathomechanism of a mitochondrial disease. In 2006 he became an independent group leader at the LMU-Biocenter focusing on the development of nanobody-derived tools for protein purification, proteomics and cellular diagnostics. 2008 he founded the Biotech company ChromoTek, which becomes the leading provider of innovative research reagents and technologies based on the nano-/chromobody-technology. Since 2011 he is full professor for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at the University Tuebingen, Germany working on the development of novel nano- and chromobodies for protein analysis, immunoassays and cellular screening models.

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

Scientist
Dr. Anna Säll is a scientist at Alligator Bioscience since 2016 and works with projects in discovery. At Alligator Bioscience, Dr. Säll is responsible for the antibody generation platform, including Alligator Bioscience antibody libraries, and lead optimization processes, and she lead the optimization of the ATOR-1017 antibody. Anna earned her PhD in 2015 at the Department of Immunotechnology at Lund University working with the design and construction of antibody libraries.

Research Associate, Genome and Genetics – Laboratory of Physical Microfluidics and Bioengineering, Institut Pasteur; Laboratoire d'Hydrodynamique, École Polytechnique
2005: Master of Science and Engineering (France): Optimization of the production of retroviral vectors using a continuous cell line. 2011: PhD in Bioengineering (Belgium): Expansion and differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells in microcarrier based stirred bioreactors. 2012-2013: Postdoctoral Research Associate at Florida State University (USA): Bioprocessing of pluripotent stem cells (development of novel biomaterials, cryopreservation of pluripotent stem cells, etc.). 2013-now: Postdoctoral Research Associate at École Polytechnique and at Pasteur Institute (France): Development of a droplet microfluidic platform for 3D cell culture and analysis (culture and analysis at single cell level of spheroids derived from hepatoma, mesenchymal stem cells, pluripotent stem cells, etc., and cell line cultivated in suspension).2018-now: Editor-in-Chief of Cytotechnology (Springer). 25 published papers.

Hematology/Oncology
Karin Schilbach received her PhD at the Children’s Hospital University Tübingen, Department of Hematology and Oncology; as one of the first she blocked the expression of an oncogene (N-myc) with the inducible expression of an antisense mRNA fragment leading to differentiation of the tumor cells. She has done research at the German Cancer Research Centre Heidelberg and her Post Doc at the Department of General Genetics Eberhard Karls University Tübingen. Currently as a Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Children`s Hospital University of Tübingen her focus is T cell immunology in context with GVHD and cancer immunotherapy which she both studies in CD34+ humanized mice; a recent clinical aspects of her work includes the establishment of a monitoring protocol for the evaluation of the efficacy of individual vaccine peptides in patients after receipt of patient-individualized anti-cancer neo-epitope derived vaccines, this providing information on the broadness of the T cell response, its longevity and peculiarities.

Vice President of Antibody Discovery & Engineering
Michael Schmidt, PhD, has served as Vice President of Antibody Discovery and Engineering at Compass Therapeutics since March 2017, where he oversees antibody discovery campaigns and optimization of monoclonal and bispecific leads. Prior to his current role, he was Senior Director of in vitro Discovery where he led development of the company’s proprietary antibody libraries and selection platforms. Before joining Compass, Mike was Associate Director of Protein Engineering at Eleven Biotherapeutics where he oversaw early stage discovery and optimization of antibody and non-antibody drugs for ocular diseases. In this role, he led development of EBI-031, an intravitreal IL-6 antagonist for treatment of diabetic macular edema licensed to Roche in 2016, as well as a modified albumin PK extension technology licensed to Albumedix. Mike received his PhD in biological engineering from MIT where his research focused on developing novel computational and experimental tools for improving antibody penetration in solid tumors. He earned his BS in biology from Villanova University.

Senior Research Investigator, Protein Science
Lumelle Schneeweis is a Senior Research Investigator at Bristol-Myers Squibb where she provides biophysical leadership and analysis for biologics discovery programs. She holds a PhD in Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics from the University of Pennsylvania. She has 19 years of experience studying the kinetics, affinity and oligomeric state of proteins, conjugates, and multi-subunit complexes.

Professor, Pharmaceutical Chemistry
Dr. Schöneich is the Takeru Higuchi Distinguished Professor and Chair in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at The University of Kansas. He received his PhD in Chemistry in 1990 from the Technical University Berlin, Germany. Between 1987 and 1991 he worked in the Department of Radiation Chemistry at the Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin, Germany. His research focuses on oxidation reactions of peptides and proteins in vivo and in vitro, and their potential consequences for the development of stable protein pharmaceuticals, biological aging and age-related pathologies. He has published > 250 papers in the field of peptide and protein oxidation reactions.

CSO
Dr. Schreiber is a physician/scientist with over a decade of experience developing immuno-oncology therapeutics. Taylor is the inventor of the Agonist Redirected Checkpoint (ARC) platform being developed by Shattuck Labs. Prior to Shattuck, he co-founded Pelican Therapeutics, which sprung from his work on the immunobiology of TL1A and TNFRSF25. Dr. Schreiber also served as Chief Scientific Officer of Heat Biologics, Inc., has published over 30 articles in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, and is the inventor on over a dozen patents.

