SPEAKERS OF 2023
Keynotespeaker
British Columbia, Canada
Pieter R. Cullis
Pieter R. Cullis, PhD, FRSC, FNAI (USA), OC, Director, Nanomedicines Research Group, Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of British Columbia. Dr. Cullis and co-workers have been responsible for fundamental advances in the development of nanomedicines employing lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology for cancer therapies, gene therapies and vaccines. This work has contributed to five drugs that have received clinical approval. Dr. Cullis has co-founded eleven biotechnology companies that now employ over 300 people, has published over 350 scientific articles (h index 128) and is an inventor on over 60 patents. He has also co-founded two National Centre of Excellence networks, the Centre for Drug Research and Development (now AdMare) in 2004 and the NanoMedicines Innovation Network in 2019. These not-for-profit networks are aimed at translating basic research into commercially viable products. Dr. Cullis has received numerous awards including the Order of Canada in 2021 and the VinFuture Prize (Vietnam), the Prince Mahidol Award (Thailand), the Tang Award (Taiwan) and the Gairdner International Award (Canada) in 2022. Two recently approved drugs that are enabled by LNP delivery systems devised by Dr. Cullis, members of his UBC laboratory and colleagues in the companies he has co-founded deserve special emphasis. The first is Onpattro which was approved by the US FDA in August 2018 to treat the previously fatal hereditary condition transthyretin-induced amyloidosis (hATTR). Onpattro is the first RNAi drug to receive regulatory approval. The second is Comirnaty, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer/BioNTech that has received regulatory approval in many jurisdictions including Canada, the USA, the UK and Europe. Comirnaty is playing a major role in containing the global Covid-19 pandemic with approximately 3B doses administered worldwide in 2021.
Robert S. Langer
Massachusetts, USA
Robert S. Langer
Robert Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. He has written over 1,500 articles, which have been cited over 368,000 times; his h-index of 301 is the highest of any engineer in history and the 3rd highest of any individual in any field. His patents have licensed or sublicensed to over 400 companies; he is a cofounder of a number of companies including Moderna. Dr Langer served as Chairman of the FDA’s Science Board (its highest advisory board) from 1999-2002. His over 220 awards include both the United States National Medal of Science and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (he is one of 3 living individuals to have received both these honors), the Charles Stark Draper Prize (often called the Engineering Nobel Prize), Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, Albany Medical Center Prize, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Kyoto Prize, Wolf Prize for Chemistry, Millennium Technology Prize, Priestley Medal (highest award of the American Chemical Society), Gairdner Prize, Hoover Medal, Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences, and the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine. He holds 39 honorary doctorates, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Northwestern, and has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors.
More information and speakers coming up soon.
Jeffrey Chao
Basel, Switzerland
Jeffrey Chao
Jeffrey Chao obtained his PhD from The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA where he worked with James Williamson on the structure and function of RNA-protein complexes.
His postdoctoral studies with Robert Singer at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, NY focused on understanding RNA localization and developing fluorescent microscopy
techniques for imaging single mRNAs. In 2013, he established his own group at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland. His group combines biochemistry, structural biology and single-molecule imaging to investigate the mechanisms that control post-transcriptional regulation in the cytoplasm.
Philip Felgner
Virginia, USA
Philip Felgner
Dr. Felgner’s work is rooted in biophysics, structure, and hydrodynamic properties of bilayer membranes conducted at the University of Virginia. In 1984 there were no positively charged bilayer forming lipids available in nature to prepare positively charged lipid vesicles. He collaborated with chemists at Syntex Research Institute to synthesize and characterize a series of positively charged bilayer forming lipids. When these vesicles interact with negatively charged nucleic acid the lipids and the nucleic acid reorganize together and assemble into a new structure, he called ‘Lipoplex’ capturing 100% of the input nucleic acid. Lipoplexes are synthetic virus-like lipid nanoparticles, that deliver functional nucleic acid into cultured cells and ‘Lipofection’ has since become the most widely used in vitro transfection method.
