Speaker Biographies by Name

Professor & Chair for Genetic Immunotherapy
Dr. Hinrich Abken is Professor and Chair for Genetic Immunotherapy at the RCI, Regensburg Center for Interventional Immunology, University Regensburg 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. Since June 2018, Dr. Abken holds the Chair for Genetic Immunotherapy at the RCI, Regensburg Center for Interventional Immunology, at the University Regensburg.

Deputy Chief
My research focuses on tumor immunology, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, and combination immunotherapy for thoracic cancers. Over the years, we have developed clinically-relevant mouse models and modeled biological therapies in these models. This research has yielded mechanistic data that has been translated and is now in CAR T-cell and combination immunotherapy clinical trials for patients with lung cancer, pleural mesothelioma, and breast cancer. Our ongoing research focuses on investigating immuno oncology agents’ efficacy in human ex vivo translational culture systems. Our laboratory research has been funded by federal agencies and foundations resulting in >70 grant awards to date totaling >$40MM over the past decade. My research has progressed to clinical trials and >200 publications including in Cancer Discov, FASEB, J Clin Invest, J Clin Oncol, J Natl Cancer Inst, Nat Med, and Sci Transl Med. In addition to serving on medical journal editorial boards, I am the Deputy Editor for Molecular Therapy Oncolytics. I serve as a member of national peer-review committees including NCI, DoD, PCORI, National health institutions of Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. I am a member of the Fleischner Society and American Society of Clinical Investigation. I serve on international committees including the American Society of Cell and Gene Therapy, NCI thoracic cancers steering committee, International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, and the American Association for Thoracic Surgery. In my laboratory, I mentor MDs, MD/PhDs, and PhDs in thoracic oncology research, including visiting scholars from international institutions.

Full Professor, Bioengineering, IBB – Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences, Instituto Superior
Raquel Aires-Barros is a Full Professor in the Department of Bioengineering (DBE) at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal and researcher at the Institute of Bioengineering and Biosciences (IBB). Since 2012 is President of the Pedagogical Council at IST; Chair of the Section Downstream Processing of the European Society of Biochemical Engineering Sciences (ESBES); Vice-President of the Portuguese Society for Biotechnology and editor of Separation and Purification Technology Journal. Current research interests include the development of new separation processes with high performance and efficiency for purification biopharmaceuticals and the development "Lab-on-a-Chip" for protein purification.

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

GOSHCC Professor of Experimental Paediatric Oncology & Honorary Consultant Oncologist
As an undergraduate, he studied for degrees in Biochemistry and Medicine at the Universities of Oxford and Newcastle before clinical training in paediatric oncology. He completed a PhD at the University of London in 1998 after which he was appointed to a faculty position at the University College London Institute of Child Health. Since 1998, he has also held an honorary clinical contract in oncology at the partner Institution, Great Ormond Street Hospital London. His research interest is in the development of novel immunotherapies for childhood solid cancers and in particular, neuroblastoma, and delivery of clinical trials. He currently runs a research group of 15 members with over 30 current active research grants. Since 2014, he has held the position of UCL Professor of Experimental Paediatric Oncology.

Investigador Coordenador, ITQB-Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica
No bio available

Principal Scientist, Antibody Analytics
No bio available

VP, Global Biologics
Fouad Atouf is Vice President, Science—Global Biologics, for USP. He leads all scientific activities related to the development and maintenance of documentary and reference standards for biologics and antibiotics, and oversees the biologics laboratories in USP–U.S. and USP–India. His department supports the work of the associated USP Expert Committees. Dr. Atouf has been at USP for over 10 years and served in a variety of scientific leadership roles including being in charge of the development of biologics documentary and references standards for biologics including advanced therapies, and being the regional champion for the Middle East and North Africa Region, where he helped facilitate programs designed to enhance the understanding of the role of regulations and standards in the registration of medicinal products. Prior to joining USP in 2006, his research at the U.S. National Institutes of Health focused on developing methods for the development of cell-based therapies for the treatment of diabetes. Dr. Atouf earned his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the Pierre & Marie Curie University, Paris, France.

Head, Cancer Immunotherapy 2
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 T-cell bispecific antibodies (TCBs), immunocytokines, checkpoint inhibitors and immunomodulators. Marina also leads the discovery activities of three pRED’s most advanced TCB programs in the clinics, including CEA-TCB and CD20-TCB. 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 the use of fresh primary tumor explants for testing of cancer immunotherapy agents. Within such activities, Marina and team established the unit for high dimensional single cell analysis of tumours including single cell RNA sequencing. In addition, Marina participates in building and overseeing Roche’s portfolio focused on antibody-based cancer immunotherapies. 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.

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

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

Coordinator, Bayer Satellite Laboratory at iBET
No bio available

Eugene J. Dodson Prof & Chair, Dept of Cell Biology
Dr. Barber’s primary interest is in studying cellular sensing mechanisms that trigger host defense countermeasures in response to microbial infection. This has included his discovery of a signaling pathway controlled by a new innate immune regulator referred to as STING (stimulator of interferon genes) that is activated by DNA based microbes such as viruses, bacteria, and parasites. He is interested in developing viral oncolytic agents and immunotherapeutic for the treatment of cancer and understanding the role of innate immunity & the control of cancer and Understanding mechanisms of inflammation associated cancer.

Sr. Scientist, Immunology
Dr. Bawadekar has completed his PhD in Inflammation and Autoimmunity from the University of Piemonte Orientale, Italy and then went on to pursue his postdoctoral training in Rheumatoid Arthritis pathogenesis at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Dr. Bawadekar is a Senior Scientist and Scientific Champion of the OX40 agonist program at Invenra Inc. At his current role, Dr. Bawadekar conducts mechanism of action studies to understand the efficacy of lead antibodies that are under development. His research interests span from identifying potential targets in oncology and autoimmune diseases to developing multi-specific therapeutic antibodies.

Sr Strategy & 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 Process & Product Development (BPD), TRD/GDD, and is part of the BioFuture team. Karoline is active in various associations (American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists AAPS, Parenteral Drug Association PDA and International Association for Pharmaceutical Technology APV) and contributes frequently to conferences in the EU as well as in the US.

Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Roger R. Beerli (CSO, NBE-Therapeutics AG) has over 15 years of experience in discovery, engineering and preclinical development of antibody-based therapeutics. Before he joined NBE-Therapeutics AG, he led therapeutic antibody development programs at Cytos AG, Switzerland, and later at Intercell AG, Austria. Dr. Beerli has published widely in the areas of antibody development and is co-inventor on numerous patents and patent applications.

Professor, Immunology and Immunotherapy, Centre for Cancer Immunology, Cancer Sciences Unit
Stephen Beers is Professor of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the Centre for Cancer Immunology, University of Southampton. He leads a research group studying antibody drugs and their mechanisms of action. The group’s research is currently focussed on two main areas: 1) the mechanisms of action of immunomodulatory mAb, and 2) how the tumour microenvironment affects antibody effector function and how this might be manipulated to enhance patient outcomes. Their work utilises a portfolio of complimentary models incorporating in vitro 3D modelling, appropriate in vivo model systems and primary clinical material.

Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Bioseparation Engineering
Sonja Berensmeier leads the Bioseparation Engineering Group at the Technical University of Munich since 2009, after several years as a group leader at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in the area of biofunctional surfaces. She meets the challenge for applied integration of molecular biology, biotechnology, particle technology, and process engineering. The focus of the current research is process intensification by adsorptive and extractive separation methods. In the field of adsorbents she is specialized in magnetic and conductive particles.

Scientist, cell Biology & Immunology
Alexey Berezhnoy is a scientist in the Cell Biology and Immunology group at MacroGenics, Inc., which he joined in 2016 from a faculty position in the Department of Medicine University of Miami. Dr. Berezhnoy has been active in tumor immunology research for the past 10+ years, focusing on novel therapeutic approaches, including multi-specific molecules and tumor-targeted therapies. Dr. Berezhnoy has authored several high-impact publications in the field of immune oncology.

Associate Director, Downstream Development, NBE and Biosimilars, Biopharma Process Science Austria
Matthias graduated in Biology, and achieved a PhD with focus on plant biochemistry and molecular biology. Since 2000, in the Biopharma Industry dealing with recombinant protein production. Since 2006, in leading functions responsible for CMC development, optimization and characterization for non-mAb biopharmaceuticals in microbials. Matthias initiates and supervises collaboration projects with academic and industrial partners: focus on new manufacturing technologies, on-line monitoring of downstream processes and automated process development.

Principal Scientist, Bispecific Target Discovery
Pallavi (Pall) Bhatta obtained her Biochemistry degree and Ph.D. from Imperial College London. Currently a Principal Scientist at UCB Pharma (formerly Celltech), she leads the Antibody Generation team within the Bispecific Target Discovery department, enabling the production of large, combinatorial bispecific antibody panels for high throughput functional screening and dual target discovery. Research interests include antibody engineering, bispecifics, high throughput transient expression and purification, biologics sample tracking and discovering new targets across a multitude of disease areas, including immuno-oncology, autoimmunity, fibrosis and neurology.

Dr. H. Kaspar Binz is CEO and founder of Binz Biotech Consulting, a strategic life-science management consultancy. He is also co-founder of Molecular Partners (SIX: MOLN), a Swiss clinical stage biotech company developing DARPin® drugs for therapeutic applications, where he acted in various positions from 2004 to 2019 including VP and CSO. With his entrepreneurial approach Dr. Binz was key in the establishment of Molecular Partners as a successful biotech company, and in the establishment of Molecular Partners’ Pipeline. He invented and developed the designed repeat protein technology including the DARPin® technology during his post-doctoral training and PhD studies with Prof. Andreas Plückthun at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. Dr. Binz has published widely in the areas of protein engineering and drug development and is inventor on numerous patents and patent applications. Molecular Partners and the DARPin® technology have been awarded with several prizes including the Swiss Technology Award 2005, the Swiss Venture 2004 business plan competition award, and the De Vigier Foundation award 2005. Dr. Binz was educated at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden (Prof. Mathias Uhlén) and holds a M.Sc. in biotechnology from the European school of biotechnology in Strasbourg, France.

Principal Scientist, CCL
Jonathan received his PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Dublin City University in 2007. Jonathan then moved to NIBRT - The National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training, working under the mentorship of Prof. Pauline M. Rudd within her GlycoScience Laboratory. In 2010, Jonathan was appointed the John Hatsopoulos Research Scholar within the Barnett Institute of Chemical and Biological Analysis at Northeastern University, Boston, working under the mentorship of Prof. Barry L. Karger. Jonathan returned to NIBRT in 2012 and is the Principal Investigator of the NIBRT Characterization and Comparability Laboratory and an Associate Professor in the School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering at University College Dublin.

Head of Biologics Research France, Centre de Recherche de Vitry/Alfortville
Thomas Bouquin is leading the Biologics Research department at Sanofi since 2016. He has extensive experience in the discovery, HTP engineering and characterization of therapeutic proteins and antibodies originating from in vitro (phage), in vivo (transgenic animals and human) platforms. Before joining Sanofi, Thomas was leading the antibody discovery department at Symphogen A/S focusing on the discovery of therapeutic antibodies in immune oncology, leading to the discovery of several monoclonal antibodies and antibody combinations currently in clinical phase.

Director, External Innovation, Discovery, Product Development and Supply Chain DPDS
Simon Brack PhD serves as Director External Innovation in the Discovery, Product Development and Supply (DPDS) organization of Janssen R&D. Before moving to his current role in February 2019, Simon headed the Oncology Discovery at the Covagen / Janssen R&D site in Zürich-Schlieren, Switzerland for four years where he led several multispecific antibody programs for Immuno-Oncology applications. Simon has worked for Covagen, which was acquired by Janssen in 2014, since 2007 and helped to develop Covagen’s multispecific FynomAb pipeline. Simon earned his PhD in Prof. Dario Neri’s lab at the ETH Zürich, Switzerland.

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 Ph.D. (Cambridge University) in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology under the guidance of Dr. Cesar Milstein. After his Ph.D. 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.

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

Prof, Immunology & Microbial Science
No bio available

Expert Scientist
Dr. Ulrich Brinkmann is a member of Roche’s Large Molecule Research organization within Pharma Research & Early Development at the Roche Innovation Center Munich (Penzberg, Germany). His work focuses on protein & antibody engineering, bispecifics, and on delivery platforms for targeted payload delivery. Prior to joining Roche, he served as CSO in functional genomics and pharmacogenetics companies Xantos and Epidauros. His previous work in Ira 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 and inventor of many patents covering recombinant antibodies, pharmaco- & functional genomics, immunotoxins and protein engineering technologies and applications.

Professor, Glyco-oncology, Head, Breast Cancer Biology Lab Comprehensive Cancer Centre, School of Cancer and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Professor Joy Burchell is head of the Breast Cancer Biology Group and Professor of Glyco-oncology at King’s College London. Before joining King’s Joy Burchell was a Senior Scientist/ Senior Group Leader at Cancer Research UK and from 2008-2012 jointly headed the Glycans in Cancer Biology subgroup of the International Consortium for Functional Glycomics (CFG) coordinated from the Scripps in the USA. She has worked extensively in glycobiology in cancer and was the first to demonstrate that over-expression of certain glycosyltransferases is at least one of the mechanisms that explain aberrant O-linked glycosylation in breast cancer. JB co-Chairs international biennial meetings in the area of Mucins in Health and Disease, was involved in the cloning of MUC1 (the first mucin to be cloned) and was the first to identify that the glycosylation of MUC1 was changed in breast cancer.

Senior Researcher, Industrial Biotechnology
Dr. Marinus (Marco) G. Casteleijn has over 20 years working experience in protein related research, from the regulatory affairs, in academia and for the industrial biotechnology sector, both in the Netherlands and Finland. Currently, he is senior researcher and project manager at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, in the field of industrial biotechnology working on innovations in the pharmaceutical industry, food solutions, and materials science. VTT generates significant growth initiatives and new market opportunities. Its impact stories provide a long-term perspective to economic renewal and growth. He has a PhD in Bioprocess Engineering from Oulu University, with a minor in Bio-business. In addition, he holds a Masters in Molecular Biology (Oulu University), and a BA in Biochemistry from the Life Sciences and Chemistry Applied University in Utrecht in the Netherlands.

Scientific Technical Leader
Biotechnology Master from University of Marseille. Joined Novartis in 2000. From 2000 to 2008 - Scientist in Protein Structure Unit working on protein preparation for structural analysis. From 2009 to today: Scientist in Novartis Biologic Center working on antibody engineering for improved biophysical properties, and design and engineering of multi-specific antibodies.