Corporate Vice President, Research & Innovation
Dr. Janine Schuurman is an expert in antibody biology and translational research. Following her passion to develop innovative antibody therapeutics, Dr. Schuurman joined Genmab in 2000. She currently serves in the position of Corporate Vice President Research & Innovation in which she focuses on antibody biology research, the creation of novel antibody formats and their translation to antibody therapeutics. She is an inventor of the DuoBody® and HexaBody® technologies that enable the generation of bispecific and effector-function enhanced antibodies. These technologies are being applied for Genmab’s antibody therapeutics pipeline as well as for drug development by a number of leading Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology companies worldwide.

Distinguished Research Professor and Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator, Infection & Immunity
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.

Professor, Gene Therapies, Oncology
Len Seymour is Professor of Gene Therapy at the University of Oxford, where he specialises in the use of genetic engineering and virology in treatment of cancer. He leads a university research containing some twenty scientists with expertise across the spectrum of virology and cell and synthetic biology. In 2003, he was the Founding Chairman of the British Society for Gene and Cell Therapy, aiming to establish this new technology as a mainstream medical discipline. He has strong interests in both clinical and commercial translation of sciences and is a founding scientist of Psioxus Therapeutics, the Native Antigen Company and Oxford Genetics.

Head of Nonclinical Safety and Immunotherapy Strategy
Michaela Sharpe is the Head of Nonclinical Safety and Immunotherapy Strategy at the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult. Michaela has over fifteen years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry, both in the biotechnology sector and large pharma, where she has specialised in the nonclinical development of cell-based therapies and therapeutic vaccines. She was Head of the Stem Cell Safety Group at Pfizer, and prior to joining the Catapult, she ran her own consultancy business. Michaela oversees Immunotherapy Strategy for the Catapult, as well as leading a team with significant expertise in the design of non-clinical safety programmes and the development of specialist clinical assays. She has implemented nonclinical development programmes for pluripotent stem cell therapies, somatic cell therapies, immune therapies, genetically modified cell therapies and tissue engineered products. Michaela has a PhD in Genetics from the University of Cambridge and did her post-doctoral research at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford.

Professor, Molecular Genetics, The Donnelly Centre
Sachdev Sidhu joined the Protein Engineering department at Genentech as a principal investigator in 1998. In 2008, Dr. Sidhu moved to the University of Toronto, where he is a professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics. In 2010, Dr. Sidhu founded the Toronto Recombinant Antibody Centre to facilitate therapeutic antibody research, and in 2015 he founded the Centre for Commercialization of Antibodies and Biologics. Dr. Sidhu’s research interests focus on the use of combinatorial biology methods to explore protein structure and function, and his group is currently developing synthetic antibody libraries and other scaffolds as sources of potential therapeutics. In 2015, Dr. Sidhu received the Christian B. Anfinsen Award of the Protein Society for significant technological achievements in protein research.

Professor, Biotechnology, Institute of Biochemical Engineering
Martin Siemann-Herzberg studied Biology at Technical University Braunschweig and is Professor at the Institute of Biochemical Engineering, University Stuttgart, Germany. A biochemist and bioengineer by training, his research focuses on bioprocess optimisation of recombinant protein production. Inspired by Alexander Spirin he pioneered the idea of engineering cell free protein synthesis for in vitro protein production. Harnessing systems biology advances of detailed systems analysis his lab identified factors impeding in vitro protein synthesis based on data-driven mathematical modelling. Within this scope his lab currently enabled dynamic and stochastic mathematical models allowing in vitro protein synthesis beyond established standard systems such as from ultra-fast growing or even non-growing stressed microbial host systems. He is directing the BSc and MSc programmes in Biochemical Engineering, which trains science and engineering graduates, with a focus on biopharmaceutical engineering.

Director, Discovery Research
Michela Silacci is Director in Discovery Research at Covagen, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of J&J. Since joining Covagen in 2009, Michela has been the discovery leader of several projects both in the field of Immunology and Oncology. At present she is responsible for Covagen’s discovery activities in the field of Immunology. Michela studied biochemistry and molecular biology at the ETH Zurich. After a short internship in the laboratories of Sir Gregory Winter at the MRC in Cambridge (UK), Michela Silacci joined the group of Prof. Dario Neri at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at ETH for her PhD thesis. Main focus of the thesis was the construction and validation of an antibody phage library for the isolation of therapeutic antibodies. After obtaining her PhD, she joined Roche Glycart where she worked for 3 years as a scientist in the protein engineering group.