Felgner published a highly cited report in 1990 showing functional gene transfer of plasmid DNA and mRNA into mouse muscle in vivo. This was followed in 1993 by a paper showing protective immunity against influenza after injection of a nucleic acid vaccine. This work spawned a separate field of non-viral gene therapy and nucleic acid vaccine science. He was a founding member and inaugural chairman of the NIH “Genes and Drug Delivery” study section on this topic. Years later, continuity of the science culminated in the development of the COVID LNP mRNA vaccines.
Currently Felgner is Director of the University of California Irvine Vaccine R&D Center. There he developed a protein microarray platform to measure vaccine induced antigen specific antibody levels against thousands of individual antigens from dozens of bacteria, parasites and viruses. During the COVID outbreak his Coronavirus Antigen Microarray was used to measure virus exposure prevalance among 10,000 Orange County residents and predict the gradual development of herd immunity from natural exposure. Then he witnessed the spectacular immunity induced by the mRNA vaccines.
He has 50 issued US patents, is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and recipient of the Robert Koch Award for infectious disease and vaccine science, and the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research. His work chronicles a remarkable period of non-viral nucleic acid delivery and vaccine science, breaking the mRNA tabu, and culminating in the phenomenal success of mRNA vaccines important to the world today.
Benjamin Goldman-Israelow
Connecticut, USA
Benjamin Goldman-Israelow
Dr. Benjamin Goldman-Israelow is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine in the section of Infectious Diseases at Yale University. He obtained his AB in Biology from Washington University in St. Louis and his MD and PhD degrees from The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He completed internal medicine residency and Infectious Diseases fellowship training at Yale. During fellowship, Dr. Goldman-Israelow joined the laboratory of Dr. Akiko Iwasaki for his postdoctoral studies. There, he studied SARS-CoV-2 infection, pathogenesis, and immunity in both patients and pre-clinical models. His work led to one of the first mouse models to study SARS-CoV-2, the identification of immunologic factors contributing to COVID-19 pathogenesis and protection, and the development of a novel mucosal vaccine strategy that protects against pathology and transmission. His laboratory focuses on understanding the development of mucosal immune memory to emerging and endemic respiratory pathogens. Working through the lenses of natural infection and vaccination, the Israelow lab aims to better understand the correlates of protection and transmission of pandemic-associated pathogens, and to leverage this research to develop next-generation vaccines and therapeutics. For his work, Dr. Goldman-Israelow has received the Iva Dostanic Physician-Scientist Award and the American Society for Clinical Investigation Young Physician-Scientist Award.
Magnus Hoffmann
California, USA
Magnus Hoffmann
Dr. Hoffmann is the Merkin Institute Fellow at the Merkin Institute for Translational
Research at the California Institute of Technology. Based on his graduate work in Pamela
Bjorkman’s laboratory at Caltech, he received the Milton and Francis Clauser Prize for the
best PhD thesis across all disciplines, and he was awarded an NIH Director’s Early
Independence Award to launch his own laboratory as an independent postdoctoral scholar
at Caltech. Dr. Hoffmann’s research focuses on the development of innovative vaccine
technologies and gaining a deeper understanding of the immunological mechanisms that
shape vaccine-induced immune responses. He developed the EABR technology, an
innovative approach to genetically encode nanoparticles for vaccine applications. This
vaccine platform combines features of mRNA- and protein nanoparticle-based vaccines
resulting in superior neutralizing antibody responses against original and variant SARSCoV-
2 in mice. Ongoing and future research in his group focuses on the continued
optimization, evaluation, and application of this technology.
Zoltán Kis
London, UK
Zoltán Kis
Dr. Zoltán Kis is a Lecturer at the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at The University of Sheffield, and an Honorary Lecturer at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London.