Project Group Leader, Structural Dynamics
2004 Diploma Degree in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics from the ETH Zurich - 2004 - 2009 PhD in Biochemistry, Department of Biochemistry, University of Würzburg, Germany, Graduation summa cum laude - 2009 - 2011 Postdoc and Project Group Leader, Department of Biochemistry, University of Würzburg, Germany - 2011 - 2016 Project Group Leader, Research Group of 3D Electron Cryomicroscopy, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany - 2016 -date Project Group Leader, Department of Structural Dynamics, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany.

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

Scientist II, Analytical Development
Dr. Rachel Chen is a Scientist in Protein Analytical Development department at Biogen. She has developed her expertise in characterization of protein therapeutics using LC-MS and other analytical methods over the last 5 years. Her research interest includes investigation into protein aggregate formation, host cell protein quantitation, characterization of disulfide related variants, as well as cell culture metabolite analysis. She received her PhD in Chemistry from Northwestern University in 2013, with a major focus on natural product discovery using mass spectrometry based proteomics approach.

Professor, Molecular Medicine
Prof. Kerry Chester leads the Antibody Engineering Group at the UCL Cancer Institute. She has over twenty years’ experience in antibody engineering and antibody phage-display technology. Her main research interests are design and construction of antibody-based therapeutics and the interaction of these molecules with specific cancer targets. The work is largely translational; her group designed and manufactured the first single chain Fv antibody (scFv) to enter clinical trials and she is the academic lead of a GMP facility, manufacturing recombinant antibody-based cancer treatments for first-in-human trials. Current projects include bench-to-bedside development of antibodies for use as: cancer imaging agents, antibody drug conjugates, chimeric antigen receptors (CARS) and nano-medicines.

Senior Director, BioMedicine Design
Gabriel Cheung, Senior Director, BioMedicine Design, Medicinal Sciences, Worldwide Research and Development, Pfizer, Inc. Dr. Gabriel WC Cheung joined Pfizer in 2015. He is a Senior Director at BioMedicine Design. He oversees the endogenous antibody discovery, high throughput screening, and technologies group supporting Biotherapeutic needs across all Pfizer Research Units. Through his interests and passion in technology development and humoral immunity, Dr. Cheung is committed to transform how Pharma industry rapidly delivers high quality and functionally relevant biotherapeutics through the use of deep repertoire discovery. Prior to joining Pfizer, Dr. Cheung spent 14 years at Cell Signaling Technology leading the company to global leadership in rabbit monoclonal antibody development. He and his research team developed a number of industry leading and state-of-the-art antibody discovery technologies and platforms to address real world commercial needs. During his tenure at CST, he and his research team also made noticeable scientific contributions and collaborations in the field of immunology and vaccine leading to a number of patents and high profile publications in Nature Biotechnology, Nature Immunology, and Immunity. Dr. Cheung received his PhD in Biochemistry, molecular biology, and biophysics from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Associate 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.

Assoc Director, BioTherapeutics Analytical Development
Mark received his training from:  A.B. Biophysics at U.C. Berkeley, Ph.D. Biochemistry at U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and conducting Post-doctoral work at ETH-Zürich and Biozentrum of U. Basel.  His work experience has spanned from being an Organic Chemist at Microgenics developing chemical conjugation of enzymes; Chemistry Professor at Seton Hall University getting grants on prokaryotic membrane protein biochemistry; Research Investigator at Abbott Labs on Mammalian Membrane Protein Drug Discovery; and now currently as Associate Director at Janssen Research and Development leading the Process Analytical Support Team responsible for clinical development of Biotherapeutics.

Associate Director, BioTherapeutics Analytical Development
Mark received his training from:  A.B. Biophysics at U.C. Berkeley, Ph.D. Biochemistry at U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and conducting Post-doctoral work at ETH-Zürich and Biozentrum of U. Basel.  His work experience has spanned from being an Organic Chemist at Microgenics developing chemical conjugation of enzymes; Chemistry Professor at Seton Hall University getting grants on prokaryotic membrane protein biochemistry; Research Investigator at Abbott Labs on Mammalian Membrane Protein Drug Discovery; and now currently as Associate Director at Janssen Research and Development leading the Process Analytical Support Team responsible for clinical development of Biotherapeutics.

President
Dr. Danny K. Chou is a biopharmaceutical industry veteran with expertise in biopharmaceutical characterization, formulation development, and emerging technologies for protein aggregate/subvisible particle analysis. Currently, Dr. Chou is the Founder and President of Compassion BioSolution, a biopharmaceutical consultancy and Contract Development Service provider that serves clients throughout the world. Dr. Chou has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, both as a pharmacist and pharmaceutical scientist. Over the past 15 years he has led the development of formulations for numerous therapeutic modalities ranging from peptides, growth factors, mAbs, ADCs, and bispecific antibodies. Prior to starting Compassion BioSolution, Dr. Chou was a Senior Scientist and Group Leader at Gilead Sciences, where he successfully converted IV formulations of monoclonal antibodies to high concentration formulations that are more stable and can be easily administered by subcutaneous injection. Prior to this, Danny was employed by Genzyme and Amgen, where he played critical roles in drug product process development, manufacturing technical support, and pharmaceutical development. Since founding Compassion BioSolution, Danny has developed stable pharmaceutical dosage form for clients ranging from small start-up biopharmaceutical companies to Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies. Danny received his PhD from the University of Colorado Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology under a NIH Fellowship and his PharmD and MBA from the University of Florida.

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

Scientist, Biologics Optimization
Ana Correia obtained her PhD in Biochemistry from ITQB/UNL in 2010. After two years of post-doc training in cryo-EM and RNA-Protein interactions at CNB-CSIC in Madrid, Spain, she joined Professor Andre Hoelz lab at Caltech in Pasadena, California, where she continued her post-doc training in structural biology. In 2018, Ana joined Amgen, where she is working on the purification and development of novel purification protocols that improve and facilitate the purification of complex molecules such as bispecifics.

Senior Staff Scientist, Oncology and Angiogenesis
Dr. Crawford is a Senior Staff Scientist in the department of Oncology and Angiogenesis at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc where she has worked since 2011. She completed her BSc in Immunology from Glasgow University before being admitted to the Wellcome Trust Ph.D. program at Edinburgh University where she focused on T cell memory. Her post-doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania examined T cell exhaustion during chronic viral infection and the role of checkpoint inhibition in alleviating T cell exhaustion. This peaked her interest in immunotherapies and she made the transition into industry at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals where she currently leads a group developing pre-clinical models to examine bispecific antibodies targeting solid tumors. She led the in vivo pre-clinical research efforts on REGN4018 (MUC16xCD3) to advance the antibody through to IND submission.

Senior Director, Biomedicine Design
Orla is senior director of Pfizer’s BioMedicine Design antibody discovery and optimization group based in Dublin. Her team use advanced protein engineering technology platforms to discover, evolve and optimize therapeutic antibodies, supporting programs across Pfizer’s diverse therapeutic research units based in the US including oncology, immunology, cardiovascular & rare diseases. Orla obtained her PhD in Biochemistry from Trinity College Dublin and followed this with postdoctoral research in cancer cell biology at the institute for molecular oncology in Milan. Orla has co-authored numerous publications and patents in the field of therapeutic antibody engineering.

Head, Thorium R&D, TCR
Dr Alan Cuthbertson has many years of industrial experience in radiopharmaceutical R&D. Initially at GE Healthcare, he focused on the development of new PET and SPECT tracers as molecular diagnostics for early disease detection. He then joined Algeta ASA as SVP of R&D with the responsibility for developing a new platform of targeted alpha particle therapies based on the radionuclide Th-227. Following acquisition by Bayer he has continued in this role advancing several targeted thorium conjugate programs from research into clinical phase I evaluation. Alan has a PhD in biological chemistry from The University of Edinburgh.

Prof, Structural Bioinformatics and Head, Dept of Statistics
Charlotte Deane is Professor of Structural Bioinformatics and Head of the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford. Charlotte also leads the Oxford Protein Informatics group, a research group of over 20 people who work on diverse problems across the areas of protein structure function and evolution. She collaborates closely with experimentalists in both academia and industry in the design of experiments to leverage the power of computation for biological insight. Charlotte has a particular interest in the design, classification and prediction of antibodies. Her group has developed the leading online catalogue of antibody structures (SAbDab) and a series of prediction and design tools (SAbPred).

Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Kansas Vaccine Institute
Dr. Brandon DeKosky is an Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas Departments of Chemical Engineering and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, where his laboratory leverages recent advances in next-generation DNA sequencing technologies to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of immune function and accelerate the development of new vaccines and therapeutics. During his graduate research, Dr. DeKosky invented the very first technology for sequencing the antibody proteins encoded by B cells at the single-cell level, at a massive scale (for example, over 5 million single B cells in a one-day experiment), which reduced cost and enhanced throughput for antibody sequencing by multiple orders of magnitude compared to traditional antibody discovery platforms. Dr. DeKosky also pioneered the associated bioinformatic methods for rapid statistical analysis of the very large datasets generated by this approach. Ongoing efforts in the DeKosky lab, supported by an NIH Director’s Early Independence Award and a United States Department of Defense Career Development Award, and focus on expanding our ability to determine the mechanisms of protection for human vaccines and to develop novel and improved targeted human therapeutics.

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

Senior Scientist, Analytical Characterization
Julia is a senior scientist in the lentiviral vector analytical characterization group at bluebird bio. She’s been at bluebird since 2017, and was previously a research engineer and applications scientist at Wyatt Technology, from 2008 to 2017, specializing in biophysical characterization. She received her M.S. in biomedical engineering from the University of California, Davis, with a research focus on bone biology, and her B.S. from Cornell University.

Postdoctoral Scientist, Department of Virology, Parasitology, Immunology, Physiology
Dr. Bert Devriendt is a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory of Immunology, the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ghent University. In 2010 he obtained his PhD in Veterinary Sciences on the interaction between virulence factors of enterotoxigenic E. coli with intestinal epithelial cells and dendritic cells in a piglet model. During his postdoctoral research he focuses on host-pathogen interactions and how the gained insights might be used to accelerate the development of oral vaccines to prevent enteric diseases. In that context, a strategy was developed to boost uptake of oral vaccine antigens by the gut epithelium via antibody-mediated selective targeting to epithelial aminopeptidase N. Dr. Devriendt also investigates the evasion of immune cell functions by alphaherpesviruses in large animal models.

Research Group Leader, Manchester Institute of Biotechnology
Neil Dixon received a 1st class degree in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Leeds (UK) in 2000 and then undertook in his PhD in Bioorganic Chemistry also at Leeds (2004). He pursued post-doctoral research in Chemical Biology at the University of Manchester (UK) on the topic re-engineering the molecular recognition properties of regulatory RNAs termed riboswitches, using rational design, high-throughput screening, directed evolution, along with structural and biophysical characterization (2006-2010).

Head, Discipline of Immunology
A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Derek completed his PhD at King's College London and postdoctoral research in the University of Washington, Seattle and University College Dublin before holding lecturing positions at Maynooth University and subsequently Trinity College Dublin. Derek’s research is focused on the biology of innate T cells (natural killer T cells, gamma delta T cells and mucosal-associated T cells) in health and their therapeutic potential for infectious and autoimmune disease and cancer.

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 Ph.D. 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.

Deputy Director/Head, Formulation, Analytical and Drug Product Development
Sachin Dubey is presently working with Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, Switzerland, where he is heading formulation, analytical and drug product development unit. His current responsibilities include designing and executing product development and characterization strategies for both early and late-stage products for Glenmark Biologics. Sachin earned his PhD from the University of Geneva, Switzerland and has previously worked with Novozymes Biopharma, Denmark. He has ~ 12 years of experience in biopharmaceutical formulation and analysis. Eleven formulations/presentations developed under his leadership are in different clinical trials. He has managed manufacturing of ~ 80 clinical batches of drug product/diluent/placebo spread across five different CMO’s in USA/Europe. He is core member of various important teams within Glenmark, including CMC-regulatory strategies, process sciences leadership team etc. His principal research interests are protein analysis, formulation, stabilization, combinational product development, analytical characterization, DOE and QbD. He also has a keen interest in practicing lean principles. He has received multiple research awards and has several publications and presentations to his credit.

Platform Leader, Medical Microbiology
Pascal Egloff obtained his PhD at the Institute of Biochemistry at the University of Zurich (UZH) in the group of Prof. A. Plückthun. His doctoral work focused on protein engineering and crystallographic structure determination of stabilized G protein-coupled receptor variants. In the group of Prof. G. Wagner at Harvard Medical School he studied G protein/GPCR interactions. Pascal Egloff co-invented the NestLink principle in the group of Prof. M. Seeger at the Institute of Medical Microbiology (UZH). Acting as the platform leader, he supervises NestLink applications in various research projects and he is responsible for further technology developments.

Team Leader, Interdisciplinary Institute for NeuroScience (IINS), CNRS
I studied medicine (BSc) and biochemistry (MSc) and obtained my PhD in biochemistry from Ghent University (Belgium), on the structural biology of Colony-Stimulating Factor 1 (CSF-1) cytokine signalling. In 2012, I joined the Division of Structural Biology (STRUBI) at the University of Oxford (United Kingdom) as an EMBO- and Marie Curie Actions-funded postdoctoral fellow. There, I transitioned into molecular neuroscience and investigated the structural biology of cell-surface protein complexes involved in neurotransmission. In 2018, I joined the Interdisciplinary Institute for NeuroScience (IINS) in Bordeaux, France as a Principal Investigator. Our team uses protein chemistry, protein engineering, and biophysical and structural biology methods to study synaptic protein complexes involved in neurodevelopmental disorders and neuronal disease.

Scientist, Bispecific Antibodies
Ursula Ellinghaus studied Biology at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany with a focus on Molecular Biology and Immunology. After completing her PhD, at the department of Hematology and Oncology at the Charité University Medicine Berlin, focusing on a constitutive NF-B activation in lymphoid malignancies like Hodgkin lymphomas, her passion for Immunology led her to the department of Rheumatology at Imperial College London, UK, where she worked as a postdoctoral research fellow on the characterization of novel biomarkers in autoimmune malignancies with a focus on Systemic lupus erythematosus. In 2018, she joined the Bispecific Antibodies unit at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals GmbH, Mainz, Germany contributing to the development of individualized therapies for cancer and infectious diseases focusing on the development of mRNA-encoded antibodies.

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

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.

Associate Director, Discovery Alliances & Technologies
As a Project Team Leader for the partnered antibody discovery at MorphoSys, Dr. Erkel is responsible for the identification, characterization, and optimization of therapeutic antibodies using MorphoSys’ proprietary phage display libraries and associated technologies. Prior to this, he was leading a team dedicated to engineer and fine-tune lead antibody candidates in more than 20 therapeutic programs. Dr. Erkel has a strong background in synthetic biology. He started his career as Project Team Leader at Sloning BioTechnology, where he was responsible for de novo syntheses of numerous customized DNA libraries for antibodies and other scaffolds. He received his PhD in Microbiology from the Philipps-University Marburg.