Senior Scientist, Product Design and Characterization, Neurology R&D
Teresa is currently a Senior Scientist and team leader of Product design and characterization at Ipsen Bioinnovation, Neurology TA. Teresa’s current focus is developing and using molecular modelling tools to support protein engineering design in early research and make use of these tools combined with experimental techniques to characterize new molecules in terms of their developability challenges, supporting the development teams at Ipsen. Teresa has extensive experience in iterative modelling where computational and experiment work are applied in shared experimental design. Her main expertise is in molecular modeling techniques and tool development for the design and study of proteins and polymers for pharmaceutical applications.

Head, Drug Product Process Development, Drug Product Services
Biography

Professor & Chair
Dr. Arne Skerra is Full Professor at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, where he heads the Institute of Biological Chemistry. He holds a Diplom degree in Chemistry from the Technical University of Darmstadt and a PhD in Biochemistry from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. After post-doctoral studies at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, and a group leader position at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt/Main he became Associate Professor for Protein Chemistry at the TU Darmstadt. In 1998 he moved to TU Munich, where he was appointed to the Chair of Biological Chemistry at the Life Science Campus Weihenstephan. Arne Skerra started his scientific career in the field of protein engineering, where he pioneered, together with Andreas Plueckthun, the biosynthesis of functional antibody fragments in E. coli. Since then, he made several other contributions to this area, including the development of the Strep-tag technology for the purification of recombinant proteins. Currently, his main field of research is the design and structural analysis of novel proteins. One focus is the functional engineering of lipocalin proteins, which laid the basis for the ‘Anticalin’ technology. More recently, he became also interested in improving the pharmacological properties of therapeutic proteins and peptides, in particular with the aim to extend plasma half-life, which led to the 'PASylation' technology. Arne Skerra has been founder of Pieris Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a US/German biotech company (NASDAQ: PIRS) commercializing Anticalin drugs and XL-protein GmbH, Freising, Germany, exploiting PASylation technology.

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

Principal Scientist, Marketing
Dr. Daniel Some develops scientific and technical content on new applications utilizing Wyatt’s instrumentation. He collaborates with instrument users and manages internal projects. He is involved in developing Wyatt’s instrumentation for characterization of biomolecular interactions. Dr. Some obtained his B.Sc. from the Israel Institute of Technology and PhD from Brown University, both in Physics, and completed his postdoctoral research at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Assistant Professor, Chemical, Environmental and Biological Engineering, Integrated Bioprocess Development
Oliver Spadiut has completed his PhD in Biotechnology at BOKU University, Vienna, Austria before doing a 2-years PostDoc at KTH, Stockholm, Sweden. Since 2010 he has been employed as University Assistant in Biochemcial Engineering at TU Wien, Vienna, Austria. In March 2015 he got his Habilitation in “Biotechnology” and is currently Associate Professor and PI of the research group “Integrated Bioprocess Development.” He has published more than 80 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as a peer-reviewer for 63 scientific journals.

Characterization Manager
Biography

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

Senior Vice President, Biopharmaceutical Development and Manufacturing
Dr. Spitznagel, Senior Vice President, BioPharmaceutical Development and Manufacturing, joined MacroGenics in 2013. He has overall responsibility for both biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing of MacroGenics’ Fc-optimized monoclonal antibodies and Dual-Affinity Re-Targeting (DART®) antibody-like molecules, as well as facilities. Prior to joining MacroGenics, he was at Human Genome Sciences, most recently serving as Vice President of BioPharmaceutical Development, where he was responsible for oversight of Analytical Development, Formulation and Drug Delivery, Purification Sciences, and Fermentation and Cell Culture Sciences. Prior to joining HGS, Dr. Spitznagel was a Senior Scientist at Nabi from 1996-1998, and a Staff Engineer at Genetics Institute from 1992-1996. Dr. Spitznagel earned his BS in Chemical Engineering at M.I.T, and his PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

Senior Scientist, Variable Region Discovery & Engineering
Dale is currently working as a senior scientist within the Antibody Discovery group at UCB Celltech utilising UCBs proprietary CORE antibody discovery platform. Dale is actively involved in single B cell-based antibody discovery technology development using flow cytometry and microfluidics. 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.

Director & Professor, Tumor Immunology, Infection & Immunity & Transplantation
Professor Hans J. Stauss is the Director of the UCL Institute of Immunity & Transplantation and Co-Director of the UCL Division of Immunity and Transplantation. He is also the Director of the Infection, Immunology and Inflammation program of the Academic Health Science Centre of UCLP. Previously he was the Head of the Tumour Immunology section at Hammersmith Hospital. He studied for his Doctor of Medicine (MD) in 1982 at the University of Freiburg and went on to do his PhD at the University of Chicago in 1987. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (FRCPath) since 2007. The main focus of his work is the analysis of antigen-specific T lymphocyte responses to tumours and the development of immunotherapy approaches for the treatment of cancer and chronic infection. In order to facilitate the development of immunotherapy, he led the development of the new UCL Institute of Immunity and Transplantation, which focuses on new vaccines and on innovative cell and gene therapy approaches to induce tolerance in autoimmune conditions and in the transplant patients, and to enhance immunity in viral infection and in cancer.