Zoltan is leading a multidisciplinary team that is innovating and digitalising RNA vaccine and therapeutics production platform technologies. His work is addressing the challenges of producing large volumes of RNA-based vaccines and therapeutics, rapidly, at high quality and at low cost in a disease-agnostic manner.
Zoltán has previously worked as a Research Associate in the Future Vaccine Manufacturing Hub at Imperial College London. He obtained his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Imperial College London, UK, holds an M.Sc. in Applied Biotechnology and a B.Eng. in Chemical with Biochemical Engineering.
Florian Leuschner
Heidelberg, Germany
Florian Leuschner
Dr. Leuschner is an interventional cardiologist and director of the catheter-based valve
replacement (TAVR) program at the University Hospital Heidelberg, Germany. He holds a
Heisenberg Professorship for Immunocadiology (W3), is a Principal Investigator of the
German Centre for Cardiovascular research (DZHK, partner site Heidelberg), and serves
as the European Lead Coordinator for the Leducq FoundationTransatlantic Network of
Excellence Program entitled “The Inflammatory-Fibrosis Axis in Adverse Cardiac
Remodeling: translating mechanisms into new diagnostics and therapeutics (IMMUNO-FIB
HF)”. Dr. Leuschner studied medicine in Ulm and pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)/ Harvard Medical School. His research focusses
on cardiac inflammation and the amelioration of adverse remodeling.
Andre E. Nel
Andre Nel
Andre Nel is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine at UCLA, where he has successfully established a large federally funded nanotechnology research program. Dr. Nel is also board-certified as a physician in Medicine and the subspecialty of Allergy and Immunology. The UC Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (UC CEIN) emerged as one of the premier think tanks for the safe and sustainable implementation of nanotechnology in the US, while the team science efforts he has put together as Research Director of the California Nanosystems Institute is spearheading nanomedicine translation and commercialization on the UCLA campus. Professor Nel is a recipient of the Harry Truman Award and received the 2013 California Governor’s Environmental Economic Leadership Award. He plays national leadership roles in science, biomedical research, nanotechnology, and policy. He has served as the Chairs of a number of NIH study sections and was also included as a NSF panel member for producing a comprehensive US Government blueprint to further develop the Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) from 2010-2020. He served as a member of the US Bilateral Presidential Commission for technology cooperation with Russia and served as a panel member on Pres. Obama’s PCAST panel for strategizing the NNI technological innovation and commercialization. Dr Nel has represented the US State Department and the NIH in cooperative research agreements with Japan and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in which he was recognized as Honorary Foreign Professor. In addition to groundbreaking work in nanotechnology, Dr Nel co-directed a leading EPA Particle Center studying the impact of air pollution on asthma. Dr. Nel has been peer selected as one of the Best Doctors in America and received the John Salvaggio Award for outstanding service to the American Academy of Asthma Allergy and Immunology. He has been included as a Highly Cited Scientist (top 1% in the world of chemistry) by Clarivate analytics and is frequently invited to deliver keynote or plenary talks at international forums. He is a serial inventor with numerous patents, some contributing to the launch of startup companies.
Hamideh Parhiz
Pennsylvania, USA
Hamideh Parhiz
Hamideh Parhiz, PharmD, Ph.D. is a Research Assistant Professor in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania where she leads the targeted LNP delivery program. Her expertise is developing novel nucleic acid delivery systems including a new generation of targeted LNP-mRNA therapeutics for a variety of non-vaccine applications such as blood gene disorders, cancer, fibrosis, and acute inflammatory conditions. Hamideh’s work has resulted in the publication of more than 40 papers including two papers in Science magazine and several patents. Her work in designing an efficient targeted LNP-mRNA platform is now the basis for industrial product developments as well as academic programs.
Dan Peer
Tel Aviv, Israel
Dan Peer
Dan Peer is a Professor and the Director of the Laboratory of Precision NanoMedicine at Tel Aviv University (TAU). He is also the Vice President for Research and Development in Tel Aviv University.