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.

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

Director, Immunology, Massachusetts General Hospital; Assoc Prof, Medicine
Denise Faustman, MD, PhD, is Director of the Immunobiology Laboratories at the Massachusetts General Hospital and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she runs a large group focusing on both the basic science and advanced clinical translation targeting the TNF superfamily of receptors. She has worked for 20 years on TNF and autoimmunity with a focus on therapeutically targeting the TNFR2 receptor with antibody agonism. In autoimmune diseases, her work as early as 2008 showed that cytotoxic T cells of diverse forms of human autoimmunity could be selectively killed with low dose TNF or TNFR2 agonism and the reciprocal Tregs expanded. She currently leads some of the most advanced clinical trials in type 1 diabetes, boosting TNF and agonizing the TNFR2 receptor with the 100 year old generic vaccine, BCG, a strong inducer of TNF, TNFR2 engagement and Treg expansion in vivo. Her recent success also includes antagonism TNFR2 as a way to eliminate the potent Tregs of cancer and infectious diseases. These achievements have earned her awards including the National Institutes of Health and National Library of Medicine “Changing the Face of Medicine” Award as one of 300 American physicians (one of 35 in research) honored for seminal scientific achievements in the United States, the Oprah Achievement Award for “Top Health Breakthrough by a Female Scientist,” and the Women in Science Award from the American Medical Women’s Association and Wyeth Pharmaceutical Company.  Dr. Faustman’s research has been published and highlighted in publications including Science, Nature, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The London Financial Times and Scientific American. She earned her MD and PhD from Washington University School of Medicine, in St. Louis, Missouri, and completed her internship, residency, and fellowships in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Research Scientist, Animal Cell Technology Unit, Cell Line Development and Molecular Biotechnology Laboratory
Ana Filipa Rodrigues developed PhD studies (2009-2014) on functional genomics and gene therapy at New University of Lisbon (ITQB-NOVA, Portugal) and University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN, USA). After graduation she started a post-doctoral project on Hepatitis C virus as an invited scientist at TWINCORE/Hannover Medical School (Hannover, Germany) and more recently a post-graduate program in Information Management and Business Intelligence in Healthcare (2018-2019, NOVA-IMS, Portugal). Currently, she is a research scientist at iBET (Portugal) where she focuses on the use of genetic engineering, synthetic biology and big data analytics to advance the manufacturing of recombinant viruses with therapeutic application, particularly vaccines and gene therapy.

CEO
Jonny Finlay is the CEO of UltraHuman, an antibody drug discovery biotech in the UK that is developing a series of therapeutics for inflammation and oncology. Prior to co-founding UltraHuman, Jonny was Senior Director in Biologics Discovery at Pfizer and Wyeth, and carried out postdoctoral research in recombinant protein engineering at several institutes, including the Centre for Biologics Evaluation and Research, FDA.

Head, R&D
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.

CSO
Mick Foley is the founding scientist of AdAlta and a key inventor of AdAlta’s lead i-body candidate AD-214. Upon completion of his PhD he was awarded a Wellcome Training Fellowship and worked at the Walter and Elisa Hall Institute. In 1995 Mick was awarded an ARC QEII Fellowship where he established the phage display of antibodies and peptide technology as a means of answering fundamental questions of immunity to infectious diseases. Mick is an internationally recognized leader in phage display, the technology used to screen the i-body library to identify new drug candidates. Having published over 70 scientific publications Mick has received funding from ARC, NHMRC and NIH (US).

CEO
Jens Frauenfeld (PhD), CEO and Founder of Salipro Biotech AB. After having studied biochemistry in Germany and in France, Jens pursued his research at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm/Sweden, where he also founded the company. He is a member of the Prins Daniel Fellowship programme from the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

CSO
Björn Frendéus is the CSO of BioInvent, a Swedish biotech company developing therapeutic antibodies for treatment of cancer. Björn got his PhD studying innate immune responses to microbial infection. Over the past decades he has developed a strong interest in understanding the complex biology of antibodies in relation to their targets, and applying his knowledge to develop better antibody-based medicines. Björn’s team conceived and developed the F.I.R.S.T™ platform from which BioInvent’s lead clinical program FcgRIIB (BI-1206) has emerged, and around which BioInvent recently partnered with Pfizer to develop immunomodulatory antibodies against tumor-associated myeloid cells to boost activity and help overcome resistance to currently available checkpoint inhibitors. Several of BioInvent´s programs, including FcgRIIB and Treg, are being co-developed with the Cancer Sciences Division in Southampton, UK, where Björn is a visiting professor. Björn chairs the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF)’s expert review committee on Infection Biology.

Senior Scientist, Department of Immunology
Fridtjof Lund-Johansen MD performed his PhD work at the University of Bergen, Norway. After 4 years as a post-doc at Becton Dickinson and DNAX in California USA he held positions as resident physician at Oslo University Hospital, Norway and medical advisor for Aventis Pharma. Since 2004, he has led the protein array laboratory and flow cytometry core facility at Oslo University Hospital. His research focus is at the interface of antibody- and mass-spectrometry-based protein detection with emphasis on protein- and antibody-array technology.

VP, R&D
George serves as the Vice President of R&D for Shattuck, and is one of the scientific co-inventors of their ARC platform. Previously, George served as the Senior Director of R&D at Heat Biologics, Inc., where he directed the Discovery and Clinical based research efforts for their phase I/II trials, and co-invented a ‘next-generation’ vaccine platform that combines a cell based immunotherapy vaccine and a T cell costimulatory fusion protein in a single treatment. He has authored IND submissions, NIH and Private Foundation Grants, and numerous publications in leading journals, including Cell, Molecular Cell, Genes and Development, and Blood. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, NY and conducted his post-doctoral fellowship training with the NIH branch; National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

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.

Founder
Jacob George, MD is the Founder of Cognyxx Pharmaceuticals; previously, a co-founder and CSO of VBL Therapeutics and a founder and director in ChemomAb; authored over peer reviewed publications in fields of inflammation and immune system modulation, as well as the role of biomarkers in disease progression; Full Professor of Internal Medicine and Cardiology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Investigator III, NIBR Biologics Center, Discovery Technologies
Nathalie George joined Novartis in 2006 as a Postdoc and is heading for 10 years a research laboratory within the NIBR Biologics Center. Her team is responsible to generate therapeutic antibodies and antibody-fragments using diverse phage display libraries and various screening techniques, including next generation sequencing. She and her team successfully identified and characterized high affinity antibodies against a broad variety of protein targets for diverse indications. Nathalie also used the phage display technique during her PhD in the group of Prof. Kai Johnsson at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in the development of a covalent protein labeling method.

Expert Scientist, Large Molecule Research
Expert Scientist with more than 25 years experience in Molecular Modeling and Drug Design for small and large molecules. In charge of protein engineering, antibody humanization, and antigen/format design. ~35 publications and over 60 patent applications.  (Ph. D. in Chemistry at the University of Namur, Belgium, now working on Biologics for the treatment of cancer, brain diseases, inflammation and ophthalmology disorders).

Director, Analytical Development, Biologicals,
Annick joined UCB (Belgium) in 2007. Having more than 23 years of experience on Biotech products working in analytical and process development of recombinant proteins, she is now Head of Analytical Development Sciences for Biologicals at UCB. She is a chemical engineer by education and holds a Ph.D. in mass spectrometry from the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg (France).

Distinguished Research Fellow
Tariq Ghayur received his Ph.D (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.

Head, Immunobiology, Large Molecule Research, pRED
Department Head and Senior Principal Scientist in Large Molecule Research at pRED, Roche & Independent Investigator at Helmholtz Zentrum München; 11 Years of experience in discovering mechanisms related to immune diseases; 9 Years of experience in pharmaceutical industry (Genentech Inc., Roche, Grünenthal GmBH); Years of experience in academic institutes (Helmholtz & Max-Planck Institutes); Studies in Germany as well as the US (Cologne, Munich, Boston). Achievements include: Established lean approaches concept for antibody discovery; Leading first author on manuscripts published in Science & Nature Immunology; Leading Senior author on four high impact manuscripts (e.g. JEM, Nature Communications & Cell Reports); Selected for European Research Council (ERC) interviews; Independent acquisition and administration of in total ∼1.8 Million Euro of funding.

Assistant Professor with Habilitation and Group Leader, Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Therapeutics
Pedro Gois studied chemistry at the New University of Lisbon from where he also received in 2005 his PhD in organic chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Carlos Afonso. From May 2005 to May 2008 he worked as a postdoc at the University of Sussex with Prof. F. Geoffrey N. Cloke, at the University College of London with Prof. Stephen Caddick and at the Instituto Superior Técnico with Prof. Carlos Afonso. In May 2008, he joined the Pharmacy Faculty of the Lisbon University as a research fellow of the medicinal chemistry group and in July 2013, Gois was appointed Principal Investigator at the same institution and head of the Bioorganic group. In 2017 he received his habilitation in Pharmacy and was appointed assistant professor of the Pharmacy Faculty.

Assoc Dir, Preclinical Pharmacology & Cancer Immunology
Christoph Goletz works for the Berlin-located biotech company GLYCOTOPE. As associate director of the cancer immunology group his focus is on the preclinical pharmacology of GLYCOTPE´s drug development program. He is additionally involved in immunomonitoring of pipeline products in clinical stage. During his academic research, Christoph Goletz studied biology at the University of Konstanz, broadened his knowledge on immunology at the University of Utrecht and received his PhD at the “Freie Universität Berlin”.

Tenured Associate Professor, Faculdade de Farmácia Universidade Lisboa; Group Leader/Principal Investigator
João Gonçalves is Group Leader and member of the board of iMed – Research Institute of Medicines at Faculty of Pharmacy at University of Lisbon, and Tenured Associate Professor, with Habilitation at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lisbon. His work on biopharmaceutical development aim at rational antibody engineering to validate theoretical concepts in autoimmune, inflammatory, cancer and infectious diseases. Development of better characterization assays and monitoring of antibody therapy in patients, including immunogenicity and pharmacokinetics is also his research driver. Author of more than hundred publications in peer-reviewed journals, 5 book chapters and 5 filed patents in Europe, Asia and US. He is a co-founder of TechnoAntibodies (a subsidiary of TechnoPhage SA).

CSO
No bio available

Immune Regulation and Cancer
I obtained my master’s degree in Life Sciences and Technologies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne in 2010. I then did my PhD in the laboratories of Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Rajewsky and Prof. Dr. Klaus Rajewsky at the MDC Berlin (including a short stay at the Harvard Medical School), in which I combined bioinformatic approaches with basic immunology research. Since 2017, I work as a postdoc in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Klaus Rajewsky.

Senior Research Scientist, R&D
No bio available

Professor, Protein Science
Professor Torbjörn Gräslund holds a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from KTH since 2001. After two years of post-doc training with professor Carlos Barbas at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, he has been principal investigator at the department of protein science at KTH since 2003. His main research focus concerns design and engineering of proteins 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.

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

Associate Director, Lab Head for the CRUK/Medimmune Alliance
Maria is responsible for the innovative Cancer Research UK (CRUK) – MedImmune Alliance Laboratory. She heads up and will lead a multidisciplinary team of 14 scientists from both CRUK and MedImmune at this CRUK-funded facility. The laboratory utilises MedImmune's and AstraZeneca’s core Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering technologies and capabilities to discover new medicines for the potential treatment of cancer. This innovative Alliance has access to the CRUK oncology Principal Investigator (PI) network, which represents over 4000 laboratories throughout the UK. Maria leads the Alliance team to work with selected PIs on five new projects each year for the five-year term of the Alliance. Maria is also an industry recognised expert and leader in the field of ribosome display and protein engineering. She joined the company (Cambridge Antibody Technology/MedImmune Ltd.) in 2000 and established herself as an externally recognised scientific expert in ribosome display. As a project leader, her biggest success to date has been leading the R&D phase of MEDI1814 – an antibody therapeutic for the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease which is now in Phase I clinical trials.

Team Leader (Structural Biology), Drug Discovery Program
Chris Gray is a Team Leader in the Drug Discovery Program at the CRUK Beatson Institute in Glasgow, UK. Chris gained his PhD in Microbial Biochemistry from University of Glasgow in 2001.  He then trained as a protein crystallographer at the Institute of Cancer Research, London. He currently oversees the structural and biophysical science that supports the Beatson Institute’s drug discovery activities, and this includes a substantial protein production effort. In this context, Dr. Gray’s team actively develops process optimizations that enhance the rates of expression, recovery and throughput towards the efficient generation of high-quality recombinant proteins.

Head, Characterisation, Formulation & Bioinformatics
Steffen Hartmann studied Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Konstanz, Germany, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. Steffen performed his Ph.D. work at the Friedrich-Miescher Institute for BioMedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, and received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Basel, Switzerland. After working for more than ten years as Protein Analytics Labhead and Group Leader at Novartis Research, he was responsible to set up a group in the Development organization focused on the developability assessment of biologics. His unit assessed developability characteristics of biologics drug candidates including molecular properties, downstream process and pre-formulation aspects, immunogenicity risk as well as in vivo fitness, and was responsible for the generation of state-of-the-art manufacturing cell lines and strains. In his current role as Head Characterization, Formulation & Bioinformatics in the Novartis Biologics Research organization, Steffen is leading a global unit responsible for the characterization of biologics molecules from early discovery until hand-over of the final lead molecule to Development.

Assoc Principal Scientist, Biologics Analytical R&D
Mark joined Merck Biologics Bioprocess development in 2012 as part of the extended characterization group. In 2014, Mark Joined Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he focused his efforts on performing pre-validation studies to support Phase III validation of late stage products. Re-joining Merck in 2016, Mark joined the analytical method development group and he is currently the analytical program lead of multiple pipeline projects. Mark’s technical contributions to the Merck biologics pipeline, include analytical method development supporting upstream, downstream, release and stability testing and also sits on SEC and CE-SDS platform teams and contributions to many of the chromatographic separation techniques used for release and stability. Mark received B.S. in Biochemistry from Montclair State University in 2009 and his M.S in Chemistry from The Ohio State University in 2011.  