Vice President, Cell Biology
David Szymkowski leads the immunology group as vice president of cell biology at Xencor, Inc. Xencor is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing Fc-engineered and bispecific antibodies and cytokine mimetics for the treatment of autoimmune diseases, allergic diseases, and cancer. Currently, 12 candidates engineered with Xencor's XmAb technology are in clinical development internally and with partners including Novartis, Amgen, 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 BA at Johns Hopkins University and his PhD in molecular and cell biology from Penn State, and completed a postdoc at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (U.K.).

Professor, Center for Gene Research
Research interest: Our research aims to understand the molecular mechanism of how plants fight against infectious diseases. Education: 1995: Bachelor of Agriculture, Faculty of Agriculture, Kobe University, Japan; 1997: Master of Agriculture, Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Kobe University, Japan; 2000: Doctor of Agriculture, Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Kobe University, Japan. Employment: 2002-2004: Assistant Teaching Staff, Faculty of Agriculture, Kobe University; 2004-2009: Research Associate, Biology Department, Duke University; 2009-2014: Associate Professor, Life Science Research Center, Kagawa University; 2014-present: Professor, Center for Gene Research, Nagoya University.

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

Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona)
I studied chemistry and biology at Utrecht University, specializing in biochemistry and cell biology. An internship in epigenetics with Peter Laird (USC, Los Angeles) allowed me to work in a lab that combines mouse model work with genome-wide DNA methylation studies. During my PhD with Madelon Maurice (UMC Utrecht), I focused on the poorly understood upstream events in Wnt/β-catenin signalling. Now I am finishing a postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Eduard Batlle (IRB Barcelona), where intestinal (cancer) stem cells and the tumour microenvironment (TME) are the main areas of research. My projects centre on the dissecting signalling mechanisms in the TME that drive colon cancer metastasis, in order to help devise new therapeutic strategies that target both the cancer cells and the accessory stromal cells.

Director, Research
Jan Theunissen, PhD is Senior Director of Research at Iconic Therapeutics. Dr. Theunissen has more than 10 years of experience in the biotech industry, specializing in the discovery and development of antibody therapeutics. Prior to Iconic Therapeutics, Dr. Theunissen worked in various roles at Genentech, Amgen and Igenica Biotherapeutics. Dr. Theunissen has a biotechnology degree from the University of Ghent, Belgium and a PhD degree in Molecular Biology from Weill Cornell Medicine, New York City.

Senior Manager, Marketing & Applications Separations
PhD at Karolinska Institute in Sweden studying protein-DNA interactions. Been with Schrödinger for almost 10 years. Currently Principal Applications Scientist and Director of Scientific Support.

Scientific Services Manager, Biologics
Nels Thorsteinson is a Scientific Services Manager specializing in biologics applications for CCG. He is responsible for providing scientific support, programming custom applications, instructing at workshops, presenting at conferences, and guiding CCG's 3D biologics applications development. Nels majored in biomedical computing and graduated focusing on bioinformatics and computational chemistry.

Postdoc, Institute for Immunology and Microbiology, Centre for Medical Parasitology
Susan Thrane has a MSc in Human Biology and holds a PhD in Immunology and Infectious Diseases from University of Copenhagen (2016). She works as a postdoc at the Institute of Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with AdaptVac. Susan Thrane is a co-inventor of the split-protein VLP vaccine technology AdaptVac is based on. Her research interests are vaccine development and protein design and expression.

Lab Head, Formulation Development, Pharmaceutical Development Biologics
Riccardo received his Master´s degree in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies from the University of Rome La Sapienza and his PhD from the University of Leiden. During his PhD studies, performed between Leiden University and the University of Kansas, he worked on the relationship between protein oxidation, aggregation and immunogenicity of several therapeutic proteins. Since 2013 he covered different roles between Coriolis-Pharma and Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland, focusing on the early and late stage formulation development of biologics.

Vice President
Dr. Trinklein is currently Vice President of Discovery at Teneobio. His group employs a novel sequence-based approach for antibody discovery that leverages next-gen sequence and high-throughput recombinant expression to screen large numbers of diverse sequence-defined antibodies. Prior to Teneobio, Dr. Trinklein was co-founder and CEO of SwitchGear Genomics, a venture-backed company that was acquired in 2013. SwitchGear developed and commercialized a unique cell-based platform for small molecule pathway screening. Dr. Trinklein served as the Technical Director of the Stanford ENCODE project and received his PhD from Stanford University. Dr. Trinklein has published over 20 peer-reviewed papers and is an inventor on over 15 patents.

Vice President, Drug Discovery
Mihriban has over 15 years’ experience in antibody engineering and discovery and has successfully managed a number of proprietary and collaborative drug discovery projects with big pharma. Prior to joining F-star, she worked in technology enhancement in Biopharm R&D at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and in the selection and optimisation of lead domain antibodies (dAbs) at Domantis Ltd. Mihriban holds a PhD in Biochemistry from University of Sussex, UK, and a BSc in Biology from Middle East Technical University, Turkey.