Prof. Peer’s work was among the first to demonstrate systemic delivery of RNA molecules using targeted nanocarriers to the immune system and he pioneered the use of RNA interference (RNAi) as drug discovery tools in immune cells. In addition, his lab was the first to show systemic, cell specific delivery of modified mRNA in animals. This strategy has enormous implications in cancer, inflammation, and infectious diseases. His lab developed one of the largest lipid library with unique properties and strategies to immobilized natural ligands and antibodies on the surface of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for cell specific delivery of RNA payloads.
His lab was also the first to show systemic, high efficiency, cell specific, therapeutic genome editing in cancer. Recently, his lab also showed the first bacterial mRNA vaccine that opened new potential field of increasing the arsenal of vaccines against antibiotic resistance strains.
Prof. Peer has more than 130 pending and granted patents. Some of them have been licensed to several pharmaceutical companies and his innovations have now been tested in more than 10 different clinical trials. In addition, based on his lab work, four spin-off companies were generated aiming to bring innovative personalized medicine into clinical practice. In 2014, he was elected to the Israel Young Academy. In 2023, he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering.
Jamile Ramos da Silva
São Paulo, Brazil
Jamile Ramos da Silva
Jamile Ramos da Silva obtained her Ph.D. from the Biomedical Sciences Institute at the
University of São Paulo, Brazil, where she worked with Dr. Luís Carlos de Souza Ferreira
on the development of therapeutic vaccine strategies for the control of human
papillomavirus (HPV)-induced tumors. During her doctoral work, she spent a year in Dr.
Norbert Pardi’s Lab in 2019-2020 and spearheaded the development of mRNA-based
vaccination strategies to control HPV-related tumors in mouse models. Although her
research has been focusing on cancer vaccines, she is also interested in the development
of mRNA vaccine candidates against infectious diseases.
Steve Roffler
Taipei, Taiwan
Steve Roffler
Dr. Steve Roffler received his B.S. degree from the University of Washington and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a Distinguished Research Fellow and the Cancer Division Chief in the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. Steve has published more than 165 papers and been awarded over forty patents. His lab developed the first monoclonal antibodies that specifically bind to polyethylene glycol, which changed the way that pegylated medicines are developed in the clinic. A range of anti-PEG monoclonal antibodies and humanized antibodies developed in his lab have been used by nearly 300 companies and labs to accelerate the development of new pegylated medicines. Steve has received several awards including the Ministry of Science and Technology Outstanding Research Award, the Ministry of Economic Affairs Innovation Award and the Ministry of Education Annual Academic Award. Steve’s major areas of research include anti-PEG antibodies, antibody engineering, targeted nanomedicines, and cancer prodrug therapy.
Selected Recent Publications
WA Chen, DY Chang, BM Chen, YC Lin, Y Barenholz, SR Roffler*. Antibodies against poly(ethylene glycol) activate innate immune cells and induce hypersensitivity reactions to PEGylated nanomedicines. ACS Nano 17: 5757–5772 (2023)
BM Chen, TL Cheng, SR Roffler*. Polyethylene glycol immunogenicity: Theoretical, clinical, and practical aspects of anti-polyethylene glycol antibodies. ACS Nano 15:14022-14048 (2021)
Chen E, Chen BM, Su YC, Chang YC, Cheng TL, Barenholz Y*, Roffler SR*. Premature drug release from polyethylene glycol (PEG)-coated liposomal doxorubicin via formation of the membrane attack complex. ACS Nano 14: 7808-7822 (2020)
YC Su, PA Burnouf, KH Chuang, BM Chen, TL Cheng* and SR Roffler*. Conditional internalization of PEGylated nanomedicines by PEG engagers for triple negative breast cancer therapy. Nat. Comm., 8:15507 (2017)
Gaurav Sahay
Oregon, USA
Gaurav Sahay