CEO and Director
Robert's research interests are in gene and immunotherapy. In addition to clinical training at the Royal Marsden Hospital and Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge, he was an MRC Research Fellow with Dr. Greg Winter and Dr. Cesar Milstein at the MRC laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. His work there was important for the development of commercially successful antibodies. His PhD was in antibody engineering, and as a Cancer Research UK Senior Clinical Fellow, he developed translational research interests in antibody-based gene therapy. He was first appointed as a consultant in Medical Oncology at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge in 1995, and then became Professor of Oncology at the University of Bristol in 1996. In 1998, he moved to the Christie Hospital to become Professor and Director of Medical Oncology. Clinically, Professor Hawkins focuses on treating renal cancer and on developing immunotherapy, particularly cellular immunotherapy. He heads a clinical research group undertaking trials and also a range of early phase clinical trials of biological agents including vaccines, antibody-based molecules and cell therapies. He has successfully led the clinical development of biological agents from Phase I to Phase III studies. He has received grant funding from Cancer Research UK, the Kay Kendall Leukaemia Fund and the European Union (he is Coordinator of the ATTACK project and was co-ordinator of the ATTRACT integrated training network) and has published widely in scientific and clinical journals as well as an inventor/co-inventor on several antibody related patents. Professor Hawkins led the development of the GMP authorised facility which has led to a commercial venture - Cellular Therapeutics Ltd (CTL).

Prof, Analytical Chemistry
Maha Hegazy is a Professor in the Analytical Chemistry Department at Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University. She has been a faculty member since 1995. Maha has completed her Master degree and Ph.D. at Cairo University. Her research interests lie in the area of Analytical, Bioanalytical and manipulation of data using chemometrics and experimental design. She has published about 105 research papers in reputed journals. She has achieved 752 citations and an h index of 14 (goo.gl/u7Qf1V) and was ranked within the top ten researchers of Cairo University in the year 2015 and 2016. She has been serving as a director of the computer center at Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University since 2017. She has been working as team leader in the field of Accreditation of testing laboratories (ISO/IEC 17025) and PT providers (ISO/IEC 17043) since 2010 at the Egyptian Accreditation Council (EGAC).

VP 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 Ph.D. from the Department of Chemistry in 1997.

Assistant Professor, Oncology
Ping-Chih is adjunct scientist of Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and tenure-track assistant professor in Department of Oncology at University of Lausanne since Sep. 2015. Prior to his arrival to Lausanne, he was trained in Department of Immunobiology at Yale University with Susan Kaech as a postdoctoral fellow (2012-2015) and in Department of Pharmacology at University of Minnesota as a PhD student (2008-2012).

CSO
René Hoet joint Imcheck Therapeutics Oct. 2018 as Chief Scientific Officer. Before joining ImCheck, René spent 8 years at Bayer AG as Vice President Biologics Research, where his team was responsible for antibody lead discovery and optimization. Between 2008-2010, he was a member of the management team at Genmab and as Senior Director Research led the team Product Related Research, Scientific Communication & Translational Research. Together with his team, he ran the antibody discovery programs and actively supported Genmab’s clinical antibody programs. René started his industrial career at Target Quest (acquired by Dyax in 1999) where his last position was Vice President Research and Operational Manager of Dyax SA. He was the driving force for internal antibody lead discovery as well as external collaborations and supported the out-licensing of Dyax’ antibody phage libraries. From these libraries, 3 antibodies have been approved by the FDA & EMA and over 10 antibodies from varies companies are currently in clinical trials. René Hoet is also Professor Biopharmaceutics at the University of Maastricht, Netherlands, guiding researchers to use antibodies to bridge the gap between academic research and pharmaceutical applications.

Senior Scientist, Antibody Engineering
Isidro Hötzel received his Ph.D. from Washington State University and joined Genentech in 2005. He is currently a Senior Scientist in the Department of Antibody Engineering. His research at Genentech has focused on novel technologies for therapeutic antibody discovery and optimization, including display and deep sequencing technologies.

Independent Consultant
Catherine has spent over 22 years acquiring significant depth of experience in antibody drug discovery and platform applications (Cambridge Antibody Technology and Heptares Therapeutics). In 2015, Catherine reverted to independent scientific and strategic consultancy to biotech and biopharma where her scientific expertise and focus includes the therapeutic targeting of challenging membrane targets, such as GPCRs and ion channels. Catherine graduated with BSc Hons in Genetics and Cell Biology from University of Manchester, UK, and a PhD in Biochemistry and Applied Molecular Biology from UMIST, UK.

Ceo and Head, Research
Tomoyuki Igawa, Ph.D., is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Chugai Pharmabody Research in Singapore, and is responsible for Chugai group’s antibody/biologics drug discovery research covering all disease area and technology development. He has started working at Chugai Pharmaceutical as Research scientist, and had experiences as project leader for emicizumab and satralizumab. He graduated and awarded PhD from University of Tokyo for studies in Engineering, Chemistry and Biotechnology. After a couple of year as Research Scientist working on early CMC development and pharmacokinetics of monoclonal antibodies, he focused on antibody engineering which lead to the discovery of bispecific antibody HEMLIBRA® (emicizumab) for hemophilia A, recycling antibody and sweeping antibody technology for various applications. Dr. Igawa likes to work in the area of interface between antibody technology and disease mechanism especially for unmet needs in the world.

Principal Scientist & Director, Contract Research
Sarah Ives is an immune engineer. In 2015 she joined Distributed Bio as employee #6 to lead the Centivax universal vaccines program as a Principal Scientist, where she leads the vivarium operations in Guatemala and leads the vaccine assays in California. In addition to the influenza vaccine studies, she directs all contract research programs for therapeutic antibody discovery with phage display libraries at Distributed Bio. She received a BSc degree in Molecular Biology from University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she contributed to published research in developmental biology in the Bashirullah lab in the School of Pharmacy. She then received a PSM degree from the University of San Francisco Biotechnology Masters Program, where she contributed to published research in virology while interning in the Delwart lab at the UCSF Blood Systems Research Institute. After her masters she became an Associate Scientist and Project Manager at LakePharma, where she managed client projects, performed sales outreach, developed custom bioanalytics immuno-assays, and organized the Bay Area Antibody Engineering Symposium in her role of Master of Ceremonies. In her spare time, she performed research community organization, acting as Associate Producer for the NPR radio show “Biotech Nation” hosted by Dr. Moira Gunn at BIO International Convention, in 2015 and 2016.

President and CSO
Philippe Jais, MD, PhD, is an Hepato-Gastroenterologist (Paris VII) and human Molecular Geneticist (INSERM, Gustave Roussy Institute, Johns Hopkins). He held various research management positions in the biotechnology industry (Genset, ProteaBio) and Pharma (Solvay, Abbott, Roche). He is the founder of Eukarÿs and the inventor the various generations of the C3P3 system, together with others’ technologies used for synthetic gene therapy with the C3P3 system.

CEO
Dr. Bahija Jallal is Chief Executive Officer and Director of the Board of Immunocore, the leading T-Cell Receptor (TCR) biotechnology company. Prior to joining Immunocore in January 2019, she was President of MedImmune, AstraZeneca’s global biologics research and development unit. She was also Executive Vice President of AstraZeneca and a member of its senior executive team. Dr. Jallal serves on the Board of Anthem, Inc. and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Johns Hopkins University and the Board of Directors of the University of Maryland Health Sciences Research Park Corporation. She also served as Chairman of the Board of Viela Bio in 2018. Dr. Jallal has authored over 70 peer-reviewed publications and has more than 15 patents. She is a Council Member of the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and a member of the American Association of Science. She is also the immediate past President of the Association of Women in Science. Dr. Jallal was named the 2017 Woman of the Year by the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association. Prior to joining MedImmune, Dr. Jallal worked with Chiron Corporation where she served as vice president, drug assessment and development, and successfully established the company’s translational medicine group. Prior to Chiron Corporation, she worked at Sugen, Inc. Dr. Jallal received a master’s degree in biology from the Universite de Paris VII in France, and her doctorate in physiology from the University of Pierre & Marie Curie in Paris. She conducted her postdoctoral research at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany.

Professor, Bioprocess Engineering, Chemical and Biological Engineering
David James is Professor of Bioprocess Engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Director of the Advanced Biomanufacturing Centre at the University of Sheffield. He previously held academic positions at the Australian Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, University of Queensland and the University of Kent. Current research and development in collaboration with bioindustry focuses on engineering cellular production of biologics using functional genomics, computational modelling, and synthetic biology.

Prof, BioTherapeutics
Wim Jiskoot is professor at the Division of BioTherapeutics at Leiden University (since 2006), the Netherlands, and scientific advisor at Coriolis Pharma, Martinsried, Germany (since 2013). His main research areas are vaccine delivery, protein formulation, and structural aspects of unwanted immunogenicity of therapeutic proteins. Previous positions: staff member at the Department of Pharmaceutics at Utrecht University, the Netherlands (1998-2006); head of the Department of Bacterial Vaccine Development at the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Bilthoven, the Netherlands (1994-1998); postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utah, USA (1991-1993). He obtained his PhD degree (1991; pharmaceutical aspects of monoclonal antibodies) and his pharmacy degree (1987) at Utrecht University. He (co)edited 3 books about protein characterization and (co)authored more than 300 scientific papers and book chapters.

Senior Scientist, Translational Oncology
Dr. Junttila joined Genentech in 2006. His early work focused on characterizing the impact and mechanism of action of Herceptin (trastuzumab) and Kadcyla (ado-trastuzumab emtansine; T-DM1), in addition to PI3K inhibitors in the treatment of breast cancer. Notably, this work unveiled a previously unknown mechanism of action for Herceptin that was key for understanding the biological underpinning of Perjeta and Herceptin combination synergy (now in clinical use). Currently his research is focused on developing Genentech’s T cell dependent bispecific (TDB) antibodies and he is responsible for multiple CD3-bispecific molecules in various stages, ranging from early stage research to clinical development.

Research Group Leader, Antibody Engineering Lab
Dr. Kalyoncu is a research group leader of Antibody Engineering Lab at Izmir Biomedicine and Genome Center (IBG), Izmir, Turkey. She got her PhD degree in Georgia Institute of Technology, GA, USA where she worked on antibody fragments. During her post-doc at Rennselear Polytechnic Institute, NY, USA, she worked on directed evolution approaches for diagnostic antibodies. She is currently working on engineering approaches for therapeutic/diagnostic antibodies and novel antibody fusions.

Research Scientist, Niall Barron Laboratory, Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering Department
I graduated with a BSc in Analytical Science in 2017 from Dublin City University (DCU). During my degree I worked as an intern at Pfizer, Grange Castle, Ireland, as part of the process validation team. Now based at NIBRT in the Cell Engineering Lab under Professor Niall Barron, I work as a Research Scientist, completing my PhD with a focus on using CRISPR Technology in CHO cell engineering.

CSO, Research & Development
Bruce Keyt, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at IGM Biosciences has over 35 years of research and development experience in biotechnology. During 16 years at Genentech, isolated human Factor VIII, filed BLA for tPA, co-inventor of TNKase, and identified VEGF in eye, plus worked on Avastin and Lucentis. At Millennium Biotherapeutics, he built a preclinical scientific team that brought forward antibody drug conjugates, as anti-PSMA. As VP of Abgenix preclinical development, anti-EGFR, Vectabix was developed and approved. As CTO, Trellis isolated human anti-RSV mAbs which were acquired by Medimmune/AstraZeneca. He received a PhD from Tufts University Medical School and BS in Chemistry from Washington Univ. Inventor on 35 patents and co-authored 55 articles.

Team Leader, Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research
Takanori Kigawa, Dr. Sci., is Team Leader of RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR), Yokohama, Japan. He graduated from Graduate School of Science, the University of Tokyo in 1994 and started his professional career as a research scientist in RIKEN. He has developed a variety of technologies related to cell-free protein synthesis and NMR-based structure biology, most of them are patented and commercialized, for instance, as the “in vitro Protein Expression (iPE) kit” (Merck/Merck Millipore) and “Musaibou-kun” (Taiyo Nippon Sanso). He is now studying the structural dynamics of biomolecules in the cellular environment mainly by using NMR spectroscopy and also developing new NMR technologies for sample preparations, stable-isotope labeling, measurements, and data analyses for this purpose.

Senior Scientist, Translational Research
After having completed my PhD studies on the role of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) in autoimmunity and leukemia (at Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands), I continued B cell research in diverse pharmaceutical projects. After fundamental research on germinal center B cell responses at Janssen Vaccines, I contributed to pre-clinical development of the second-generation BTK-inhibitor acalabrutinib at Acerta Pharma / AstraZeneca. Recently I have joined Genmab to support pre-clinical research on new antibody therapeutics targeting B cell malignancies.

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

Director, Research
Roman Kischel is Director Research at Amgen Research (Munich) GmbH, Germany. Roman leads a group developing novel BiTE antibody constructs for different cancer indications. He has been with Amgen and before the acquisition by Amgen with Micromet for 18 years, working mainly on design and characterization of BiTE antibody constructs. Previously Roman worked at the Institut für Immunologie at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. Roman received his M.D. from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität.

Head, In Vivo Pharmacology Function, Research Biology
PhD in Circadian clocks genetics in 2005 from Rockefeller University, New York, NY; Postdoctoral studies 2005-2012 at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in Wnt and planar cell polarity signaling in tissue generation; Senior Staff Scientist at UCSF 2012-2016 – Designer macrophage cell therapy platform development for cell therapies project leader; 2016 on – In vivo Pharmacology Function at Nektar Therapeutics: TLR agonist NKTR-262 program Biology Lead, IL-15 pathway agonist NKTR-255 program In vivo pharmacology Lead, Head, In vivo Pharmacology, Discovery Biology, Nektar San Francisco.

Head, Oncology Programs, Head, Cancer Immunotherapy Discovery
Christian Klein, Distinguished Scientist is Head of Oncology Programs and Department Head Cancer Immunotherapy Discovery at the Roche Innovation Center Zurich, Roche Pharmaceutical Research & Early Development specialized in engineering of (bispecific) antibodies and the discovery, validation and preclinical development of antibody-based Cancer Immunotherapy (CIT). During his >15 years at Roche he has made major contributions as research project team leader to the development and FDA/EMA approval of GAZYVA/GAZYVARO (obinutuzumab, GA101), and to the preclinical development of 12 clinical stage bispecific antibodies/immunocytokines/antibody fusion proteins. He lead research teams developping Roche’s novel bispecific antibody technologies e.g. the CrossMAb technology and the immunocytokine and T-cell bispecific antibody platforms. 2017 he completed his habilitation in Biochemistry at the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich, and since then is an external lecturer there.

Director, Antibody Technology
Dr. Klaus Koefoed is Director of Antibody Technology at Symphogen. His lab focuses on generation of recombinant antibody repertoires from humans and immunized mice, rats and chickens using Symplex B cell technology. Functional lead candidates are identified by combining NGS analysis with novel high throughput functional screening, expression and purification procedures. Dr Koefoed has worked in the antibody field for more than 20 years within all stages of early antibody generation and characterization. He received his PhD in Immunology from the University of Copenhagen, in a joint program with Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, where he characterized HIV-1 antibodies from human donors with Phage Display Technology. Later he did his Postdoctoral training at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he worked on cancer projects using Yeast Display Technology.