Mar Valés-Gómez obtained her PhD on the interaction between NK receptors and its ligands under the supervision of Prof. Jack L. Strominger, in 1998. For the next five years, she worked as a postdoctoral scientist in the Department of Pathology of the University of Cambridge, focusing on NK cell recognition of virus-infected cells. In 2006, she started her independent research as an MRC Young Investigator, studying molecules that signal stress to the immune system. In 2010, she joined the Spanish National Centre for Biotechnology, working on the role of NK cells in cancer recognition. Mar’s research focuses on the differentiation and proliferation events that occur in the NK cell compartment in the context of cancer and the changes provoked by therapies. She is interested in immune modulating molecules secreted by tumours, both soluble species and in extracellular vesicles, such as exosomes.

Senior Scientist, Analytical Sciences
Ewald van den Bremer worked in antibody biology and biotechnology for more than 12 years. He holds a PhD in biomolecular mass spectrometry from Utrecht University (2004) and worked at Genmab since 2006. Ewald is as an expert in analytical chemistry of biomolecules and antibodies in particular. Contributed to the research and development of the therapeutic antibodies ofatumumab (Arzerra®) and daratumumab (Darzalex®) and is an inventor of the DuoBody® technology that enables the development of bispecific antibodies. His group is mainly focused on advanced mass spectrometry-based methods for the analysis of innovative antibody therapeutics.

Manager Interaction Laboratory
Alex has worked for more than 20 years at diverse biotech institutes, with in-depth knowledge of bio assays, Alex started working at Ibis in 2009. Intimately acquainted with IBIS' SPR technology, Alex can be found at (potential) customer sites and conferences giving demonstrations, workshops and training to future IBIS users.

PostDoc, Laboratory for Systems and Synthetic Immunology, Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering
Dr. Rodrigo Vazquez-Lombardi is a PHRT postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich, working on engineered T cell therapies in the laboratory of Prof. Sai Reddy (Department of Biosystems Science & Engineering). Dr. Vazquez-Lombardi completed his PhD studies at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia in September 2016. There, he trained with Prof. Daniel Christ, an expert in antibody engineering, and Prof. Jonathan Sprent, a world-leading immunologist. His scientific interests revolve around the development of novel cancer immunotherapies and associated technologies. During his PhD project Dr. Vazquez-Lombardi worked on the molecular engineering of IL-2-Fc fusion proteins for use in cancer immunotherapy. His findings on the therapeutic determinants of IL-2-Fc led to the discovery of a novel mechanism of action, namely regulatory T cell depletion (Vazquez-Lombardi et al., Nature Comm, 2017). Complementary to his research in the field of cancer immunotherapy, he has vast expertise in the production of recombinant proteins and antibodies, which he has performed both in industry and academia (Vazquez-Lombardi et al., Nature Prot, 2018). Dr. Vazquez-Lombardi has published review articles in the field of engineered protein therapeutics (Vazquez-Lombardi et al. Antibodies, 2013; Vazquez-Lombardi et al. Drug Discovery Today , 2015) and has contributed to published work in protein engineering (Porebski et al. PEDS, 2016) and immunology (Loetsch et al. Cell Rep, 2017; Corpuz et al., Journal of Immunol, 2017; Sabouri et al. PNAS, 2014). He has also contributed to conference reports (Thomson Reuters, PEGS Boston, 2015) and journal editorials (Owens, Nature Biotech, 2017) on protein and antibody therapeutics.

Professor, Chemistry
Michele Vendruscolo is Professor of Biophysics and Director of the Centre for Misfolding Diseases at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Cambridge where he moved nearly 20 years ago. His research is focused on the development of rational design methods to optimise the properties of antibodies, in particular those relevant for developability. His innovative methods are widely used and progressively optimised through his extensive network of collaborations with academic and industrial partners. He has published over 350 scientific papers and 11 patents, and given over 400 invited lectures at international meetings.

Senior Consultant, CMC, Analytical and Formulation Developmen
Christina Vessely, PhD, RAC, has over 18 years of experience in analytical and formulation development within the biotechnology industry. Her experience ranges from early stage research and development for small and start-up firms through late stage development and commercialization for mid-sized and large pharmaceutical companies. She has been involved in priority review and fast track programs, she has participated in pre-approval inspections (PAI) and PAI enabling activities such as design and execution of validation studies and evaluation of GMP systems, as well as the authoring and editing of analytical sections for multiple filings in both the U.S. and in the EU (IND/IMPD, BLA/MAA).