Gaurav Sahay is Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and co-Director for the Center of Innovative Drug Delivery and Imaging (CIDDI), at the College of Pharmacy at Oregon State University. Dr. Sahay’s lab is developing novel nanotechnology-based platforms including lipid-based nanoparticles for effective delivery of messenger RNA therapeutics for treatment of cystic fibrosis, retinal degeneration and against SARS-CoV2. He has done pioneering work to dissect the intracellular transport essential for nucleic acid delivery to the cytosol and developed methods to overcome endosomal barriers. He has more than 60-peer-reviewed publications in top tier journals including Science Advances, Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Nanotechnology, Journal of Controlled Release, Nano Letters etc. He is the winner of a 2013 American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Postdoctoral Fellow Award, the 2015 Controlled Release Society (CRS) T. Nagai Award, a 2016 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) New Investigator Award, a 2019 Oregon Health & Sciences University (OHSU) Distinguished Faculty Senate Award for Collaboration, 2020 Phi Kappa Phi OSU Emerging Scholar Award and 2020 CMBE Young Innovator Award. He serves as the Principal Investigator on awards funded through the National Institutes of Health, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and biotech companies. He serves as a consultant and scientific advisory board member to several biotech and venture capital firms. He is co-founder of Enterx Bio and RNAvax Bio. He was the Chair of the 2018 NanoMedicine and Drug Delivery Symposium (NanoDDS, Portland, OR) and is standing section member for Innovative in NanoSystems and Nanotechnology. Dr. Sahay completed his postdoctoral research with Prof. Robert Langer and Prof. Daniel Anderson at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT and received his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska Medical Center under the mentorship of Prof. Alexander Kabanov.
Balachandran Vinod
New York, USA
Vinod Balachandran
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center – New York, NY
Vinod Balachandran completed his BA in Physics at Cornell University, MD at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and surgical oncology training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. In 2015 he joined MSK as faculty, where he is a laboratory head in the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program and an attending hepatopancreatobiliary surgeon in the Department of Surgery. His lab aims to discover new immunotherapies for pancreatic cancer.
In 2017, Vinod’s group made the striking observation that rare exceptional survivors of pancreatic cancer have immune-activated “hot” tumors that recognize highly immunogenic mutation-derived neoantigens. As pancreatic cancers phenocopy the ~80% of cancers that resist first-generation immunotherapies, this biological evidence of spontaneous neoantigen-specific T cell immunity in pancreatic cancer has spurred efforts to identify, validate, and therapeutically deliver the minority of immunogenic neoantigens for cancer therapy. His group has translated immunological insights from exceptional pancreatic cancer survivors, with a recent clinical trial of mRNA neoantigen vaccines for pancreatic cancer that has ignited global interest in mRNA cancer vaccination.
For his work, Vinod has received a Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award, a National Cancer Institute Cancer Moonshot Award, the Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators, and the Louise and Allston Boyer Young Investigator Award for Cancer Research, among others.
Selected Recent Publications
Rojas L…Balachandran VP. Personalized RNA Neoantigen Vaccines Stimulate T Cells in Pancreatic Cancer. Nature 2023 May;618:144-150.
Łuksza M…Balachandran VP. Neoantigen quality predicts immunoediting in pancreatic cancer survivors. Nature 2022 Jun;606:389-395.
Moral JA… Balachandran VP. ILC2s amplify PD-1 blockade by activating tissue-specific cancer immunity. Nature 2020 Mar;579(7797):130-135.
Balachandran VP…Leach SD. Identification of unique neoantigen
Qiaobing Xu
Massachusetts, USA
Qiaobing Xu
Dr. Qiaobing Xu is currently a professor in Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University. He also holds an adjunct position in Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and School of Medicine at Tufts University. He obtained his B.S. from Jilin University, China, and PhD from Harvard University, USA. He did postdoc training at MIT before joining Tufts as an assistant professor in September, 2010. He was promoted to full professor in 2021. His current research interests lie at the intersection of material science engineering, specifically micro/nanoscience, and biomedical application. His work involves using combinatorial methods to develop novel materials for the delivery of therapeutic biomacromolecules and using nanotechnology to develop novel biomaterials for tissue engineering. He received Charlton Award from Tufts University School of Medicine and National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He was named the Pew Scholar for Biomedical Sciences from Pew Charitable Trusts and was elected as a Fellow of AIMBE, class of 2020. Dr. Xu is the founder of Hopewell Therapeutics Inc.