Principal Scientist
Dan Bach Kristensen holds a Ph.D. in biology and B.Sc. degree in chemistry. Dan is specialized in protein chemistry and mass spectrometry, which he initially applied in the field of proteome research in Japan and later in Denmark. For the last 15 years Dan has been working with analytical development in the biopharmaceutical industry, on projects ranging from early discovery through to product registration. Clinical indications include bleeding disorders, neutropenia, autoimmune diseases and oncology. Dan currently works as a Principal Scientist at Symphogen, which is specialized in the development of antibody mixtures for the treatment of cancer.

Head of Section of Biotechnology & Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry and Bioscience
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. The interest to make technological developments based on recombinant antibodies and for manipulating protein stability and activity, were initiated while Peter Kristensen performed his post doc at the MRC-LMB in Cambridge in the group of Nobel Laureate Sir Greg Winter. However, to justify technological development, the technology developed should be able to provide new insight or solve important problems and here we have especially focused attention at finding novel biomarkers which can be used in characterization of important human conditions, such as age-related diseases and rare circulating cells in the blood, just to mention the most relevant example. Most recently the research has involved the use of non-natural amino acids for immobilization and conjugation of recombinant antibodies and proteins of industrial interest and novel biosensors building on recombinant antibody technology.

Group Leader, Biotherapeutics Discovery
No bio available

Professor, Department of Biotechnology
Renate Kunert is Professor for Animal cell Factory Design at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria. She and her working group are well trained in recombinant cell line development starting from the gene of interest and ending with the lab scale fermentation. They evaluate cell biological aspect and technological feasibility of cell lines and analyze the protein of interest on biochemical aspects and functionality. The portfolio of treated proteins includes IgGs, IgMs, IgAs, hormones, cytokines, and various types of humanized IgGs.

Prof 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 Ph.D. 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.

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

Senior Director, Protein Science
I received my BS in Biochemistry from the University of Delaware in 1991. I completed my doctoral thesis in the laboratory of Leonard Freedman and received my Ph.D in Molecular Biology from Cornell University in 1997. I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate and NIGMS Research Fellow in the laboratory of Robert Tjian at the University of California. I have been engaged in the pursuit of human therapeutics for 17 years in various roles at Tularik, Amgen, and Harpoon. I have authored 25 peer-reviewed publications and hold 4 issued patents with others pending. When not thinking about generating molecules, I enjoy the company of my wife and live vicariously through my two children.

Group Leader
No bio available

CRUK Assoc Prof, Honorary Consultant, Haematological Oncology, Centre for Cancer Immunology
Sean Lim is an Associate Professor at University of Southampton and Consultant in Haematological Oncology at University Hospital Southampton NHS Trust.  Her research aims to understand the mechanism of immunostimulatory monoclonal antibodies.  In particular, her lab is trying to develop rational antibody combination therapy in cancer, with a focus on CD27 targeting.  Dr Lim also has a strong interest in translation and is chief/principal investigator of several clinical trials.  She earned her PhD in immunology at Southampton before undertaking a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University with Dr Ron Levy.

Head, Protein Biochemistry, Biologics Research
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 responsibly for Developability Assessments of biologics at Bayer . He is also caretaker of the iBET (Portugal) collaboration. Lars joined Bayer in 2007 during the acquisition of Schering AG were 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, Molecular Microbiology, 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.

Lab Head, Physico-Chemical Characterisation
Urs Lohrig studied biochemistry at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, 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/Novartis in 2012, he initially worked as labhead and project analyst for late stage biosimilar products (drug product). Subsequently, he changed to the Physico-Chemical Characterisation group in 2015. His main field of expertise is in MS driven Biosimilar and NBE characterisation with a strong emphasis on glycan analytics.

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

Specialist Scientist, Biophysics and Injectible Formulation
In 2013 I obtained a PhD from the University of Aarhus, Denmark, where I worked within the field of protein aggregation in the protein biophysics group of Professor Daniel Otzen. Since then I have been working with biophysics and formulation at Novo Nordisk A/S where I have recently been focussing on antibody developability assessment.

Senior Director, R&D, Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering
No bio available

Senior Scientist
Dr. Johannes Lutz joined CureVac AG in 2013 where he is involved in the development of mRNA-based vaccines, immune modulators and antibodies for oncology. He has been trained as a postdoc at the University Medical Centre Göttingen and as a PhD student at the University of Erlangen where his work was focused on B cell development.

Chief Scientific Officer
Bob Lutz serves as Chief Scientific Officer of Iksuda Therapeutics and has extensive experience in the development of antibody-based therapeutics. With more than 25 years’ experience, Bob was previously Vice President of Translational Research and Development at ImmunoGen, where he was responsible for all early-stage ADC development programs and directly the clinical pharmacology, biomarkers, pharmacology and toxicology departments. While at ImmunoGen, Bob was responsible for bringing multiple ADC candidates through development and was ImmunoGen’s research lead for the FDA-approved trastuzumab emtansine.

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

Consultant & Senior Lecturer, Immunology, Cancer Studies
Dr. John Maher is a clinical immunologist and immunopathologist who leads the "CAR Mechanics" research group within King's College London. His research group is focused on the development of adoptive immunotherapy using CAR engineered and gamma delta T-cells. He is also Chief Scientific Oofficer of a spin-out company named Leucid Bio and is a consultant immunologist within King's Health Partners.

Scientist II, Biotherapeutics
Afshin is proficient in antibody production, purification and biophysical characterization. Experienced in drug discovery and well knowledgeable in developing of novel therapeutics for a wide range of diseases. Identification and selection of targets for drug discovery of novel pharmaceuticals and management of group to perform expression (E.coli, Baculovirus) and characterization of proteins for research and development of drug discovery. 

Researcher & Lab Manager, Wallenberg Center for Protein Research
I’m a trained molecular biologist, protein and cell line engineer with a PhD in Molecular Biotechnology from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. I did my doctoral thesis on protein engineering of affinity scaffold proteins (Affibody molecules) for therapeutic targeting of cancer receptors. Since then I have a history from both academia and industry (Alligator Bioscience), working with protein engineering and evaluation of antibody-leads for solid tumor targeting. In 2016 I changed gears, and instead of engineering antibodies, I started engineering cells in the Directed Evolution group of Johan Rockberg at the Royal Institute of Technology. Here I work as a researcher and lab manager with the main focus on the evolution of human cell factories for the production of proteins and viral vectors.

Assoc Senior Lecturer
Associate professor S Mangsbo is also Associate senior lecturer at Uppsala University in biologics and have a track record in drug development within immuno-oncology with a focus on bladder cancer. She has also developed a novel human whole blood assay that is now used in preclinical assessment of cytokine release.

Regulatory Review Scientist, Division of Plasma Protein Therapeutics, Office of Tissue and Advanced Therapies, CBER
Ewa Marszal is a regulatory review scientist in the Division of Plasma Protein Therapeutics, Office of Tissues and Advanced Therapies, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), FDA. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Utah State University, Logan, Utah and M.S. in Chemistry from Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland. Since 2010, Ewa serves as an FDA liaison to the USP. She also participated in the development of WHO protein standards. Her experience includes evaluation of process and assay development and validation, as well as product characterization especially with respect to the presence of particulate matter. Her interests include protein folding and protein aggregation in human disease and in biological products and evaluation of new analytical technologies used in this field.

Deputy Director, Functional Screening and Targeting in Cancer, Institut de Recherche en Cancérologie de Montpellier
Pierre Martineau graduated from Polytechnic School and obtained a PhD at the Pasteur Institute in Paris under the supervision of Prof. Maurice Hofnung. Pierre Martineau was also postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Sir Gregory Winter, in Cambridge. Pierre Martineau is currently Research Director at the Inserm and team leader at the Montpellier Cancer Research Institute. The team has a long-standing expertise in protein engineering, particularly in the antibody field, and capitalizes on this expertise for the development of original and innovative antibody-based molecules for in vitro and in vivo applications. The team has developed several generations of synthetic human antibody libraries and original selection pipelines for the selection of human monoclonal antibodies against any target. Pierre Martineau is also founder of the iMAb company that develops on-demand synthetic human monoclonal antibodies that match customer requirements for a rapid and efficient development into the clinic.

Associate Professor, Departamento de Bioquímica e Bioloxía Molecular, Centro Singular de Investigación en Química Biolóxica e Materiais Moleculares (CIQUS)
I carried out my PhD at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Santiago under the supervision of Professor Javier Benavente. In January 1994 I moved to the laboratory of Dr. Polly Roy (Oxford, UK) working with Bluetongue Virus (BTV). In September 1996 I returned to the University of Santiago where I became Associate Professor in 2003. Since 2012 I received the accreditation for full professorship. Our group has been dedicated to studying the molecular biology of avian reoviruses, as well as the molecular mechanisms that regulate their interactions with the host cell. In the course of those studies we have developed and patented the multi-purpose IC-tagging platform and showed its value for production of adjuvant-free vaccines, immobilized heat-stable enzymes, and difficult proteins. We also keep close collaboration with several groups on the development of bio-active organic molecules.

PhD Candidate, Department of Biosystems Science & Engineering (D-BSSE)
Derek Mason worked as a process engineer in Denver, Colorado for 3 years before moving to Basel, Switzerland in 2015. Currently, he is finishing his PhD in the Laboratory for Systems and Synthetic Immunology at ETH Zurich’s Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering. Intrigued by recent advances in gene editing technologies and machine learning, his research interests aim towards combining cellular and protein engineering in mammalian cells with computational/bioinformatics analysis for the field of antibody discovery and development.

Assoc Clinical Prof, Medical Oncology and Therapeutics
Erminia Massarelli, M.D., Ph.D., M.S., is an associate clinical professor in the department of medical oncology and therapeutics research, specializing in lung and head and neck cancers. Dr. Massarelli received her medical doctorate and Ph.D. in molecular oncology and endocrinology from the University of Naples Federico II in Italy.  She continued her postdoctoral training with dual medical oncology and thoracic/head & neck medical oncology fellowships at MD Anderson Cancer Center.  In 2009, Dr. Massarelli pursued a residency in internal medicine at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, TX, followed by a clinical fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center in medical oncology and a master of science in biomedical sciences from the University of Texas Health Science Center. Board certified in internal medicine and medical oncology, Dr. Massarelli is the recipient of several honors and awards, and has received funding for her research grants and protocols including receipt of the ASCO Conquer Cancer Foundation’s Young Investigator Award.  She has published over 25 peer-reviewed articles, numerous abstracts and three book chapters.  Dr. Massarelli is frequently invited to present her work at national and international conferences and symposia, and holds several memberships in professional societies including the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC).

VP, ImmunoOncology
Matthew McCourt, Vice-President of Immuno-oncology, joined Kymab in 2015. He brings 25 years’ experience in biopharmaceutical research and development. Kymab a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing a deep pipeline of novel antibody based therapies in a broad range of indications. Kymab are initially focusing our discovery and development efforts on four therapeutic areas: autoimmune and inflammatory disease, immuno oncology, hematology and infectious disease. His previous experience includes roles as Director of Oncology Biology at MedImmune (now Astra Zeneca), where his team drove the discovery and preclinical development of MedImmune’s immuno-oncology portfolio of biologics, and Head of Pharmacology at Cambridge Antibody Technology. Prior to this Matthew worked at British Biotech on a number of small molecule and novel biologics projects.

Principal Scientist, Discovery Chemistry
I obtained my Ph.D. in Chemistry from Princeton University and postdoc'd at Princeton and ETH-Zurich. Prior to joining Merck, I was on the scientific staff at the Wistar Institute and at a biotech, Sterling-Winthrop. Most of my career has focused on using structural biology to enable oncology discovery and development programs. One of my key scientific contributions has been the pre-clinical determination of the Keytruda mechanism of action.

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

Head, Characterization, Biologics Development/BioAnalytics
Jean-Michel graduated from Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de Paris (Engineer School) with a master of science in Analytical Chemistry (1991). He received his PhD in Analytical chemistry (1995) from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI) on CounterCurrent Chromatography. Jean-Michel started his career with Rhône-Poulence Santé in 1995 in Vitry-sur-Seine R&D site as analytical scientist, with following positions such as head of analytical support for process development and pilot in Vitry (France), in Bridgewater (NJ, USA), head of analytical support for bioprocess and pilot plant, and since 2013, head of characterization group gathering mass spectrometry and biophysics activities (Sanofi). He is currently coordinating the Mass Spectrometry Expert Network within Biologics Development Department between France, Germany and US.

Postdoc, Analytical Development and Characterisation
Following graduation in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Basel in Switzerland, I pursued a Ph.D. in the Protein Analysis Group at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. In the research group of Prof. Dr. Kasper Rand, I probed the conformational dynamics of integral membrane proteins by hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry. Specifically, I studied the molecular mechanisms that govern substrate transport in the prokaryotic neurotransmitter:sodium symporter LeuT under close-to-physiological solution conditions. I then joined the Analytical Development & Characterisation team at Novartis in Basel as a postdoctoral researcher. I am currently working on establishing a widely applicable strategy for the relative quantification of protein post-translational modifications by an automated and reliable mass spectrometry-based multi-attribute method.

COO
Sebastian is Chief Operating Officer of Numab Innovation, a Swiss biotech company with partnered as well as proprietary pipeline assets in the field of immuno-oncology and inflammatory diseases. Prior to joining Numab, Sebastian headed the downstream processing and analytics unit of ESBATech, focusing on process development and characterization of novel scFv drug candidates in Phase I/II of clinical development, including RTH258 (brolucizumab). Prior to that, Sebastian was a group leader in bioprocess development at Cytos Biotechnology. Sebastian holds a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Hamburg and a PhD from the University of Zurich.

Professor, Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology
Kim Midwood is Professor of Matrix Biology at Oxford University, and Principal Investigator at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, studying how the cellular microenvironment drives, and shapes, immune responses. Kim graduated with a BSc (HONS) in Biochemistry from Edinburgh University in 1995 and completed her PhD in the Department of Pathology at Edinburgh University in 1999, identifying how changes in the extracellular matrix switch cell signalling pathways in arthritis. She undertook postdoctoral training in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University in the US from 1999, investigating the molecular mechanisms by which environmental cues define cell phenotype. In 2004 she established the Matrix Immunology group in the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at Imperial College London to examine how immunomodulatory matrix molecules contribute to healthy innate immune responses, and their role in pathological inflammation, moving to Oxford University in 2011. In 2007 she was awarded an MRC New Investigators Award and in 2012 an Arthritis Research UK Senior Fellowship. She founded the BioTech company Nascient Ltd. in 2012.

Director, Oncology, Therapeutics Research
Following graduate and postdoctoral studies of adaptive immune responses, Dr. Mills has dedicated 12 years to therapeutics discovery, starting at Arena Pharmaceuticals and Kyowa Kirin Pharmaceuticals, where he led numerous small molecule, antibody, and RNAi drug discovery campaigns for autoimmune/inflammatory diseases. He currently directs strategy and execution of Zymeworks’ preclinical oncology pipeline, which includes immuno-oncology and antibody-drug conjugate therapeutic candidates leveraging Azymetric™ and ZymeLink™ platforms.