Scientist, Formulation & Process Development / Biologics Drug Product Development, Sanofi R&D
Saskia Villinger got her diploma in biochemistry at the University of Frankfurt. She completed her doctoral degree and a post-doc at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. During this period she studied structure, dynamics and interactions of a membrane protein by solution NMR, and her work resulted in several peer-reviewed publications. In 2013 she joined the BioStructure and Biophysics group, headed by Alexey Rak, at Integrated Drug Discovery in Sanofi R&D in Paris. As a post-doc she implemented state-of-the-art biophysical techniques, notably MST and nanoDSF, for the characterization of biomolecular interactions of therapeutic targets. She then obtained a permanent position as a research scientist in the group, where she was responsible for MST and nanoDSF studies to support the lead discovery for various challenging protein targets. She recently joined the Formulation and Process Development group at Biologics Drug Product Development in Sanofi.

Head, IBIsA Facility for High-Throughput Cloning, Expression and Purification of Proteins
Dr. Vincentelli spent 9 years producing proteins at EMBL (Heidelberg, G) before moving to AFMB, Marseille, France in 2001 to set-up one of the first high throughput (HTP) protein production facilities in Europe. The team was involved in seven European collaborative projects and produced more than 10.000 proteins since the beginning. To achieve this task the development of HTP and miniaturized methods has been constant in the fields of protein production (Saez. N et al Methods Mol Biol. 2014), in-vitro protein-DNA (Jolma A et al, Cell 2013) and protein-protein interactions studies (Vincentelli R et al, Nature Methods 2015). Dr Vincentelli organized the first (2005) and the last (2015) European EMBO course on HTP methods in protein production and crystallization at AFMB.

Assistant Professor, Life Sciences Department, UCIBIO, Science and Technology Faculty
Paula Videira received her PhD in Biotechnology from the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2002. After a post-doctoral training, she joined the Medical School from NOVA University of Lisbon, where, in 2007, she founded the Glycoimmunology research group. The present research interest of her group is to contribute to developing novel immunotherapeutics to treat patients with cancer and disorders of Glycosylation. She has been invited as a fellow by international institutions awarded by EMBO and Bologna University. In 2013, the Fulbright Commission awarded her as a visiting Professor at Harvard Institutes of Medicine at Boston. In 2015, she moved to Faculty of Science and Technology from NOVA Universty of Lisbon, where her work is focused on identifying novel therapeutic targets and to develop antibody- and dendritic cell-based therapies. She has contributed to identify aberrant glycosylation in different types of cancers and to understand how glycan signatures promote tumor growth and metastasis and induce a tolerogenic/inflammatory immune profiles. She recently co-founded the CellmAbs, a spin-off project aiming at developing innovative therapies in the field of glycoimmunology and oncology. Her team is composed of internationally recognized experts in these fields with several ongoing partnerships and collaborations with research centres and oncology clinical institutes. Her work has been recognized by the Bluepharma | University of Coimbra Award and by Scientific merit price from Santander Totta - Universidade NOVA de Lisboa.

Senior Scientist, Industrial Biotechnology and Food Solutions
Dr. Marika Vitikainen is working as a Senior Scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. She is a molecular biologist with strong experience in protein production in various microbial hosts. Before joining VTT, she worked at National Public Health Institute of Finland in several projects involving protein production in Bacillus and pathogenicity of Staphylococcus. During that time, she received her PhD in microbiology in 2004 at the University of Helsinki. She came to VTT in 2007 as an Academy of Finland Postdoctoral fellow for the development of genomic tools to characterize fungal strains. After the fellowship, she continued in various projects of protein production in filamentous fungi (mainly T. reesei) and P. pastoris, and she has managed expression service projects as well. Currently she is working with M. thermophila to develop this fungus for production of biotherapeutics.

Researcher, Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics & Department of Molecular Cell Biology
Thomas Vogl obtained a PhD at the Graz University of Technology in Austria (group of Prof. Anton Glieder) working on various synthetic biology strategies to improve recombinant protein expression in the yeast Pichia pastoris. During this time the first CRISPR/Cas system for P. pastoris has been established (doi: 10.1016/j.jbiotec.2016.03.027; 10.1002/jcb.26474), novel promoters were discovered (10.1021/acssynbio.5b00199) and synthetic regulatory circuits generated (10.1002/bit.26529). He was a visiting scientist at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane (group of Prof. Robert Speight) focusing on genomics of high-level production strains (10.1128/AEM.02712-17). After working in the R&D department of Sandoz (Novartis) in Austria on biopharmaceuticals, he moved as a postdoctoral researcher to the Weizmann Institute of Science (group of Prof. Eran Segal). Working on the interface between basic and applied research, Thomas is applying synthetic biology concepts to generate improve biotechnological applications and gain insights into natural biological systems.

Director, CHO Cell Line Development, The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability
Bjørn Voldborg has worked within the field of recombinant protein expression, for more than 20 years with experience from both academic and industrial settings, 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 cell factories for protein production.

Group Leader, Bioconjugation & Protein Chemistry
Stephanie Voss is a group leader for Bioconjugation & Protein Chemistry at Heidelberg Pharma Research GmbH, a pharma company located near Heidelberg focused on the research and development of anti-cancer drugs. Stephanie obtained her chemistry diploma in 2010 at the University of Göttingen. Following a research stay in India at the IISER in Pune, she started her PhD in Protein Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund. During her PhD she developed novel GTPase sensors using site-specific conjugation techniques. After a brief postdoctoral stay at the Chemical Genomics Centre in Dortmund she joined the Biochemistry Department at Heidelberg Pharma and is now working on the development of new ADCs based on the RNA polymerase II inhibitor alpha-Amanitin.