Industry sponsored speaker
Marco Ciufolini
Michigan, USA
Marco Ciufolini
Dr. Ciufolini obtained his PhD in chemistry at the University of Michigan and after postodoctoral studies at Yale University, he became an academic. He held faculty positions at Rice University, Houston, TX (1984-1998), the Université Claude Bernard and ESCPE in Lyon, France (1998-2004), and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (2004-2021). Marco Ciufolini have over 30 years’ experience as consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, and contributed to the development of 3 commercial pharmaceuticals, including Onpattro.® He is a co-founder of NanoVation Therapeutics (NTx), and 6 other companies, and he is the author of more than 160 technical papers and 45 patents.
May Guo
Maryland, USA
May Guo
May Guo is the Chief Commercial Officer for Synthgene, a company dedicated to develop and manufacture novel and high quality starting materials for mRNA, gRNA, siRNA and oligos. Prior to Synthgene, May worked for Arranta Bio, TriLink, Synthego, Agilent and Promega in various business development roles. She is passionate about new technologies and discoveries, particularly in the area of treating cancer and rare diseases. With 20 years of experience in the life science industry and extensive knowledge of mRNA, CRISPR, siRNA and LNP, May is in a good position to bring solutions to customers and connect people in the industry. May received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Peking University and MBA from Georgetown University.
Régis Gervier
Lyon, France
Régis Gervier
Régis is responsible for creating and leading the Sanofi’s mRNA Center of Excellence, which is key to accelerating the development and delivery of prophylactic and therapeutic solutions based on mRNA technology. The mRNA Center is a fully integrated organization with teams dedicated to mRNA & LNP Research, CMC activities, GMP manufacturing and Applied Data Sciences. The Center of Excellence is located both in the USA and France.
Régis started his career at Sanofi 28 years ago in the R&D Dpt as Biotechnology Process Development Scientist & has since held successive leadership positions at Sanofi and Sanofi Vaccine in R&D and Industrial Operations worldwide. Before assuming his role at the CoE, Régis was leading the global Evolutive Vaccine Facility (EVF) program for France and Singapore. Biotech Engineer by training, he holds complementarily a Master in Microbiology and an MBA from McGill University.
Romain Micol
Massachusetts, USA
Romain Micol
Dr. Romain Micol has been President, co-founder, and Chief Executive Officer of Combined Therapeutics since 2016. Previously, he held several positions in R&D and Business Development across the Institut Mérieux group: ABL Inc (USA), Shantha Biotechnics (India), and Transgene (China and France). Dr. Micol helped to set up the first reference center for primary immunodeficiency in France in 2005. Dr. Micol is an entrepreneur with affiliations to six famous universities (Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT in the U.S., LSE in the UK, Paris VI, Paris V, Paris Dauphine in France and Global LBS in the UK). Dr. Micol obtained his Medical Degree (two specializations in Infectious Diseases and Public Health) from Pierre et Marie Curie University, his Ph.D. in Communicable Diseases from Paris Descartes University, his Master of Business Administration from Hult International Business School and his LLM (Corporate Law – Intellectual Property) from the London School and Economics, and his Advanced Management Program from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Venkata Indurthi
Massachusetts, USA
Venkata Indurthi
Venkata Indurthi, Ph.D. is Aldevron’s Chief Scientific Officer, where he provides essential leadership and structure while focusing on strategic opportunities to further strengthen our position across all platforms with a special emphasis on RNA-focused developments.
Indurthi earned a Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology from SRM University, Chennai, India, and his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Science from North Dakota State University, Fargo, N.D. He has published several scientific papers and has presented at multiple conferences and symposiums.