Research Associate, Science and Engineering School
Dr. Shayli Varasteh Moradi is a research associate at the Queensland University of Technology (Australia). She completed her PhD degree in Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutical sciences in 2015 (UQ, Australia). She received Dean’s commendation Award for Research Higher Degree Excellence in 2012. She joined Professor Alexandrov’s group in late 2015 to pursue her passion in molecular engineering and synthetic biology area. Since then, she has been working on development of robust techniques in the field of protein engineering. Her research interests include cell-free protein production and purification, improvement of expression yield in cell-free translation system, screening of antibody-antigen binding and protein-protein interaction.

Professor, Chimica, Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica, Giulio Natta
Massimo Morbidelli received his Laurea in Chemical Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano and PhD at the University of Notre Dame. He is currently Professor of Chemical Reaction Engineering at the Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering at ETH Zurich (Switzerland). His main research interest is currently in the area of integrated continuous up and downstream processes for the purification of therapeutic proteins, their PEGylation reactions and other processes of interest in the pharmaceutical industry.

Director, Molecular Biology & Protein Sciences
Umesh Muchhal has extensive expertise in discovery, design and development of next generation biotherapeutics. He is currently a scientific director at Xencor overseeing molecular biology and protein sciences groups involved in antibody discovery, optimization, purification and characterization. He also leads the early product development activities including the stable cell line generation and bioprocess optimization. Prior to this he was at Maxygen working on directed-evolution based protein engineering technologies for enzyme optimization. He received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from University of Nebraska-Lincoln and completed post-doctoral training at Purdue University.

Professor, 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 (Nobel Prize Chemistry 2002). After a post-doctoral research internship (1992-1996) at the Medical Research Council Centre in Cambridge (UK), under the supervision of Sir Gregory Winter (Nobel Prize Chemistry 2018), he became professor at ETH Zürich in 1996. Dario Neri is currently Full Professor of Biomacromolecules at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich. The research of the Neri group focuses on the engineering of therapeutic antibodies for the therapy of cancer and other angiogenesis-related disorders and on the development of DNA-encoded chemical libraries. Dario Neri is a co-founder of Philogen (www.philogen.com), a Swiss-Italian biotech company which has brought various antibody products into multicenter clinical trials for the treatment of cancer and of chronic inflammatory conditions. Dario Neri has published 400 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.

Professor, Antibody and Therapeutic Engineering, William Harvey Research Institute
Ahuva Nissim graduated in Molecular Immunology in 1992 from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and was trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering in Cambridge until 1995. During this period, she developed phage display semi-synthetic human antibody library, the so call ‘Nissim’ library which has been used worldwide. In November 2000, she was appointed as a Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University. Her studies are interdisciplinary and involve translational research at the William Harvey Research Institute and with intensive worldwide collaborations. Her studies have been mostly focused on the mechanisms that lead to the formation of disease tissue-specific pathogenic proteins and the exploitation of identified pathogenic proteins to develop platform technologies for novel disease - and tissue-specific, diagnosis and targeted treatment.

Director, Discovery
Haakan Norell is the Director of Discovery at Gadeta, creating unique cancer immunotherapies based on TEG (αβT cells Engineered to express a defined Gamma delta receptor) that achieve broad cancer targeting. Haakan holds a PhD in tumor immunology from the Karolinska Institute and prior to his current position pursued an international academic research career for almost two decades - with pioneers of the fields of NK cells, adoptive TCR-transfer and γδ T cells. The two central themes in Haakan’s research remain studies of tumor evasion/evolution and the development of therapeutic approaches tackling cancer escape by combining innate and adaptive immune mechanisms.

Senior Scientist, ADPE
Following a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Manchester in 1995, Monika joined the Marie Currie Research Institute, where she worked on viral transcription factors. In 1998 she moved to MRC LMB Cambridge to continue working on DNA-binding proteins based on designer zinc fingers with Sir prof Aaron Klug. Having joined Cambridge Antibody Technology/AZ in 2006 Monika has been working in Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering (ADPE), developing new technologies and candidate therapies in the areas of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Monika is a co-author of several scientific papers and patents.

Research Scientist, Biologics Research
Cristina Parola obtained her MSc degree in Medical Biotechnology at the University of Torino, Italy, and subsequently moved to Trondheim, Norway, for an internship in the company GeneSeque. She then completed her PhD at ETH Zurich, in Switzerland, in the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering located in Basel. During her doctoral studies, she was part of the Laboratory of Systems and Synthetic Immunology of Prof. Sai Reddy, where she worked on developing a mammalian cell platform for antibody engineering. She is now a postdoctoral research scientist at Sanofi, in the Paris area, where she is working on mammalian display as part of the Enabling Technologies team.

EVP and Head, R&D
Prof. Paul Parren, is an expert in antibody research, translational science and drug development. He is Exec. VP and Head of R&D at the start-up company Lava Therapeutics. He is also a biotech consultant and a professor of molecular immunology at the Leiden University Medical Center. Previously, he was head of preclinical development and research at Genmab and he was an Associate Professor at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. He invented and developed the approved therapeutic antibodies ofatumumab (Arzerra) and daratumumab (DARZALEX) and clinically validated antibody platform technologies for generating bispecific and enhanced-function antibodies. He received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam (1992).

Senior Research Scientist, CHO Expression Team Leader, Biopharmaceutical Development
No bio available

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Chemistry, CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials
Augusto Q. H. Pedro finished his MSc in Biochemistry in 2011 (UBI, Portugal) wherein he carried out research at Health Sciences Research Centre (CICS-UBI), being also an intern at Technical University of Lodz, Poland. He was then granted with a PhD fellowship from FCT wherein he developed and implemented different protocols for the recombinant expression and chromatographic purification of both soluble and membrane bound human catechol-O-methyltransferase enzymes. Since the completion of his PhD in 2016 to january 2019, he was a Post-doctoral researcher at University of Aveiro, (CICECO – Aveiro Institute of Materials, Chemistry department), hired as member of the research team of an European Research Council (ERC)-funded project, namely “IgY Technology: A Purification Platform using Ionic-Liquid-Based Aqueous Biphasic Systems (IgYPurTech)”. Currently, Augusto is a post-doctoral researcher at CICECO, hired under the scope of the FCT project IF/01634/2015. In the last years, he has been using ionic liquids as alternative solvents to improve the stability of biopharmaceuticals, as phase-forming components of aqueous two-phase systems in integrated stabilization/purification platforms, and as novel ligands in solid supports as chromatographic stationary phases. Since 2011, he (co)authored 16 scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals, 1 scientific article in a national Journal, and 1 book chapter, all publications in the fields of sustainable chemistry and (applied) biotechnology. He has completed the co-supervision of 3 MSc (University of Beira Interior and University of Aveiro) and 1 BSc theses. He also participated as jury in 5 MSc and 3 BSc theses. Up to date, he has/had participated in 4 research projects funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), 1 as the Principal Investigator and funded with more than 214 000€.

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

Professor and Director
Andreas Plückthun has been Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Zürich, Switzerland since 1993. He studied chemistry at the University of Heidelberg (Germany), received a PhD from the University of California at San Diego in 1982, was postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University (1982-85) and from 1985 until 1993, group leader at the Gene Center and Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried near Munich. His research in protein engineering has made important contributions to four areas: (i) Antibody engineering (first antibody expression in E. coli, the first fully synthetic antibody library, many contributions to antibody stability and design), (ii) Scaffold engineering: the repeat proteins as alternative scaffolds, especially the DARPin technology, and the Armadillo technology, (iii) Directed evolution: ribosome display, the first truly in vitro protein evolution method, (iv) GPCR engineering: directed evolution methods for making G-protein coupled receptors stable for structural biology and drug screening. He has written over 440 publications, which have been cited over 42,000 times. He has been an inventor on >25 patent families and is co-founder of three companies, Morphosys AG (listed on TECDAX), Molecular Partners AG (listed on Swiss Exchange) and G7 Therapeutics (Zürich, Switzerland; divested to Heptares/Sosei [UK/Japan]). In 2003, he was elected to the German Academy of Science and in 1992 member of EMBO. He received, among others, the 2016 Christian-Anfinsen Award of the Protein Society for "pioneering contributions to protein engineering", and together with his colleagues, the Swiss Technology Award (2005) and the deVigier Award (2005), and in 2002, both the JP Morgan Chase Health Award and the Wilhelm Exner Medal, and the Karl-Heinz-Beckurts-Prize (2000).

Reader in Biotechnology, Department of Chemical Engineering
Dr. Karen Polizzi is a Reader in Biotechnology in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London.  She has spent her career working at the interface of biological sciences and engineering, training first as a biochemist and then a chemical engineer. In 2008, Karen joined Imperial College as an RCUK Fellow in Biopharmaceutical Processing. Karen's research focuses on the application of synthetic biology to the development of biological systems for manufacturing including cell-based and cell-free production of recombinant proteins. 

Principle Scientist, pRED, Large Molecule Research
Education: Engineer in Biotechnology; Dr. rer. nat. in Biochemistry; Employment: Research Scientist and Technological Project Leader at Roche Diagnostics GmbH; https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliver-popp-a2a63a95/?originalSubdomain=de

Professor, Immunology, Biology-Life Science
Marie-Alix Poul holds a PhD in Immunogenetics from the University of Montpellier, France dedicated to monoclonal antibody humanization and production in insect cells (1994). After a postdoctoral stay at UCSF, CA, in the field of antibody phage display (Jim Marks Lab), where she set up selection strategies for internalizing antibodies (1996-1999), she joined Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris–Saclay as an Assistant Professor. Since 2011, she is a Professor of Immunology at the University of Montpellier, France and develops tumor specific internalizing antibodies for cancer therapy at the Institute of Cancerology of Montpellier, IRCM.

NIHR Professor in Cell & Gene Therapy, & Consultant in Paediatric Immunology/BMT
Waseem Qasim is NIHR Professor at the UCL Institute of Child Health and a consultant in Paediatric Immunology at Great Ormond Street hospital for children in London. He trained in Medicine and Paediatrics in Newcastle before PhD research at UCL, where he has combined clinical work in immunodeficiency and transplantation with cell/gene therapy research. He is leading research group focused on translation of basic science through GMP steps to ‘first-in-human’ trials, using lentiviral vector and genome editing tools including TALENs, CRISPR/Cas9 and base editors. Translational applications of T cell therapies, including the use of chimeric antigen receptors in genome edited cells, are currently underway.

CSO
Christophe is responsible for directing and advancing the development of Oncorus’ next generation oncolytic viruses. An industry veteran, Christophe has nearly two decades drug discovery experience in immuno-oncology and a successful track record of building portfolio from target identification through market approval. Prior to joining Oncorus, Christophe was Chief Scientific Officer at iTeos Therapeutics where his responsibilities included leading an innovative immuno-oncology portfolio 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 small molecules and biologics drug discovery programs for oncology and inflammatory diseases. Christophe trained as a post-doctoral fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle after receiving his Ph.D. in Life and Health Sciences from the University of Lille, France.

Scientist, Group Leader, Particle Lab, Pharma Technical Development Biologics Europe
Anacelia Ríos Quiroz did her University studies as Industrial Pharmaceutical Chemist in the Polytechnic National Institute (IPN) of Mexico City. Afterwards, she did her Master studies in Pharmacology in the Centre of Research and Advanced Studies (CINVESTAV-Mexico City) on the field of Bioinorganic Chemistry. In 2012, she started her PhD studies in Pharmaceutical Technology in collaboration with Basel University and F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., in Switzerland. She worked in the field of sub visible protein particles and has become an expert on particle counting characterization techniques. Her research increased the understanding on the applicability of emerging technologies as analytical tools for the pharmaceutical industry and serve as guideline for the implementation of related analytical methods and quality control strategies. After a Post Doc in the field of evaluation of the immunogenicity of protein particles, she joined in January 2016 the Analytical Department of Roche where she leads the Particle Lab

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

Senior Scientist Lead Generation
Dr. Christian Reichen works as senior scientist at Molecular Partners, 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 masters degree in microbiology at the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland.

Executive Director, The Antibody Society; Editor-in-Chief
Janice M. Reichert, Ph.D., is Executive Director of The Antibody Society. She is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of mAbs, a peer-reviewed, PubMed-indexed biomedical journal that focuses on topics relevant to antibody research and development, and co-editor of the Handbook of Therapeutic Antibodies. She has published extensively on development trends for antibody therapeutics, and she has presented her research results as an invited speaker at conferences held worldwide. Dr. Reichert received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania and did her post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School.

Team Leader, Synthetic Glycobiotechnology, Bioprocess Engineering
Thomas Rexer obtained a bachelor’s degree in Process Engineering from the University of Stuttgart and a master’s degree in Advanced Chemical Engineering from The University of Manchester. He received his PhD from the Newcastle University before joining the MPI Magdeburg as a Postdoc. At the MPI Magdeburg, he established the research team on synthetic glycobiotechnology.

Assistant Professor, Protein Science
Dr. Rockberg is an Associate Professor in Antibody Technology and Directed Evolution at KTH. He has been holding industry positions as director at Alligator Bioscience AB, Lund Sweden and as CSO of Atlas Therapeutics AB, Stockholm Sweden and is co-founder of Abclon Inc, Seoul South-Korea all focused on cancer immunotherapy. Main research interests include: Antigen – Antibody interactions, Bacterial display, Gene therapy biologics, microfluidics and cell line engineering.

Senior Principal Scientist, BioMedicine Design
Adam is a project manager and group leader in Pfizer’s large molecule discovery group, BioMedicine Design. His responsibilities include managing the protein discovery and engineering activities for several projects in the early immuno-oncology portfolio. He also leads a high throughput protein production core lab that is responsible for automated molecular cloning, expression, purification and characterization of thousands of new therapeutic proteins each year.

VP, Discovery & Alliance Management
Christine Rothe serves as VP Discovery & Alliance Management at Pieris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In this position she oversees technology development as well as the discovery process of selecting and profiling of Anticalin® proteins. In addition, she holds responsibility for the Alliance Management team. She joined Pieris in 2010 as Senior Director Alliance Management. Prior to joining Pieris, she worked at MorphoSys AG in various positions in R&D and Alliance Management. She received a Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the University of Regensburg, Germany.

Head, Launch Preparation and Coordination
Dr. Rümenapp is based in Wuppertal, Germany and working within the Product Supply Pharmaceuticals, Biological Development organization, where he is responsible for the transfer of Bayer’s pipeline candidates (antibodies and antibody-drug-conjugates) to external manufacturing partners and regulatory submission and launch preparations. Dr. Rümenapp studied chemistry and holds a Ph.D. in biosciences.