Asscociate Director, Immunology
Claudia Wagner leads the TCR Discovery and Validation group at Immatics. She joined the company in 2012 and is part of the strategic scientific leadership team. Before, she was trained as postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Immunobiology at Yale University, New Haven, USA.

Senior Scientist, NBEs, Analytical Chemistry
Dr Elsa Wagner-Rousset is a senior scientist in the analytical-chemistry department of the Centre d’Immunologie Pierre Fabre (Saint Julien en Genevois, France). She has been leading a research team in the group headed by Alain Beck since 2005. She has an extensive expertise in the development of analytical methods dedicated to the structural characterization of biomolecules such as therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) & recombinant proteins. She is involved in the assessment of mAbs/ADcs developpability by in silico approaches and stabilities study. She is an expert in Mass Spectrometry (HPLC-MS, UPLC-MS) and related analytical methods (IEX, IEF, SEC, CE & SDS-PAGE).

Director CMC
Stefan Warmuth, PhD is Director CMC at Numab, where he is responsible for biophysical characterization, formulation, process development, and manufacturing. Stefan also serves as project manager for Numab’s lead IO program ND021. Before joining Numab, Stefan was responsible for downstream processing at CSL Behring, focusing on process development and optimization to support clinical production and up-scaling. During his post-graduate studies, Stefan investigated the structure and function of sodium potassium chloride cotransporters. Stefan graduated with a degree in Biochemistry from the ETH Zurich and obtained his PhD from the University of Zurich.

Head, Science, Biologics
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.

Senior Scientist, Protein Sciences
Studied Biology at Southampton University, graduating in 2006. Worked at UCB in Slough for the past 10 years as a research scientist, specialising in protein expression and therapeutic stable cell line generation.

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

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

Master
Sir Gregory Winter is the Master of Trinity College Cambridge and until worked at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, U.K. He was one of the early pioneers of protein engineering, and in particular known for his inventions to humanise rodent antibodies for use as therapeutics, in the course of which he helped to develop alemtuzumab/Campath-1H. Later, he developed methods to make fully human antibodies against human self-antigens using antibody libraries. His inventions are used in most of the antibody products on the market, including the humanised antibodies alemtuzumab, trastuzumab, bevacizumab and pembrolizumab, and the first human antibody (adalimumab) to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Sir Gregory has also acted as an entrepreneur to translate his scientific inventions to medicines. He was a founder of Cambridge Antibody Technology (1989) and Domantis (2000) and Bicycle Therapeutics (2009).

Student, Large Protein Biophysics
Adriana-Michelle Wolf Pérez obtained her BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Jena (Germany) and Nottingham University (UK) and her MSc in Biochemistry from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). Currently, she is a final year PhD student at Novo Nordisk, Aarhus University (Denmark) and Cambridge University (UK) under the supervision of Prof. Michele Vendruscolo. Her research focuses on the rational design of monoclonal antibodies and the development of novel in vitro and in silico high-throughput methods to assess developability. Adriana is expected to graduate in December 2018.

Faculty Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Faculty of Science, Agriculture & Engineering
Biography

Professor Emeritus, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL); Founder, Chairman, ExcellGene SA
Florian M. Wurm trained as Biologist/Molecular/Genetics. His career involved academic and industrial work: Behringwerke AG, Marburg (1981-1984), Harvard Boston (1984-1985), Genentech, Inc., San Francisco (1986-1995), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) (1995-2015), ExcellGene SA, Monthey, Suisse (2001-today). He contributed to the generation of several high-value products (cumulatively now sold for multi-billion dollars/year globally), such as Herceptin® – an anti-breast cancer antibody, Pulmozyme® – for Cystic Fibrosis and Tenecteplase® – a highly potent Thrombolytic agent. His research activities covered Process Sciences using recombinant animal cells (CHO, HEK and others) in bioreactors at the EPFL. He is/was founder (2001), CEO (2015-2016) and CSO/Chairman (since 2017) of ExcellGene SA. Florian is member/past Chairman of the European Society of Animal Cell Technology. He has published more than 200 papers and filed more than 30 patents, covering aspects of expression and manufacture of clinical proteins using mammalian cells in bioreactors.

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

Global Head of Characterization, Analytical Development
Bernice is currently the Global Head of Characterization at Shire’s Analytical Development, supporting all biologics in Shire’s commercial and clinical pipelines. Previously she worked at Bristol-Myer Squibb, IntegrityBio and Amgen, in areas that covered developability and manufacturability assessment, analytical and formulation development, and product characterization. Bernice has a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Northeastern University, where she studied under Professor Paul Vouros, in the area of biological mass spectrometry.