Indurthi has been a member of the Aldevron team since 2016, holding a variety of positions that increased in responsibility and focus across production, quality and R&D.
Igor Smolenov
Massachusetts, USA
Igor Smolenov
Igor Smolenov is the Chief Development Officer of Arcturus Therapeutics. Dr. Smolenov is a recognized leader in clinical development with a proven record of accomplishment in small biotechnology and large pharmaceutical companies. He contributed to the successful development and licensure of several innovative vaccines.
Before joining Arcturus, Dr. Smolenov was the Executive Vice President at Clover Pharmaceuticals, where he built a strong team able to rapidly generate pivotal clinical data leading to COVID-19 vaccine authorization and the product launch. Before that, Dr. Smolenov served as Therapeutic Area Head, leading the development of several seasonal influenza vaccines in Seqirus (CSL), and Head of Clinical Development in Moderna Therapeutics, managing the initiation of the first clinical trials of mRNA vaccines in humans. At Novartis Vaccines, Dr. Smolenov contributed to the development and global licensure of meningococcal vaccines (Menveo, Bexsero, and MenABCWY) and the overall commercial success of the meningococcal vaccines franchise.
Igor Smolenov graduated from Volgograd State Medical University, Russia, and holds MD, Ph.D., and Doctor of Science (Habilitation) degrees from this university. Before starting his industry carrier, he passed multiple academic steps from junior researcher to professor and head of the Allergy/immunology department of the university. He is the author of more than 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals in clinical pharmacology, infectious disease, and vaccine development.
Ying Tam
Vancouver, Canada
Ying K. Tam
Chief Scientific Officer of Acuitas Therapeutics, Dr. Ying K. Tam, is a globally respected expert in the areas of nanotechnology and immunology. He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Developmental and Molecular Biology from the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, ON prior to his post-doctoral fellowship in cancer immunotherapy at the BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver, BC. Dr. Tam has held several academic positions including Instructor and Assistant Professor in the Department of Hematology/Oncology at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago, IL, overseeing the translational stem cell transplant immunotherapy research program. He also served as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of British Columbia.
Prior to Acuitas, Dr. Tam led a program developing a lipid nanoparticle (LNP), nucleic acid-based immunostimulatory drug. Dr. Tam is a founding scientist at Acuitas and helped the company to become a global leader in the application of LNP technology for the delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics. This includes the development of the LNP carriers used in ONPATTRO® and COMIRNATY®, a highly effective and safe COVID-19 vaccine produced through a partnership with BioNTech and Pfizer.
Dr. Tam oversees the scientific program at Acuitas and has guided both internal research programs as well as external programs with partners and collaborators. He has authored more than 75 peer-reviewed studies, including several in high-impact journals such as Nature and Nature Biotechnology, and has contributed to grant applications to secure millions of dollars in funding.
Shigetomo Tsujihata
Kyoto, Japan
Shigetomo Tsujihata
Shigetomo Tsujihata joined Fujifilm Corporation in 2000 and have been involved in R&D related to nanoparticle formulation and dispersion. He has more than 10 years of experience in nano-DDS, with a particular focus on lipid nanoparticles. He manages CDMO projects on LNPs and his team is responsible for molecular design of ionizable lipids, formulation of LNPs, and process development.
Andreas Wagner
Vienna, Austria
Andreas Wagner
Dr Andreas Wagner is currently the Head, Liposome Technology at Polymun Scientific GmbH. He has significant expertise in incorporation and optimization of hydrophilic, lipophilic and amphipatic substances into liposomes and LNPs and development for clinical use. He studied Biotechnology in Vienna, Austria.. Dr Andreas Wagner is listed as inventor on several patents, like the liposome technology and some product patents of liposomal formulations. Furthermore, he has published several peer reviewed articles dealing with liposomes, the technology, products thereof and their application in preclinical and clinical studies.