Lecturer, Food Science and Environmental Health, College of Health and Science
Barry carried out his PhD research in Dublin City University, under the supervision of Dr. Ciarán Ó'Fágáin, in the area of applied enzymology. Following extended periods in research and development in the (bio)pharmaceutical, diagnostic and biotechnology industries he returned to academia and the Technological University Dublin. Here he continues to teach on the biotechnological and biochemical aspects of Food and Pharmaceutical Sciences, whilst currently developing his applied enzymology research lab. His primary scientific research focuses on rational and directed evolution of recombinant proteins; including protein molecular modeling and stability analysis, to leverage commercialisable, bioprocess and diagnostic applications of recombinant proteins. His research group uses targeted biodiscovery procedures to identify novel microbial and fungal strains to act as sources of new gene/protein sequences/functions. Additional research areas include Real Time PCR, with particular emphasis on veterinary and food diagnostics. Aligned to his scientific research, he champions impactful, research-informed, evidence-based pedagogies.

Prof, Nanoscale Biophotonics Laboratory
Prof. Alan G. Ryder directs the Nanoscale Biophotonics Laboratory (NBL) which is based at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG). He has a B.Sc. and Ph.D. (1989) in chemistry from NUIG. After a stint as a postdoctoral researcher in UCC, he rejoined NUIG in 1997 to work on developing quantitative Raman spectroscopy-based methods for measuring illicit narcotics. In 2003, he formed the NBL which applies photonics and chemometrics technologies to applications in the life and physical sciences. In 2006 obtained tenure in the School of Chemistry at NUIG as senior lecturer and was promoted professor there in 2016. He has two core research areas: Analytical Sciences and Photonics which cover a wide range of applications. In the Analytical Sciences domain, his main research area is developing of rapid, quantitative analytical methods for the analysis of complex materials with particular focus on biopharmaceutical manufacturing and cell culture media analysis. He has collaborated with a wide range of industry partners including Bristol-Myers Squibb and Janssen-Biologics. He has authored more than 95 publications, generated 3 patents, graduated 17 PhD students.

Chief Scientific Officer
Volker Sandig started ProBioGen’s cell line development program in 2000 resulting in one of the leading CHO platforms, the co-development of the CHO-Freedom Kit with LTC (now Thermo-Fisher), and Glycoengineering technologies such as GlymaxX. In addition, his work aims at modern human and animal vaccines and their manufacturing processes based on designed cell lines and unique culture media. Prior to joining ProBioGen, he led a research group at Merck Research Laboratories, USA, focusing on the development of manufacturing systems for gutless adenoviruses and vectored vaccines. Volker Sandig received his PhD in Molecular Biology from the Humboldt University, Berlin.

Scientist, Process Development
No bio available

Professor, Dipartimento Scienze della Vita
Daniele Sblattero is an Associated Professor in the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Trieste, Italy (2015-). He previously held the position at the university of Eastern Piedmont in Novara Italy (2005-2015). He obtained his PhD in Biophysics from SISSA. His research group, during the last 20 years, use display technologies approaches to identify high specificity antibodies that target autoantigens in autoimmune disorders. Interest was devoted to the analysis of the transglutaminase 2 (TG2)-specific VH:VL autoantibody repertoire of celiac disease (CD) patients. Prof. Sblattero has published >90 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has 3 granted patents in these areas.

Centre of Chronic Immunodeficiency
No bio available

Principal Investigator, Cologne Translational Immunology
No bio available

Director, Recombinant Technologies
Peter conducted his PhD at Bayer Healthcare in Wuppertal, Germany in the area of nitric oxide-independent blood pressure regulation. Based on this work he got awarded an Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellowship to continue his research at the department of Pharmacology at Monash University in Melbourne. He left academia to join CSIRO and after 4 years took over the position as Senior Scientist in CSL’s R&D department in Melbourne, Australia. After 7 years with CSL in Australia Peter has recently relocated to Germany to run the department of Recombinant Technologies. As such he is involved in all aspects of the early development of new biologics.

Postdoctoral Researcher, BioProcess & Analytical Development Department
Valerie Schmieder joined Boehringer Ingelheim as a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Cell Line Development in December 2019. Before, she worked as an Early Stage Researcher at BOKU University in Vienna, Austria, as part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions ITN “eCHO Systems” aiming to enhance CHO cells by the application of systems biology. Ms. Schmieder studied Pharmaceutical Biotechnology (MSc) at the University of Applied Sciences in Biberach, Germany, as well as Biotechnology (BSc) at the University of Applied Sciences in Aachen, Germany. During her education, Ms. Schmieder gained first insights into the field of biopharmaceutical production at the Cell Line Development Department at Rentschler Biotechnology, Germany, as well as the Pharmaceutical Production Group at the Fraunhofer IME Institute in Aachen, Germany.

Lead Scientist, Cell Biology
Suzanne Schubbert is a group leader in cell biology at Xencor, Inc. Xencor is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing engineered monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of cancer, autoimmune diseases, asthma and allergic diseases. Currently, 12 candidates engineered with Xencor's XmAb® technology are in clinical development internally and with partners. Xencor's XmAb antibody engineering technology enables small changes to the structure of monoclonal antibodies resulting in new mechanisms of therapeutic action. Suzanne and her team are dedicated to evaluating the activity and efficacy of Xencor’s clinical candidates using cellular and immunological bioassays, and in vivo models. Prior to joining Xencor in 2015, Suzanne was a project scientist and postdoctoral fellow in pharmacology at UCLA. She received her PhD in biomedical sciences from UCSF, and BS in molecular biology from UCSD.

Founder & CEO
Dr. Schuetz, M.D., Ph.D., is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Compass Therapeutics, LLC. Previously, Dr. Schuetz was a Venture Partner at OrbiMed where he co-founded Audentes, now a publicly traded company where he remains a Director. Also at Orbimed, he was responsible for the investments in Enobia, Arteaus, and Relypsa where he served as a Director at each of these companies. Enobia was acquired by Alexion in 2011, Arteaus was acquired by Eli Lilly in 2014, and Relypsa was acquired by Galenica in 2016. Dr. Schuetz has multiple years of clinical strategy, development and operations experience including roles as Chief Medical Officer of Therion Biologics Corporation, a cancer vaccine company, and the Vice President of Clinical Affairs at Transkaryotic Therapies, a company acquired by Shire. Dr. Schuetz completed his medical training at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he served as the Chief Medical Resident, and completed his medical oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Schuetz holds a B.S. in chemistry from Xavier University, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard University. Dr. Schuetz is Board Certified in Medical Oncology.

Corporate VP Research & Innovation, Antibody Research & Technology
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®, HexaBody® and HexElecttm 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.

Investigator, Analytical & Product Characterisation, Biopharm Process Research
Archana Shah works as an investigator in Biopharm Analytical and characterisation group at GSK in Stevenage. Archana is a qualified pharmacist and joined GSK in 2008. Over the years, Archana has gained a wealth of knowledge and expertise in Analytical method development and characterisation to support Drug Discovery and Development. Being skilled in separation techniques and by performing de-risking studies and early CQA assessment, she supported number of candidate selections for monoclonal antibodies and novel biopharmaceuticals including domain antibodies and other antibody formats.

Project Leader
Peter received a PhD in biochemistry for the study of intramolecular signal transduction in complex multi-domain proteins. He subsequently joined the McCafferty laboratory at the University of Cambridge where he worked on therapeutic antibody discovery by phage display. He was member of the founding team at IONTAS ltd in 2012, where he is currently a Project Leader running antibody discovery campaigns to diverse and challenging target classes.

Director, Research & Development
Peggy Sotiropoulou joined Celyad in 2017. As Director of the R&D department, she leads a broad-ranging internal research program that aims to develop new strategies in CAR T cell design to target haematological and solid malignancies. Prior to Celyad, Peggy spent 17 years in Academic research in oncology. Before moving to industry, Peggy was associate Professor in the Université Libre de Bruxelles, in Brussels, Belgium, and published landmark papers in journals such as Nature, Nature Cell Biology and Cell Stem Cell. The aim of Peggy in Celyad is to translate cutting-edge research and innovation into actual treatments for patients.

Executive Vice President, Technical Operations
David Sourdive, PhD, is a co-founder of Cellectis and joined the Board of Directors in 2000. Dr. Sourdive holds the position of Executive Vice President, Technical Operations, with the mission to develop the Company’s industrial and technological basis as well as to deploy its operations in the pharmaceutical arena. Dr. Sourdive combines a strong scientific expertise with experience in managing industrial programs bringing innovative technologies to industrial fruition. He served as Executive Vice President, Corporate Development, from 2008 to 2016. In addition to his role at Cellectis, Dr. Sourdive has also served on the board of directors of the Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences. David Sourdive graduated from École Polytechnique, received his PhD in molecular virology at Institut Pasteur and completed a research fellowship in the Emory University Department of Microbiology and Immunology. His management training is from the HEC (Challenge +) and his decade-long experience in industrial program management was acquired at the French Department of Defense (DGA) prior to Cellectis’ inception.

Associate Professor, Chemical, Environmental and Bioscience Engineering, Integrated Bioprocess Development
Oliver Spadiut completed his PhD in Biotechnology at BOKU University, Vienna, Austria, in 2008 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 100 papers in reputed journals and is serving as a peer-reviewer for 72 scientific journals.

PSI Founder Fellow, Center for Radiopharmaceutical Sciences (CRS)
Undergraduate studies at the University of Basel (Switzerland) in Nanoscience, graduate studies at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) in Biomedical Engineering and PhD studies in materials and protein engineering at ETH Zurich (lab of Prof. Viola Vogel). Post-doctoral researcher at Prof. Roger Schibli’s lab at PSI Villigen (Switzerland) for three years and since December 2017, PSI Founder Fellow at PSI Villigen to build the spin-off company Araris Biotech AG.

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

Professor, Interfaculty Institute of Biochemistry
University education, degree: Studies in chemistry (1982 – 1987), University of Freiburg; Diploma thesis supervisor: Prof. Dr. Georg E. Schulz at the University of Freiburg, Germany; Academic degrees: Dr. rer. Nat. (Ph.D.): (1988 – 1992); PhD thesis in the laboratory of Professor Dr. Georg E. Schulz at the University of Freiburg, Germany (Structure and function of the enzymes guanylate kinase and NADH peroxidase). Academic career: 2016 – present Vice Dean of Research, Faculty of Science, University of Tuebingen; 2005 – 2016

Director
The Steyaert lab pioneered the use of nanobodies for chaperone-assisted X-ray crystallography (www.steyaertlab.eu), aiming at the highest hanging fruits of structural biology including membrane proteins, amyloidogenic proteins, and now also (transient) multiprotein complexes. The elucidation of the first GPCR structures in the agonist-bound active state demonstrate the power of Nanobodies to stabilize G protein coupled receptor conformational states including transmembrane signalling complexes. Recent work focusses on exploiting the conformational complexity of therapeutic targets for Nanobody-enabled drug discovery and on the design of novel antibody formats for applications in single particle cryo-EM.

Staff Scientist, Analytical Development & QC
John Stults is Technical Development Staff Scientist in the Analytical Development & QC organization at Genentech, with responsibility for biologics control systems during clinical development through license application. Previously he was a Director of Protein Analytical Chemistry, with responsibility for method development and molecule characterization. John began his career at Genentech as head of the Research Mass Spectrometry group where he pioneered methods and database search approaches for proteomics. He received the ASMS Award for Distinguished Contribution in Mass Spectrometry for the development of the Peptide Mass Fingerprinting method. John received a BA in Chemistry from the College of Wooster (Ohio) and a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Michigan State University.

Researcher, Discovery Biologics
Kanako Tatsumi is a researcher in Discovery Biologics Department at Chugai Pharmaceutical co. Ltd. She joined Chugai Pharmaceutical in 2010. She has worked for the development of a novel antibody with improved therapeutic index targeting solid tumor. She also has served as a project leader of antibody projects for oncology in pre-clinical stage. She has experiences of antibody engineering, antibody library display and pharmacology. Her current research focus is on engineering antibodies with novel functions.

CBO
Dr. Helen Tayton-Martin has served as Adaptimmune’s Chief Business Officer since March 2017, having formerly served as Chief Operating Officer since 2008, a role in which she oversaw the transition of all operations in the company from five to 300 staff, through transatlantic growth, multiple clinical, academic and commercial collaborations and private and public financing through to its Nasdaq IPO. As \CBO, Dr. Tayton-Martin is responsible for optimizing the strategic and commercial opportunity for Adaptimmune’s assets, leading on business development and commercial activities. Dr. Tayton‑Martin has over 26 years of experience working within the pharma, biotech and consulting environment in disciplines across preclinical and clinical development, outsourcing, strategic planning, due diligence and business development. She co‑founded Adaptimmune from the former company, Avidex Limited, where she had been responsible for commercial development of the soluble TCR program in cancer and HIV from 2005 to 2008. Dr. Tayton‑Martin also serves as a non‑executive director of Trillium Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ and TSX: TRIL). She holds a PhD in molecular immunology from the University of Bristol, U.K. and an MBA from London Business School.

CEO & CMO
Dr. Tesi is President, Chief Executive Officer and acting Chief Medical Officer since the formation of the Company in September 2015.  From November 2011 to May 2015, Dr. Tesi was CEO, President and Acting Chief Medical Officer of FPRT Bio Inc., a development-stage biotech company formed to develop XPro1595 for the treatment of neurodegenerative disease and other inflammatory diseases.  From November 2010 to October 2011, Dr. Tesi was Chief Medical Officer of Adienne SRL, an emerging biotech company in Bergamo, Italy focused on products to treat patients with hematologic malignancy.  From June 2007 to September 2010, Dr. Tesi was CEO and President of Coronado Biosciences, a company he founded. Dr. Tesi received his MD degree from Washington University School of Medicine in 1982. Dr. Tesi has been a licensed physician since 1982, an academic transplant surgeon and Fellow of the American College of Surgery before transitioning to industry in 1997.

Centro Ricerca M.Tettamanti, Clinica Pediatrica Ospedale S.Gerardo
PhD in Molecular Medicine, Basic and Applied Immunology obtained at the University of Vita-Salute San Raffaele, in Milan. She performed her training at the “M.Tettamanti” Research center in Monza under the supervision of Prof. Ettore Biagi and Prof. Andrea Biondi. During the last 6 years, she has been working as a Post Doc being directly involved in the optimization and clinical translation of CAR-expressing T cells for Acute Myeloid Leukemias. She is the co-inventor of a patent describing a non-viral based approach to genetically engineer T cells, by which a first academic clinical study exploiting CD19CAR-redirected Cytokine-Induced killer cells for B-cell malignancies is currently running in her institution. She is currently investigating several lines of research on anti-AML CARs and she has been mentoring several PhD and undergraduate students from the University of Milano-Bicocca.

Medical Oncology Consultant Experimental Cancer Medicine Team (ECMT) & Honorary Senior Lecturer, Division of Cancer Sciences, Faculty of Biology Medicine & Health
Dr. Fiona Thistlethwaite is a Medical Oncology Consultant within the ECMT (Experimental Cancer Medicines Team) at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust and Honorary Senior Lecturer at The University of Manchester. She graduated from The University of Cambridge MB PhD programme in 1999. Her PhD, under the supervision of Professor Sir Martin Evans, explored the molecular mechanisms that lead to cancer in inherited breast cancer syndromes. Following posts at Liverpool Royal, The Royal Marsden and The Christie she became a consultant at The Christie in 2007 and joined the ECMT in 2016. Fiona has been actively involved in clinical trial development for many years with a research focus on early phase clinical trials in immune-oncology, particularly adoptive cell therapies, combination immunotherapies and immune biomarkers. She is the Programme Director for the iMATCH (Innovate Manchester Advanced Therapy Centre Hub) consortium which was awarded almost £7M to establish one of three Innovate funded ATTC (Advanced Therapy Treatment Centres) in the UK. She is a member of the ESMO Congress Scientific Committee (Immunotherapy Track).

Area Specialist, R&D Microanalysis Centre
Jonas Hoeg Thygesen has been with Novo Nordisk Pharmatech since 2012. He is area specialist in the Novo Nordisk Pharmatech Microanalysis Centre, a center of excellence in Novo Nordisk for particle identification and characterization. Here he works with microscopy, microanalytical techniques and develops new analytical methods for material identification and characterization. Among his areas of expertise are spectroscopy, microscopy and advanced data analysis (chemometrics). He holds a Ph.D. from University of Copenhagen within Process Analytical Technology (PAT).

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

CMO
Elizabeth (Beth) G. Trehu, M.D, FACP, is Chief Medical Officer of Jounce Therapeutics, a clinical stage immuno-oncology company dedicated to transforming the treatment of cancer by matching the right immunotherapy to the right patient. Dr. Trehu designed and conducted her first cancer immunotherapy clinical trials in the early 1990s as an assistant professor and translational researcher at Tufts University School of Medicine, where her research focused on reducing the toxicity of high dose interleukin-2. She has held oncology leadership positions in drug development from IND through post-marketing at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Genzyme Corporation, Infinity Pharmaceuticals, and Promedior, Inc. and joined Jounce in 2015 to build and lead the clinical organization. Dr. Trehu was recognized as a ‘2012 Woman to Watch’ by Mass High Tech. She holds an M.D. from New York University School of Medicine and an A.B. cum laude from Princeton University.

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

Lead Senior Scientist, Biologics Drug Discovery
Obinna originally trained as a pharmacist before obtaining and MSc (Clinical Pharmacology) and PhD (Medical Sciences) from the University of Aberdeen. He also holds a postgraduate certificate in Intellectual Property Law. He is author of several academic publications including original research, reviews, book chapters and patents (inventor). Obinna is a Senior Scientist at Elasmogen Limited and is currently leading the preclinical and clinical development of the anti-autoimmune inflammation drug candidate, ELN/22. Elasmogen Limited is a serial award-winning next generation biotech company based in Aberdeen Scotland. With a robust, IP protected platform technology and versatile pipeline including soloMER™ drug candidates in late stage pre-clinical development for autoimmune inflammatory diseases and oncology, Elasmogen is positioned as one of the most promising biotech companies in Scotland.

Head, Cancer Immunotherapy Discovery
Pablo Umaña is Head of Oncology Discovery, Cancer Immunotherapies at Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED), Roche, and Head of Research at the Roche Innovation Center Zurich. He led the team that discovered and initially developed GAZYVA, a novel Type II CD20 antibody for the treatment of B-cell malignancies. GAZYVA was approved on Nov 1, 2013 by FDA for 1L CLL and is the first ever medicine approved by the FDA under the Breakthrough Therapy regime. In 2001 Pablo co-founded GlycArt Biotechnology AG and headed its research since the company’s foundation. Pablo, who holds a PhD from the California Institute of Technology, joined Roche when the company acquired GlycArt in 2005. Throughout this time, he has been leading research in the fields of cancer immunotherapy and protein engineering. He has co-invented and led the research group that has generated Roche-pRED’s tumor targeted-T-cell bispecific antibody, -immunocytokine and -immunomodulator platforms and respective drug candidate pipeline in the field of Cancer Immunotherapy.

VP, Antibody Development
Stefanie is a Molecular Biologist with an extensive experience in antibody technologies and development. During her time at MorphoSys she was in charge of the development of antibody platform technologies as well as therapeutic antibody discovery for external partners and in-house programs. Since October 2016 Stefanie is with iOmx Therapeutics where she serves as VP Antibody Development, being responsible for early antibody drug generation.

Senior Vice President, R&D
Since August 2012, Patrick van Berkel is appointed as Senior Vice President Research & Development for ADC Therapeutics sarl. Between 2003 and 2012, Patrick worked for Genmab BV, where he had various positions with increasing scientific and management responsibilities in the area of antibody engineering and antibody manufacturing. From 2001 to 2003, Patrick worked for Crucell as Senior Scientist Antibody Technology. Patrick worked from 1996 to 2001 for Pharming as scientist protein chemistry. In 1996, Patrick obtained his PhD from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands.

Senior Scientist
Muriel van Kampen works as a Senior Scientist at Genmab, a biotechnology company specialized in the development of differentiated antibody therapeutics. She is involved in characterizing the properties of new antibody formats like Genmab’s proprietary bispecific DuoBody format. She has also implemented developability assessment of antibody lead panels at Genmab. Today she is going to talk about the novel HexaBody® format and the impact of formulation on the biophysical characteristics of HexaBody®-based model compounds.

Director, Oncology-Immunology
No bio available

Senior Consultant, Analytical and Formulation Development
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).

Principal Scientist, Head, Immunotoxicology Cellular Immunology, Biotherapeutics
Dr Sandrine Vessillier received her PhD in Biochemistry from the University Claude Bernard in Lyon in 1999. After a few years of academic postdoctoral research at the William Harvey Research Institute in London she joined the UK National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in 2012 as a principal scientist. She currently serves as the head of the Immunotoxicology Laboratory. She develops, initiates and directs a broad program of research in immunotoxicology to understand mechanisms of action of biological medicines on the immune system with the goal of improving the safety, quality, and efficacy. Her focus is the development of relevant assays to assess the immune safety of emerging new biologics and the production of reference reagents to assure consistency and quality of bioassays. She provides specialist preclinical technical support for hazard identification of first-in-human biological medicines and expert advice on immunotoxicity risk to regulatory agencies and pharmaceutical companies.

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

Vice President, Pipeline Research
Dr Annelise Vuideopot is the Vice President of Pipeline Research at Immunocore Limited. Dr Vuidepot has been with Immunocore Limited since it was founded in 2000 and has played a lead role in the design and engineering of the novel ImmTAC platform. Prior to joining Immunocore, Dr Vuidepot was a postdoctoral researcher in the Biochemistry department at UCL; she gained her PhD in 1998 in Biophysics from the University of Paris.

Principal Scientist, Immunomodulatory Drug Discovery
Jeremy Waight is a PhD-trained immunologist with 8 years of industry-related experience in the field of cancer immunotherapy. Jeremy obtained his doctorate in immunology at Roswell Parker Cancer Institute (RPCI) in Buffalo, NY where he studied the transcriptional regulation of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) in cancer. At Agenus Jeremy is a principal scientist within the Immunomodulatory Drug Discovery (IMDD) group, tasked with developing novel cancer immunotherapies. Jeremy has successfully led several mono- and multi-specific antibody programs from early discovery to clinical evaluation and contributed significantly to many more. Prior to Agenus, Jeremy worked at Merck KGaA studying regulatory T (Treg) cell epigenetics, bi-functional molecules, and supplementing the ImmunoOncology pipeline with novel checkpoint immunotherapies.

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

Reader, School of Chemistry
Jim Warwicker has a BSc in Physics and introduced news methods for computing protein charge interactions with continuum electrostatics in his PhD. Post-doctoral work in structural bioinformatics was carried out with Fred Richards and Tom Steitz at Yale, followed by positions in the UK. JW has been based at the University of Manchester for the last 19 years, and for 10 of those years has collaborated widely, with Industrial and University colleagues, in the bioprocessing field.

Professor, Departments of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology
Wells’ group pioneered the engineering of proteins, antibodies, and small molecules that target catalytic, allosteric, and protein-protein interaction sites; and technologies including protein phage display, alanine-scanning, engineered proteases for improved hydrolysis, bioconjugations, N-terminomics, disulfide “tethering” (a novel site-directed fragment based approach for drug discovery), and more recently an industrialized recombinant antibody production pipeline for the proteome. These lead to important new insights into protease mechanisms, growth factor signaling, hot-spots in protein-protein interfaces, role of caspases in biology, and more recently determining how cell surfaces change in health and disease. His team was integral to several protein products including Somavert for acromegaly, Avastin for cancer, Lifitegrast for dry eye disease, and engineered proteases sold by Pfizer, Genentech, Shire and Genencor, respectively. He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Science, American Association of Arts and Science, and the National Academy of Inventors.

Associate Director, Antibody Discovery & Protein Engineering
Trevor is Associate Director in the Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering (ADPE) department of the AstraZeneca BioPharmaceuticals Unit. In this role Trevor is responsible for therapeutic project delivery and the production of purified, high quality, proteins and biologics. Trevor holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Southampton and an MBA from the University of Hertfordshire.

Director, Structural Biochemistry
Dieter Willbold studied biochemistry in Tübingen (Germany), Bayreuth (Germany) and Boulder (Colorado, USA). He completed his PhD in 1994 at the University of Bayreuth. After some more years in Bayreuth and a couple of research visits, e.g. at the Sackler School of Medicine of the Tel-Aviv University, he was leading his junior research group at the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology in Jena, Germany. In 2001 Willbold became an associate Professor at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. Since 2004, he is full professor at the Institute of Physical Biology in Düsseldorf and director of the Institute of Complex Systems at the Forschungszentrum Jülich. His main interests are protein interactions with physiological and artificial ligands, high resolution structural biology, neurodegeneration, neuropathic pain and autophagy. Since quite some years, Willbold is very much engaged in drug development and protein aggregation and has co-founded the companies Priavoid in 2017 and attyloid in 2018.

Prof, Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Technology & Biopharmaceutics
Gerhard Winter was born in 1959, studied Pharmacy at the University of Heidelberg from 1977 until 1982 with a scholarship from the Studienstiftung . In 1983 he received the German Approbation as a pharmacist and started a Ph. D. thesis under the supervision of Prof. Stricker in the area of transdermal absorption simulations. He finished the Ph.D. in 1987 with summa cum laude and accepted a position at Merck in Darmstadt leading a laboratory for solid dosage form development. In 1988 he joined Boehringer Mannheim, later Roche where he stayed until 1999. During this time Dr. Winter was responsible for parenteral and liquid dosage form development including every development step from preformulation, to stability studies and clinical supplies to scale up, production transfer and dossier submission. He led a large scale aseptic pilot plant to supply worldwide clinical studies with lyophilisates and sterile solutions. His special interest was focused on protein and peptide formulations, freeze drying and parenteral drug delivery systems. He was involved in the development of major drug products like EPO, Reteplase and Ibandronate. In 1999 G.Winter was appointed as a full professor for Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmaceutics at the University of Munich , Center for Drug Research, where he is currently working on protein stabilisation, parenteral dosage form technology, novel drying technologies, drug delivery systems and colloidal drug formulations. Prof. Winter has issued more than 50 patent applications and more than 185 publications in his research field, more than 60 Ph.D. theses have been finished under his supervision. He is member of many scientific societies, editorial advisory boards of several scientific journals and scientific advisory boards of pharma and biotec companies. In 2008 he co-founded Coriolis Pharma GmbH, Martinsried, together with former Ph.D. students to provide the biotec industry with formulation and analytical services. The company has grown into a leading provider of such services world wide an G. Winter ist supporting the company and its customers with scientific advise.

Scientific Director, DPDS BioTD Analytical Development
Klaus Wuchner is leading a small team of specialists responsible for particle characterization and container closure integrity testing within the global BioTherapeutics Development organization at Janssen R&D, Schaffhausen, Switzerland. The analytical development organization provides highly specialized and unique support mainly for sterile biological products from early clinical phases to marketed finished products. Klaus has over 15 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry and worked on various products from small molecule APIs to finished biotech products. Prior to joining the pharmaceutical world, he headed the organic residue analysis department in a water laboratory in France. He holds a Ph.D in analytical chemistry of the “Institut National Polytechnique of Toulouse”, France.

Senior Scientist 1, Lead Optimization
Christine Koo is a Senior Research Scientist working in Lead Optimization at Chugai Pharmabody Research, Singapore. Her work focuses on antibody optimization for pre-clinical stage development, across therapy areas including oncology and chronic diseases. Prior to joining Chugai Pharmabody Research, Christine earned her PhD at the National University of Singapore.

Assoc Fellow, Precision Medicine Lead, Clinical Biomarkers and Experimental Medicine, Oncology TA
Sapna Yadavilli is a precision medicine scientist in GSK Oncology experienced in clinical biomarker research as well as translational work involving nonclinical mouse and ex-vivo human tumor models for IND enabling studies. She has nearly 17 years of combined experience in academia and pharmaceutical industry where she has supported many Oncology drugs starting with tyrosine kinase inhibitors to ADC targets and more recently, immuno-modulatory agents for the last 6 years. She is currently the precision medicine lead for the ICOS agonist program responsible for designing and executing biomarker strategies for multiple clinical trials, aimed at characterizing pharmacodynamics, patient selection biomarkers, mechanisms of action and resistance as well as to inform on combination strategy with other cancer therapies. Prior to finding her passion for Oncology, Sapna was a research scientist at University of Pennsylvania involved in studies on invasion mechanisms and host-pathogen interactions of Apicomplexan parasites.

Principal Scientist, Molecular Oncology
Dr. Minhong Yan is currently a Principal Scientist in the department of Molecular Oncology at Genentech. Dr. Yan joined Genentech as a Postdoc after he obtained his PhD from Case Western Reserve University. Over the years, Dr. Yan has developed research interest across several areas, including TNF/TNFR superfamily, B cell biology, vascular development, lymphangiogenesis, tumor angiogenesis, phagocytosis, innate immune sensing, and cancer immunotherapy. Ongoing projects in his group have the potential to translate into therapies for treating vascular diseases and cancer.

Principal Scientist, Advanced Therapy Division
No bio available

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