Principal Scientist, Biologics Development Sciences
Dr. Fang Yi is currently a Principle Scientist at Janssen Biotherapeutics, Johnson and Johnson. She leads a biophysical screening group supporting the early antibody discovery. Prior to joining Janssen, she was a NIH postdoc fellow at Yale University. She got her PhD in Biophysics from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Senior Scientist, Analytical Development
Dr. Linda Yi is a Senior Scientist in Protein Analytical Development department of Biogen. She has developed her expertise in recombinant therapeutic protein characterization by liquid chromatography, as well as LC-MS or LC-MS/MS over the last 12 years. She has participated drug development for monoclonal antibodies, bi-specific antibodies, fusion proteins, protein vaccines, and biosimilars for preclinical and clinical programs.

Head, R&D, Vice President
After I received my PhD majored in Biochemistry at Yonsei University, South Korea, I have worked as a postdoctoral fellow at UC San Francisco, and as a researcher at Sanford-Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute from 2004 to 2012 to expand my research experience and knowledge. I have successfully performed several research projects and published many papers regarding tumor-induced angiogenesis and tumor microenvironments, especially focusing on the efficacy of drug candidates using nonclinical animal models. After I came back to Korea, I was joined as a project leader in the drug development project to discover and develop a novel bispecific antibody at Hanwha Chemical, Biologics R&D center. Currently I am working as R&D Head at a new startup biotech company, ABL Bio, Inc, supervising and managing many exciting projects for antibody-based novel therapeutics.

Senior Vice President, Research and Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Zalevsky joined Nektar in July 2015 as Vice President of Biology and Preclinical Development to lead biological and translational research and guide strategy for the Nektar discovery portfolio. During his tenure at the company, Dr. Zalevsky's expertise in immunology, as well as his experience across biological modalities and therapeutic areas, have helped fuel the growth of the company's immuno-oncology and immunology pipeline. Dr. Zalevsky led the discovery and preclinical development for NKTR-358 (a T regulatory cell stimulatory agent being developed for auto-immune diseases with partner Eli Lilly & Co.) and NKTR-262 (a small molecule TLR agonist being developed in combination with NKTR-214). Prior to joining Nektar, Dr. Zalevsky had over 15 years of experience within both large pharmaceutical and small biotechnology companies. Previously, Dr. Zalevsky was Global Vice President and Head of the Inflammation Drug Discovery Unit at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. As the leading immunologist for Takeda, he was responsible for an immunology pipeline that spanned from early target discovery to late-stage development and launched products. Prior to working at Takeda, Dr. Zalevsky held a number of research and development positions at Xencor, where he was responsible for the discovery and development of Xencor's first four clinical-stage assets. Dr. Zalevsky received his PhD in Biochemistry from the Tetrad Program at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). He received dual bachelor degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Principal Scientist Pharmaceutical Sciences
Dr. Jingtao Zhang is a principal scientist in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Merck Research Laboratories at West Point, Pennsylvania. Over the 10 years’ industrial tenure, he has extensive experiences in diverse modalities including synthetic peptides, small molecules, synthetic conjugates, and oligonucleotides. His current role is in the preformulation and drug delivery research supporting the development of synthetic peptides and small molecule therapeutics. He also co-leads a cross-functional technology development group to boost the peptide biophysical characterization capability within Merck Pharmaceutical Sciences. His current research interest is in biophysical characterization, peptide aggregation, and drug delivery technology development. His past roles were in the formulation, biophysical characterization, and analytical testing of siRNA drug delivery systems to advance the clinical development of siRNA therapeutics. Prior to Merck, he received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007. He published more than 20 articles in peer-reviewed journals and presented extensively in industrial and academic conferences.

Senior Scientific Manager, Early Discovery Biochemistry
Yingnan Zhang, PhD in Biochemistry, is a Senior Scientific Manager at Genentech. She got her PhD in the field of enzymology and glycobiology from University of Miami, FL, mentored by Dr. Keith Brew. She joined Genentech as a postdoc mentored by Dr. Sachdev Sidhu. She has been involved in many projects with phage display as technology platform during her career at Genentech. These include, but are not limited to generating specificity map for PDZ domain family, discovery of Dvl antagonist for Wnt signaling pathway regulation, identification of specific peptide inhibitors to proteases (e.g. BACE1 and caspase 6), engineering ubiquitin to specific inhibitor of DUB by exploring conformation diversity of ubiquitin, and identification of peptide antagonists against PCSK9. She is the lead manager for diversity display lab at Department of Early Discovery Biochemistry in Genentech for over nine years.

Director, Cell Biology
Jonathan Zmuda, PhD is a Director of Cell Biology in the Life Sciences Solutions Group at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Frederick, MD (USA). Dr. Zmuda leads a team of scientists dedicated to developing new technologies for cell biology applications including protein expression, advanced cell culture and rare cell analysis. Dr. Zmuda received his PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Maryland, College Park and his undergraduate degree from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA.